Clamshell razors, lasers, lye depilatories, tweezers, waxes, threading and electrolysis. Humanity has used an impressive array of tools to remove hair. This is, biologically speaking, pretty strange. Most of Earth's mammals possess luxuriant fur. Only one seeks to remove it. Rebecca Herzig's delightful history of hair removal in America helps explain why: smooth skin is a cultural imperative. There is no finer example of this than the reaction of the bearded Europeans to the smooth skin of the male and female native Americans they saw when they arrived on their shores. George Catlin's portrait of the eldest son of Black Hawk in 1832 (right) reveals the preoccupation that many colonists had with hairlessness. Hair was political, too, and formed part of a debate about Indian racial characteristics and whether natives were capable of being civilised. William Robertson, a Scottish historian, said hairlessness provided evidence of a "feebleness of constitution".
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