Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - History of Pubic Hair

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

We often think of the way we treat pubic hair as a relatively modern thing.But how did they manage pubic hair in Ancient Greece, or the Middle Ages? Why would someone wear a pubic wig (also known as a merkin)? And why was the pubic hair of suspected witches shaven off?Joining Kate today is Professor Jill Burke, author of How to be a Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity, to help us uncover this history.This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.All music from Epidemic Sounds/All3 Media.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Oh, my lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. I am here once again with your favourest of favourite podcasts, Betwixt The Sheets. And probably one of the reason it is your favourite is because we do stray into the saucier areas of history. And because of that, I have to tell you,

this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adultery things in an adulty way covering a range of adult subjects. I should be an adult too. And if you're not an adult two, be off with you. And if you are an adult, you're hanging around. Well, fair do's, we have now told you that this podcast might get a little bit spicy. So if you hang around and you end up clutching your pearls, well, tough t-de-hs, quite frankly, we did let you know. For the rest of you, on with the show. Here in the Islamic bathing houses

of the 11th century, some fantastic work is going on. I am here with my fellow European travellers and guys, it's seriously rude to stare. The body hair of both men and women is being very carefully removed. Not from us Europeans, we're a right hairy bunch, but they are having the whole lot off. Not even a tough left. They look like eels. Why are they doing this? Well, dear listener, in today's episode, we are finally going to find out about the history of pubic hair and its removal and the keeping thereof. And to do that, we will be traveling back to Europe where a culture of sharing beauty tips and secrets is blossoming. This is one of our most requested episode you are pub crazy.

So to find out more, who else could we possibly talk to other than Professor Jill Burke, who is an expert on Renaissance beauty and she knows an awful lot about pubic hair as well. So, on with the show. What do you look for a man?

Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and... Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Oh, and welcome back to betwixta sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister.

Do you want the classic bikini wax, a Brazilian wax, the Californian wax, or the Hollywood wax? Or perhaps you just prefer an entire Brazilian blowout and just go own that, Trell. The way we treat and think about pubic hair is something that most of us are probably familiar with, and there are plenty of options available. But how was it approached throughout history? From the ancient Egyptians and Grecians to Italian women in the Renaissance, they all had fashions for pubic hair. I told you that this has been a very, very heavily requested episode.

And one of the many people to request it is Cister, who works at a waxing salon in the Netherlands. And who better, quite frankly, to ask about this one. Hi, Kate, it's Cicester from the Netherlands. I really enjoy the podcast. I love history and I like a good fun fact. I work in a waxing salon and I'm often chatting to customers about those weird facts. Sometimes I talk about how the history of body hair and what we like or dislike about it has really changed a lot.

But I'm a bit low on the fun facts and a one or two. So maybe you can do an episode. Thank you. Bye. Well, we would be thrilled to support. you and your customers with some historical pubic hair facts. So get your tweezers at the ready, betwixters. Me and Professor Jill Burke are going to get pubic.

Hello and welcome back to Betwicks the sheets. It's only Jill Burke. How are you doing? I'm, as always, delighted to be talking to you about a subject close to our hearts. And apparently close to a lot of other people's hearts, because this is one of our most requested episodes. History of pubic hair. It's just like people just want to know. It's an important topic.

It's deceptively important, actually. Actually, yeah. I mean, we joke about it, but actually it's really fascinating when you get, you delve into the history, it's going to be so many cons, when you delve into the history of it. Because it's really about how people change their bodies

in the light of things that are happening around them in their culture that's around them. But in a way that it's really hard to find out about as a historian. So it's a really hard. really good topic for history, I think. And change their bodies in a way that isn't visible to most people. Unless I'm wrong about that, unless you have uncovered cultures where pubicare was on full display 24-7 and it was like a really big deal. Well, there might be. I haven't heard of any of them. You know, this is a disclaimer. You know, my expertise is mainly in European cultures and certainly

I'd say in most of European history, that's not been the case. And so a lot of the kind of history and they're delving into this. Do you keep using the word delve. Yeah, delves into this subject that me and other historians have had to do. You've got to be a bit kind of creative about the kind of sources that you're using. And also aware that sometimes quite small sources,

you have to use quite small sources to make quite a big story with subjects like this. But I've checked, I've double-checked everything. I'm going to try, honestly. And everything that I've been looking at is based on this primary information. Because we think of puberty. hair fashion as being something that dates from the 90s.

It's very easy to think that with the advent of the Brazilian wax and sex in the city making us all think about pubs. And there's a sort of temptation to think that from day dot until about 1997, everyone was just full bush, a thicket, just rocking that 70s, that 70s vibe. Let themselves go wild and beautiful. And yeah, no, that's not true at all. So there's evidence of pubic hair removal from very ancient times. So probably ancient Egypt, certainly ancient Greece.

And it's a fashion that comes and goes through history. People sometimes tell this story like there's a straight line that goes no hair removal to complete hair removal. But that's not how it works. Different cultures and different historical periods have fashions for this. So it's got history that's thousands of years old. particular points in history where it becomes more fashionable and more possible for women to move their pubic hair and where people start to discuss it in sources. And how's men's pubic hair been subject to as many changes as women's have?

That is a good question. I think in ancient, I've come across discussions of men's pubic hair. So on the time, it tends to be in many societies. And again, this is Western society. masculinity and hairiness are associated with each other. Yes, they are. And so although there's a bit of evidence for men shaping their pubic hair in ancient Greece, for example, there's less discussion of men's pubic hair generally.

There's ancient texts that say that pubic hair in both men and women kind of adorns the body. It's there to adorn the genital sort of. That is nice. I think that's a really nice way. of looking at it. But there's probably less discussion than men's pubic hair. It just tends to hang around men's pubic hair. It does, doesn't it?

I hope that they've trimmed it, though, throughout history. I think that that's important. I mean, certainly if you look at the sculpture, like ancient Greek sculpture, looks very groomed. Yeah. It does. And this probably does for yet. You know, it might well be late to practice. Ah. So in Islamic

history and custom, hair removal was incredibly common. Yes. There's two, separate histories really. So you get this classical history where people sometimes remove their hair, there's less patchy evidence for it. And then you, from the early middle, I'm sorry. Sorry. Around the early middle ages. You get, you know, the start of Islamic bathing practices. Yeah. So when the bath plays a really

important role in many different Islamic cultures. And certainly you start to get European travelers from the Middle Ages, from the 10th or 11th century saying, what are they doing? These people in their bats are completely moving all their body hair for both men and women. And that kind of feeds into European practices in Spain. Because Islamic cultures in Spain, right up to the 15th century, and Jewish and Christian and Islamic women are sharing beauty recipes, sharing recipes for medicine, sharing recipes for all sorts of cosmetics as well and also sharing recipes for hair removal. And so then when you get the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492, a lot of these women come to Italy.

Italy is the centre of printing in the later 15th, the late 16th centuries. And so then you get these recipes for hair removal to start to be spread all around Europe. So I think that, again, we're talking about evidence. It's really difficult to get secure evidence for this, but that seems to be probably how Islamic mixtures for hair removal spread around the rest of Europe. but stop, but it's mainly the Mediterranean. There's different kind of, in Germany and England, they're a bit suspicious of hair removal. That sounds about right for us, to be completely honest.

There's lots of accounts of British people and Celtic people being very confused by what they saw during the Crusades, which was mostly people cleaning themselves. Yes. It's been really baffled by it. I mean, you get that a lot in Northern Europe, like, why? Why? What's happening? God almighty.

I mean, I suppose that a lot of the hair removal, particularly in a lot of places, is to do with hygiene. It probably is, isn't it? Yeah. Certainly some of it, I reckon, because if you know that how common lice were, scabies, that kind of thing, it's really common as well all over the place.

And so presumably removing long of your body hair would have prevented some of that. contacts, particularly for little insects like lice, would have prevented. And in Islamic traditions, in Jewish traditions, body hair removal, it's also about being clean. And you see this idea repeating and changing and other people reacting to it. The idea that taking the hair away somehow makes you cleaner. Yeah, I mean, this is something that you get repeated right up to now, right? Up to now, yeah.

Yeah. And so that's, you know, it's part of what was happening in baths. You know, a lot of these rituals and what was happening in baths wasn't just to do with what we would think of as washing with them soap or whatever. You know, they're scraping the skin as well and what we might think of as exfoliation. So there's a big range of bathing practices that go on, but it is associated with cleanliness, the idea of hair removal. But yeah, mainly in these Mediterranean cultures, which makes sense because they're hotter. And maybe certainly there's pictures in the 16th century, the European pictures, so they're quite, you know, orientalising and they're kind of fetish eyes. They really do fetish eyes in Europe,

but what goes on in Islamic women's baths, particularly Turkish baths and baths in North Africa and Egypt. And there's pictures of women with like see-through gowns on when you can see that they've got no body hair. So yeah, it's associated with cleanliness, both ritually. Yeah. But also probably in practical terms as well. I just got back from a week in Pompeii and I was lucky enough to talk to the head curator of the site, Sophie Hay, there. And she showed me around the brothel and it was amazing. But one of the things she said did stay with me because I knew I was going to be talking to you. And she said, when the brothel in Pompeii was excavated, they found evidence of razors. And there was a lot of washing and hygiene equipment, as you

might expect, but they found lots of razors there, which has sort of led to this discussion around. would that have been the people that were working there shaving the clients for like shits and giggles? Or as I suspect it might have been, is they removing their own body hair? Yeah, I think that's quite possible. Or each other's body hair. Or each other's body hair, yeah. Because there's a lot of associations between sex work and body hair removal. Yes.

Historically. Some of it is, it's really hard to sometimes to extricate historical insults, right? oh, you know, this is associated with sex workers and therefore it's sinful on what actually happened in practice. But certainly in the sources that I know the best, there's a connection between sex work, hair removal and immigration. Oh, I wasn't expected it to go there. Wow, okay. And a lot of these Jewish immigrants who came to Italy did work in this kind of world where women didn't have much money were more likely to do sex work and were also more likely to do the kind of jobs like hair removal, beauty and stuff.

So it might have been the same. It's very difficult because it's thousands of years different because I'm looking at 1500. But it wouldn't surprise me if it was kind of similar if poorer women, but also the women who were more likely to do the kind of beautician work, but hair removal work. And that's also what happened in Baths later on as well. Baths also become a centre for hair removal,

but are also a centre for sex work. What that shows in Pompeii is clearly someone was having their hair removed, in the brothel. So that suggests some kind of fashion. Yeah, I think so. When do we kind of get at the point where we've got any more kind of concrete evidence that we can get our fingers into

and be like, this was a definite thing that was happening? There's a great text that I probably talked about before the last time called La Loxana and Aluccia, which is a funny play about an immigrant from Spain who comes to Italy and sets up like this beautician. And they talk about removing pubic hair that women come to them and they say we want to get our pubic hair move

because that's how our husbands like it or they say we want to get our pubic hair move most of the Roman women don't do this and it's better for us to get so that we stand out from the crowd. This is like 1524. So there's evidence that gives a good amount of evidence that people are starting to think about this as a fashion

and that men are starting to expect it. And it's interesting with classical art if you look at sculptures of Venus, they never have pubic hair. They never have pubic hair. have pubes, do they? Do you think that that is related to the fact why so many of the statues have tiny little willies?

With the women, they just don't have any detail there at all. It's like a Barbie doll. It's interesting that there's no pubic hair on such as the Venus. In the Middle Ages, in the 14th century, 15th century you do get pubic hair. Who put pubes on Venus? And many images of Venus. Yeah.

Particularly in Northern Europe and in Germany, but also in Spain. So this fashion, when you get the interest in classical school, in the Renaissance, then they start removing all the body hair from all their nudes. But before then, you do get depictions of pubic hair. So I think they go hand in hand. Yeah.

I think this, you know, what's happening in the visual record probably both reflects and affects the way that women think their body should look and that men are expecting to see in women. Because, you know, there's that famous story of the art critic John Ruskin who was allegedly. Anyway, really shocked by his wife's heavy-grace pubic hair because he was expecting her to be, you know, like a classical sculpture. But I think that's also one of the fascinating things. There's difference between an expectation of what people's bodies look like

and the clothes and what visual culture tells people to expect of the actual real living bodies. By the time you get to the Renaissance, and this is your area of study, and I don't know the Italian texts that well. But I do know that British texts, there's quite a few of them, by which I mean four or five, but in historical terms, that's like in this particular subject, it's loads. Absolutely. And they talk about pubic hair removal as being the Italian custom, that it's something Italian women do,

the Italian wenches do it. And there's quite a lot of, again, confusion and bafflement from the Brits about this. Yeah. Well, the reason why they associate with Italians is that a lot of the makeup texts, the recipe texts that get published in the 16th century are Italian. So you get things like LSEO P.M. Montaise's Book of Secrets. Yes. And that is first published in Italian in 1558, I think.

And then it's translated. It goes all over Europe. And there's several editions in English. And the English editions, the early worst ones, change the text about hair removal. Really? And they say, yeah. They say, oh, this is to remove the hair from the chin.

of young men. No, it's not. No, it's not. It's not what it's for. Whereas the Italian text quite explicitly say it's to remove hair from anywhere on the body. And then, so you get

those books and things like Giovanni Marinalis on a mente, which I wrote about in my book, that has a whole section on body hair and says, if you don't remove your body hair, especially if you're going around looking like a wild beast,

you can't blame your husband for leaving you and going off her with another woman. And so it's like by the 1560s in Italy, if you don't remove your body hair, you're not the norm. And it looks like that. Again, you know, with this abundance of text about five. But in England, yeah, it just doesn't translate that. The ones that I've looked at, there's a real sense that like Bush is lush.

Like I often think of it as when I've teaching the students, I was like, the way that the Italians and us today look at it is like this kind of super smooth. like, you know, it's like a baby bird. There's no hair on it at all. Whereas the Brits seem to have this idea of like, it's almost like a big, thick, full fatch of lusciousness, like a cat with a silky coat. And their view in the Italians is like a balding, mangy cat with, and they look at it with the same kind of, ugh.

Yeah, it's so interesting, this cultural difference. So, Merkins, which, you know, I haven't come across those in Italian texts at all. Whereas, so this idea that you could actually have a pubic wig would be like, why in Italy? Because they do kind of fetishize. They're really strict about what you should look like in Italian texts. And they've got such an amount of visual culture, you know, nude, female needs really saturate their visual culture from the 16th century. They're just kind of pop up everywhere all over the place. And so I think customed to seeing women without any pubic hair.

So I think that's what they expect. That's what they expect. the Brits, they wanted like this kind of lush pelt. And you can find like odd insults turning up of who was it, was it John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester who talks about having sex with someone and it was like rustling because the murkin was moving. And he's like really revolted by this patchy pubic hair thing. And that's amazing. For anyone who's listening, doesn't know what a murkin is. Can you just explain that? And why on earth you would use such a thing? Well, American is a wig

But for your pubic area And so they're just like furry triangles Aren't they? Yeah. It's almost got a mythical status Emerkins really Because again, it's really hard To find very much out about them

But certainly they're not used I haven't come across them In southern Europe No, they wouldn't they? They seem to be just talked about in England And we haven't I don't think we've actually found any of them We've got like references

Replicas, yeah Replicas, references I think he was John Wilmot again who talks about somebody using fat, like goose fat or something, and then like putting hair on top of that and trying to like, like, so that kind of, this sounds delicious, doesn't it? It sounds absolutely yummy. But why would you do this?

Why would somebody not have all their pubic hair to the point where they needed a wig? And they, you know, to create this luscious pelt thing. Yeah, I mean, that's something that's, is interesting because there's like smallpox epidemics. Yeah. And smallpox causes you to lose your hair. out both on your head but in other places too. And there's just a lot of skin problems. Yeah.

Disease that they don't really have many options for getting rid of. So I'm talking about things like scabies, particularly or various poxes, a lot of different kind of lice. And I suppose if it'd be interesting to find out in the English context, if you remove in pubic care to get rid of lice, for example, pebit lice. Probably were, weren't they? Your Merton would come in and found it. Yes.

would suggest you don't have pubic clice. I've put syphilis as well. That's knocking around, isn't it? Quite a lot of syphilis, particularly. Obviously, if you're a sex worker or just married to a guy. Yeah. Unfortunately. So, yeah, and again, and you know, these treatments as well.

So they're using things like mercury and arsenic as treatments for these things as well. So maybe, again, it's part of treatment that you remove body hair. Even in an English context, I can imagine that would be something that you might want to do. there is a link between patchy pubs and illness. You can see that where it crops up in the English texts. Because when we read all these beauty texts, you imagine people's having bodies that are similar to our bodies today, but actually they're just afflicted by all these illnesses

that thankfully we can normally get rid of if you have them nowadays. I'll be back with Jill after a short break. If you were a lady in Italy who needed to take your pubes off because that's just what your husband expects because you saw it on a statue and it looked nice. How would you do that? I mean, because I'm thinking like now you can nip down the shop and get a disposable razor, but the razors they had at the time were those cutthroat raises. I would feel very cautious about putting that near my chuff, wouldn't you? This is ancient Greece. They didn't use razors in the Renaissance, but there's an ancient Greek

image from a vase of someone using one of those razors. Oh my God. Pubit area. Yes, there is. But there's another one with someone burning them off, burning their pubic hair off with a lamp. All right. Yeah, I take the razor.

I know. Given the choice. Oh, my God. So in the middle age, so this again is comes probably from Islamic bath culture, spreading through Europe. They used a paste made out of arsenic and quick lime. Of course they did.

Yeah. So you'd make this paste. You'd often use it in a bath because there's not a lot of running water, remember in this period. So you go to the public baths. I'm like to be next to the person who's decided to put that, smear that on themselves. You're smearing that all over your body. And then you have to tie.

So it's like feet, right? It's like veed at the pace. And you have to time it. And of course they don't have watches. There's clocks, but not in baths. And so they say things like, say the Lord's Prayer twice. Holy God. Oh, wow.

Okay. Nice. So you say the Lord's Prayer twice or whatever they do. And then you start to try and take it off your skin. And if you don't take it off quickly enough, it starts to burn. I bet it does. Yeah. So it's all about timing.

And then it says and get the bath attendant or the maid to kind of pour water all over you really quickly. So you take it off with a cloth and then you pour water all over yourself to get rid of it. Does it work? You know, they won't let me try it. No, I bet they won't. I know you've done some experiments. Health and safety gun, mad. All right, yeah, okay.

Let's not try that one. I think it would work because it's very highly alkaline and that's how feet works. It just burns. Those modern day depilitary creams, other brands are available. They're shit. They're not awful. And they still.

And you also, you're trying to leave them on for long enough before they start. They still burn. They smell terrible. And they don't get with all the hair. It's like lots of my hairs that don't come out. It's really rubbish. It's like hundreds of years on and it's still kind of shape.

I wonder, though, if the really hard stuff, you know, that quick line, if we were allowed to try it. People would as well. We should probably say, please for fuck's sake, don't try it. Absolutely don't try it. Please. But how about something like waxing or sugaring or threading? Surely someone must have worked. I don't know the history of waxing.

Because I know that they use, like, you can't just get a candle and do it. That would be awful. And like, you sort of melt it on you. You have to have special wax. But was there any evidence for that? I'm being very strict with myself here. But the only references I've heard for pubic hair removal is this mixture with quick lime and other things that definitely don't work like ants eggs and cat dung.

Things like that probably, I just don't see how they could possibly work. But they do have waxing. They use things like. like tree gums. So like pine resin that's really, really sticky. You put it on, you leave it to dry, and then you rip it off. They use that. They use sugaring in. Sugar's quite expensive. Oh God, it is, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, that's true. They probably wouldn't use sugaring. Yeah. Probably later on, and, you know, when you get into the, when sugar gets cheaper in the 18th and 19th centuries, I don't see why they wouldn't use sugar. And they definitely use things like,

you know, waxing with sheets of carton. They do exactly the same thing as we did. It's a quite a simple process really, really waxing. I wonder if they were using it on pubic hair. It seems very strange that we would have evidence that they would opt for like this quicklime stuff over like waxing. That to me sort of suggests that they hadn't put two and two together because why on earth would you use that over waxing? Unless they think there's other reasons for it. So for example, arsenic was often used to get rid of lice and as an insecticide generally. It also whitens skin a little bit. So it might have been there were other reasons to use this

paste. They did thread eyebrows, but I think that might be a bit complicated in pubic hair. There's mention about in Roman texts about men in Bath having their hair plucked, their body hair plucked with tweezers, presumably. Yeah, with tweezers, yeah, there's

definitely, but that would take a long time. That would be horrible. And yeah, we're really painful. Yeah. Like your whole bush just plucked out. Oh no It was like not nice It would have grown back

By the time By the time you got out of the back Yeah Alright so that one's not going to work That's kind of crap I think the main way they did it Was this paste And razors they did say

In the sources You shouldn't use razors Because the hair greased back thicker That's true That's true Yeah It kind of grows back coarser Doesn't it

Because you've chopped The kind of fine ends of it So yeah They do say not to use razers And also yeah the cutthroat, you know, maybe it would be, given there's not got any safety raises, that wouldn't be. Am I right in thinking that there's a witchy association between pubic hair and... Yeah, it's quite sad.

I hadn't seen this one come in at all. It's very sad and very, there's a straggled route to this one. But what's the link between pubic hair and witchcraft? Well, people, when they were accused of witchcraft, the Inquisitors would have them completely shaved from top, you know, billy then. from the neck downwards and sometimes their head as well, in order to check to see if they have hidden signs or amulets or magic implements that the devil has put there. So there's evidence for this in which trials in Northern Italy,

in Lake Como and 1485, in which, something like 120 women were killed. And it's like a shaming ritual, but it's also like this kind of humiliation, you know, to have that done in front of the other. men. And so in Germany, in the 1520s and 30s, just as the witch craze is starting, it's before you get this massive sway with people just chasing down, witches. They do have this obsession with pictures of people staring into pubic hair. There's a few images of people staring at pubic hair as if there's something secret hidden there. I'm not familiar with the trials in Germany in Italy, but I know a few about the ones in the UK. And were they doing what the Inquisitors

here we're doing, which was, yeah, they're looking for like bite marks or, like, something that the devil left his mark there. Yeah. Or sometimes just like kind of tokens or ambulates that could be kind of conceded. Hidden in your pubic hair and the devil's left an amulet in your pubic hair. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like an excuse, isn't it, to just degrade women as much as possible. Do you know what? The shaving women has a really long history as a shaming thing. And it's usually the head that is shaved. And you see that like right up until, you still see it today, I suppose, but certainly after the Second World War, when in France, when women were being accused of being Nazi collaborators, they'd be paraded in the street and

have their head shaved. Pubic hair removal is kind of, I think that it sort of plays into that as well in these witch trials. Absolutely. And also in a man's space, because when we're talking about pubic hair removal, normally in, say, bath houses or at home, you'd be in a female-only space. Yeah, yeah. So what you're doing is taking that kind of very intimate female-only experience and putting it out and exposing it in front of a bunch of men who are when you're on trial. It's really awful. Even the inquisitors who are writing about this. They talk about this in the Malias Malifakarum, which is this really famous witch-hunting manual that comes out at that's written by two Germans in the late 15th.

century. Even they say it's a really shameful thing. Wow. And we don't actually do this in Germany because it's too shameful. And that comes to something of the fucking Malius Malifakarum is going, that's a bit too far. Yeah. So you can imagine how much stigma there is. Even to expose women like that, to expose their nakedness like that, it's awful. Yeah. There's an undeniable sexual undertone to a lot of these trials across Europe, like this insistent on searching in women's genitals to the point where they're going to shave them. And, you know, it's horrible. Yeah, it's really awful. And, you know, you see all these, and it's like thousands of thousands of women are involved. And it's, you know, because of the way that

people talk about witches and it's kind of funny and all this kind of thing, we kind of forget the actual horror of these witcherals sometimes. But this kind of invasion of the most intimate parts of the body is part of this history as well. Do you think that that kind of leaked out into a sort of a wider narrative around pubic hair and maybe witchcraft. I was going to, maybe not completely witchcraft, but the idea that there's something subversive about not having pubic hair. Yeah. Not having pubic hair is often being associated with people who are on the edges of society.

We've talked about sex workers. Yeah. People with syphilis. People with syphilis. Yeah. It's kind of not respectable. Yeah. And of course, the people who definitely definitely.

don't have pubic hair that we often don't talk about in these things are kids. It's a strange signifier that as an adult you would remove this sort of marker of you are fully pubescent and you are no longer a child, isn't it? Yeah. And that's a disturbing thing. That is actually a disturbing thing about what it suggests. Does it suggest say, you know, girls were getting married often at 14 to 16? You know, what does it suggest about male tasting?

Yeah. In women's bodies. So there's also this undercurrent of things. You know, it's like everything to do with like altering their body. Sometimes you can say, oh, this is to do with women's agency. And it's to do with women doing what they want with their own bodies and using their bodies to kind of get ahead in society or whatever. And then sometimes it's about men's taste in taking away women's agency

and treating them wanting them to be more childlike. So it's always like all these things. It's complicated, yeah. I'll be back with Jill after a short break. I spoke to Professor Helen King a while ago who is the expert on all things Greek and gynecological and I put the small willy question to her I was just interested to what she would say

and I've never heard anyone give this response before I was like oh okay she thought that the tiny willies was actually a marker of childhood because they worship the boy the boy body in Greek history and in Roman history and right up to the Renaissance, this idea of like boy love, the young man.

And then suddenly, like, the conversation wasn't funny anymore. I was like, wow, okay, Helen. But I thought that's interesting. And then maybe like what you were just saying there about the women not having pubic hair on their statues and those images, maybe that's a hark back to childhood too. Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting. Certainly in the early part of the Renaissance in Italy, you do get this real interest in,

young boys. You think of there's a sculpture by Donatello called the David, as in David McGlythe, the bronze David. And he's not got any pubic hair and he's definitely meant to be kind of younger. But also there's kind of uncomfortable whether it's kind of fetishization,

sexualisation or not, or whether it's, you know, whether that's not an appropriate question. That's a big debate amongst our historian still. But then you get the things like Michelangelo's David, who it's definitely a man. It's definitely a man. He's got manly stuff going on, but he does have

a little boy's willie. There was actually, in some of the texts on sculpture, they're very into proportion in the Renaissance bodily proportion, and they do talk about the ideal proportion of a penis, yeah. What did they? And do they say it should be a little one? I'll have to measure it out and see, because I haven't done that yet. Next time, next time I can tell you about that.

I'm getting us off topic now. We should get back to pubic hair. By the time you get to the Victorians, like through the 18th century to Victorians. We're now getting like photographic evidence and sort of some of the earliest pornography and it looks like there is pubic hair removal being practiced around here too. I think so. And actually these books, you know, that recipes for Asnick and Quickline goes right through to the 19th century. Wow. So people are constantly using it. They're using it in America. They're using it and, you know, because printing goes all over the world. So they're using it

everywhere and people are warning against it for good reasons and saying you'd be better off shaving and things like that but it looks like people are still still using it and still removing the hair but obviously again with the edges of society it's presumably not particularly respectable women who are having themselves photographed naked so it speaks this kind of maybe unconventional world of women who can flaunt sexuality does doesn't it when do pubes become political because pubic hair is a feminist issue now. Like the arguments about going back against that childhood thing about like, why would you want to move your hair so you can just look like a little girl?

And the fact that even today in 2024, there is no real way of removing your hair that isn't either results. If you shave it, you'll end up with loads of little ingrowing hairs. It's just shit and it's hot, itchy as hell. You can go to a waxer, but even the best waxer who can do it really quick, it's just a good of hair. So there is a kind of like, why are we doing this? But when did that start to happen that feminists decided pubic hair, this is what we're going to talk about?

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I think this is, this debate used to be massive. Huge. A few years ago that you shouldn't remove your pubic hair because it's really anti-feminist to do so. I need body hair, armpit hair as well. And do you remember that time when celebrities like Julia Roberts? Julia Roberts. Yeah, came and she had armpit hair and everyone was like, wow.

On the red carpet. And that was front page new. God knows what they would have done if she got her pubes out, but shed her hair. And that stopped the world's press. It really did. And so I think it's calmed down a little bit now that debate. But it's certainly in the 70s, you know, second wave feminism, people were really vehement about, you know, almost betraying feminist ideals if you remove their body hair. Because, you know, you were bending to male ideas of what women's body should look

like so that it was a key kind of matter for debate, this kind of what you did personally, became very political. And, you know, last time I talked about this a few years ago when I first started working the subject and people were like expecting me to get really angry about other people

removing their pubicare. It was something like that. I don't mind. You can get down the energy. Put dreadlocks in it, if you like. Yeah, exactly. But, you know. Macaroni pasta and sparkles,

whatever you were. You know, I'd like to go on record. I don't mind what people do with their pubit hair. But at the same time, it's very interesting how politicise that debate got in the 70s, how it represented this kind of years of oppression. And I can understand why, because it is work. You know, it is body work. But a lot of that body work, I'm not just talking about hair removal,

but it can be pleasing as well. You know, it's not just painful. There's also good things about it as well. So it's always a bit more nuanced, I think, than just saying it's the patriarchy. And of course the proliferation of porn, which we've always had. Like you've spoken about the nude statues and the nude. So it's always influenced us, although it's not porn, it's erotic, whatever you want to say. But images of nude bodies.

But the fact that we can now access porn as easily as we can. I mean, you might remember as I do that really the only way you were going to see porn as a kid is if you found it in a hedge. Yes. By the side of my railway. Because you can look at it in a new age. Yeah, I'd remember that. You'd find like stashes and like rips, bits. Maybe someone at your school would have a video that they were sending around and everything.

But now if you've got a mobile device, you can see anything that you want. And that's got to have had an impact on. I think so, yeah. Because there's some evidence that pubic care removal is much more common now. It started to go up, you know, with the advent of the internet. And it's age-related as well. So people who were between 18 and 30 are much more like it, remove their pubic hair than people who are older. So it's definitely a cultural thing.

It's completely related to the availability of internet porn, because it's normal. Again, it's what's normal. Yeah, that's what you can see. It's visually normal. So that makes people think it's normal to remove their body hair and also for women to remove their body hair because men, they've never really out to deal with it. Yeah. Maybe just a bit of a quick trim and they are on their way. Because it's what men are expecting as well, even more than women, maybe, because a lot of men might not have had much experience of seeing women's bodies. No.

So that's the way that they've encountered women's naked bodies is mainly via porn. So, frankly, anybody should be very grateful for people showing them their bodies. Just quietly grateful, I think. Whatever state they happen to be in. Just say, thank you. It's sort of a weird one anyway, because I don't know the history on this, but I'd be willing to bet that nowhere in the history of men, straight men having sex with women, has there been a man that's gone, well, it was a bit untidy,

so I thought I should just go home. If they do, they should go home, quite frankly. That's unacceptable. That's unacceptable. He's going to be a shit shag, quite frankly. I think a lot of these pressures are not to do with individuals, and not to do with, like, individual that you might meet and whatever, but it's more to do with the sense of pressure,

the sense of we're guessing what other people are going to be expecting. guessing what they're going to expect. Absolutely. And as a final question to you, I know that you're a lecturer at the university and I was too, which means that we have regular access to Gen Z and their conversations. And it does seem that there is something afoot with the youngsters when it comes to body hair. They're bringing it back, Jill. I've noticed this. Yeah, I think it's great. No, I mean, again, people should do whatever they want, but I think it's great that, you know, a big fan of Gen Z generally. A big fan of teachers. 18 to 22 year olds.

Love it. And they're just really feisty. And they don't give a shit about body hair. Like we've got like Julia Roberts when that was absolute front page news, like, oh my God. And now it's like a whole classroom full of Gen Zee and all the women have got hairy pits. Nobody really gives. It's not even a statement. No, it's not a statement.

It's like I couldn't be bothered or I just don't want to. Yeah. And that's absolutely fine. Yeah. So I think they're going to come through and possibly save us all. But then eventually, eventually, eventually, there'll be another push back against it. Yeah, yeah, because all this stuff,

if history teaches there's anything about this, it comes and waves and it goes, it comes and goes again. Well, as long as they're not using our sense. Yes, I hope we haven't inadvertently brought that into fashion. No, let's not bring that one back. Oh, Jill, you have been wonderful to talk to you. You always are. And if people want to know more about you and your research,

where can they find you? Well, I am at the University of Edinburgh in the history department, and you can always buy my book. It's called How to Be Renaissance Woman. It's out with profiles and paperbacks. It's not massively pricing. It's quite good. I like it.

Very good. Thank you so much for talking to me today. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Thanks so much for doing so much about pubic hair. It's so great to talk to another pubic hair. Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Jill for joining me. And if you like what you heard,

please don't forget to like review and follow along whatever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. Coming up, we have the next installment in our limited series, The Secret Lives of the Six Wives and Michelangelo's Sex Life. Those two things do not have any crossover, by the way.

But those episodes will be with you very soon. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith, the senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.