Well, the New World Indians do have very little facial hair, right? Dunno about shaving. Straight razor = sharp knife, I assume.
"two sea shells
I'm tempted to quote Demolition Man, but I probably shouldn't acknowledge having seen Demolition Man. More than once.
Facial hair is a social construction.
I'm tempted to excerpt Cryptonomicon, but I probably shouldn't acknolwedge having read Cryptonomicon. More than once.
Are you only talking about facial hair for the purposes of the "Hairy Iranian" declaration?
Looking at those pictures, maybe sticking sharp objects through your face has something to do with the inhibition of hair growth.
Is that why do the facially pierced cashiers at my co-op all have such scraggly beards?
Yeah, it's my understanding that New World Indians just don't grow much facial hair and what does grow is easily plucked out. Although googling, apparently some Native American ethnic groups --mostly from the Pacific Northwest -- apparently do produce facial hair
I've tried the 'two seashells' thing -- with a stick. You take a twig, snap it so that the bark is retained on one side. it makes a sort of big tweezer affair. It bloody hurts. It's clearly not a 'shaving' technique meant for hairy Northern Europeans or Middle-Easterners.
All the best people shave twice a day.
How many Hairy Iranians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Google it, B, it's one of my favorite film quotes. Me, I shave twice a week at best, because of the folliculitis thing. I once let my facial hair grow out to its full, ruddy, Grizzly Adams glory (not an idle reference, given that one of my genealogically obsessed great-aunts determined that we were related to Dan Haggerty), then shaved it the same day that a trusted friend told me I looked like an Ewok.
Incidentally, I wonder if the two-shell deal was a primitive scissors rather than a plucking instrument.
Well, the New World Indians do have very little facial hair, right? Dunno about shaving. Straight razor = sharp knife, I assume.
Still would have been a post European encounter development then. I can't imagine getting a straight razor type edge with anything but steel.
re: 12
Flint is definitely sharp enough. Probably too sharp though, given the relative irregularity of the blade edge.
I'd imagine a sharp enough blade for shaving could be made from bronze too. It'd just need sharpening regularly.
This is actually something that's puzzled me for awhile. Shaving with a straight razor requires an awfully good edge, and a fair amount of skill on the part of the shaver. I've never understood how being clean-shaven was a widespread fashion in, say, the Roman Empire. It just seems as if it would have been much too much trouble -- beards aren't that much of a hassle, are they?
When I was a chabbie they told me the Roman army in the field used to shave by rubbing their faces with pumice. Anybody know if that's true? It's hard to think of anything I wouldn't prefer to do.
Maybe it's a lice issue -- that having a beard is really, really unpleasant if you have bugs, so extreme measures are worth it not to have bugs on your face.
Do we have any photographs of Native Americans from before the arrival of Europeans? That would be the way to know.
It strikes me as possible that we just think the Romans were clean-shaven because they didn't show the uneven stubble on their statuary.
Um, almost by definition, no, unless some Yamamoto genius invented the camera. And I'm sure that Romans were stubblier than modern-day Americans, but they clearly had to be at least shaving occasionally if their portraiture bears any relationship to reality.
Do we have any photographs of Native Americans from before the arrival of Europeans?
Taken with Aztec Cameras?
Even in the 18th century people usually only shaved once or twice a week. IRL, most of the time Washington or Jefferson would have looked like street people the young George Michael somebody a lot less smart than their formal portraits.
What Romans shaved with. Roman beard fashion. The pumice thing is also true, but I wonder how it worked.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A896664
It seems adequate shaving tools go back a LONG way.
23: 2nd link looks like an entertaining site.
Wait, wouldn't the Romans be like Italians today? They seem to have pretty patchy growth, in general. (I hope that's not racist.) I have pretty full growth, but I can still go for a week and not appear to have a beard -- plus, if the standard was to be unshaven, then wouldn't they make their statues that way? They were not as concerned for realism as we (sometimes) are today.
I mean, if the standard was to be clean shaven.
Wait, wouldn't the Romans be like Italians today? They seem to have pretty patchy growth, in general.
I think we're talking about the men, Kotsko.
I was given to understand that the beardlessness was so that the enemy couldn't grab you by the beard while shoving the ol' gladius into you; but maybe that's fabula urbana.
There's been way too much movement of peoples since the time we are considering to say that the Romans resembled modern Italians more than other European types.
"They were not as concerned for realism as we (sometimes) are today."
Yes, they were.
Has there ever been a recorded culture in which no men shaved? If the answer is no, does that mean that shaving predates civilization itself? (Or at least arose very early in primitive civilization? Does anyone else find this weird/troubling?
I assume the above queries will illuminate the extent of my blinding ignorance of athropological history.
And by "no men shaved", I don't mean they were just naturally hairless. I mean they were bearded.
"illuminate" s/b "illustrate"
When were scissors invented? I could understand primitive folk giving themselves a nice close clipping (for bug-related reasons like LB mentions, among others) a lot easier than I can understand them literally shaving. But they probably didn't have any scissors, which makes that more tough.
Brock, would you like to define civilisation for present purposes?
Was there a joke inbedded in 34 or was it supposed to be a pure grammatic-correction? If the latter, I reject your change. Illuminate and illustrate are both metaphorical here, and either phrase works.
Wikipedia says:
"Scissors were likely invented in 1500 BC in ancient Egypt[3]. These were likely shears with the joint at the far end[4]. Modern cross-bladed scissors were invented by Romans around AD 100."
A while back somebody on Unfogged posted a beautiful link to the World Beard and Moustache Championships. Thanks, whoever that was!
36- cultures for which we have at least some lasting historical/archeological record = civilization, I guess. Sure, it existed before then (although probably not for very long), but we dont' know anything about it.
In Icelandic/Norse culture, being bearded was extremely important.
So much so that in one of the major sagas, 'Njal's Saga', the fact that Njal is beardless is remarked upon several times, and when he is referred to as 'old beardless' it's taken as a great insult.
40 -- but "illuminating" your ignorance means correcting it. "Illustrating" your ignorance means demonstrating that it exists which I think is the meaning you were going for.
I am so utterly unsurprised that most of the World Beard champions are German.
Piling on: You don't really mean grammatical in 37.
In this usage, illuminating my ignorance means bringing light to it so it can be seen clearly by everyone.
If you are going to play w-lfs-n here at the Mineshaft, you need to be good at it.
Goofy beard traditions + exuberant pleasure in silly hobbies and clubs.
Do I have to start linking to cat pictures again? (Pot kettle on my behavior on the Iran thread.)
My guess is that the pumice thing yanks the hair out by the roots, like tweezing or waxing. As you pass the stone over your face, it catches hairs in the little holes and pulls them. It probably wouldn't be all that bad -- no worse than waxing -- if you did it often enough that there weren't many hairs to pull.
It probably wouldn't be all that bad -- no worse than waxing -- if you did it often enough that there weren't many hairs to pull.
That sounds like hell. But, then, so does waxing.
I have never got the appeal of any of the various methods of pulling hairs out by their roots.
Related to my earlier question: how about primitive cultures in which women didn't shave? The earliest I know anything about is ancient Egypt, in which they commonly shaved their whole bodies (even heads).
How long have women been shaving? Roughly the same length as men? Are there cultures in which one sex commonly shaves and not the other?
(And were early women shaving for the same reasons as men -- which we hypothesize to be lice-prevention and beard-grabbing-in-battle avoidance -- or for different reasons?)
How long have women been shaving? Roughly the same length as men? Are there cultures in which one sex commonly shaves and not the other?
My strong impression is that leg and armpit shaving for women are much less common, historically, than face shaving for men. I think modern Americans are well out on one end of the bell curve as far as standards of depilation for women. But I could be wrong -- I haven't studied the history of it.
Still, mostly I think that early women weren't shaving at all.
Pumice is (usually?) a frothy mixture of glass (obsidian) and air. Glass gives a very sharp edge when broken. So pumice stones will have a zillion very sharp edges around each very tiny buble. Thus, the stone should cut rather than abrade the hair.
But I'm just speculating. I've decided to shave every fifty years whether I need it or not, so I'll be well past 100 before the question arises again.
American culture isn't the only one with crazy hairlessness standards for women.
I think modern Americans are well out on one end of the bell curve as far as standards of depilation for women
A woman I know of Pakistani (Punjabi) parentage but completely culturally Anglicised told me that if she'd remained in her parents' culture she'd have been expected to depilate her mons, but as she hadn't she didn't. I have only her word for it.
Flint is definitely sharp enough. Probably too sharp though, given the relative irregularity of the blade edge.
I'd imagine a sharp enough blade for shaving could be made from bronze too. It'd just need sharpening regularly.
Yeah, that chipping process seems to ususally produce what kind of looks like a serrated edge, and I would have thought bronze lacked the hardness to hold a sufficiently thin edge. But looking around it seems artifacts of both materials that are assumed to be razors aren't uncommon.
60 -- I'm given to understand that's fairly standard practice in America's porno industry. No idea how widely it is practiced outside that milieu.
American culture isn't the only one with crazy hairlessness standards for women.
To be fair, Brazillian women have a reputation for being super-hot, so I'm not sure the standards are quite so unjustifiable.
And were early women shaving for the same reasons as men -- which we hypothesize to be lice-prevention and beard-grabbing-in-battle avoidance -- or for different reasons?
One of the other explanations that sounds right is smell prevention. Before great soap and bathing facilities, it really helped to not have wild patches of armpit and pubic hair that get sweaty and smelly. At least, I heard that as justification for ancient Egyptian shaving practices.
It probably wouldn't be all that bad -- no worse than waxing -- if you did it often enough that there weren't many hairs to pull.
The pumice thing sounds far more unpleasant than waxing to me. I've shaved with a blunt razor a couple times, which basically just pulls the hairs out with friction like the pumice stone would. It's slow and feels like a thousand nasty pin-pricks one by one, way worse than the quick tug and slight sear of waxing in my experience.
Yo Tim, linked article isn't about Brazilians.
68: Fuck I just read the title. So no new information on trolling LB, I guess.
Actually, a lot of other cultures have a lot higher standards of depilation for women than modern Americans, including the Arab world. One reason it's higher is that shaving is simply not done, the old wives' tale about "your hair wil grow back thicker!" has taken hold as if it were solid medical truth. And waxing is more expensive and more painful (though more infrequent). In Egypt, for example, women get their legs, armpits, bikini line area, and arms (that's right, arms, and this is almost universal) waxed on a very regular basis.
It hurts.
My great-grandpa believed that line about shaved hair growing back in thicker, so when at about 25 he noticed his hair was thinning---yeah, he was bald as an egg for the rest of his life.
That's not a lot higher than the current American standard -- arms is unconventional here, but everything else is pretty common. (Shaving v. waxing isn't what I'd call a higher standard, just a different favored method; waxing is more painful, but it does have to be done much less often, and hair grows back softer rather than as stubble. I'm in a leg-waxing phase now because I have to do it about once a month rather than twice a week for shaving, and I'll probably drop back to maybe once every two months or so over the winter when I'm wearing pants mostly.)
And I didn't say we were unique, just that I thought we were out on one end of the curve.
Of people who are voluntarily bald on top, do any wax their scalps?
It just seems interesting to me that so many people in so many different cultures across the globe seem to have decided so very early in their histories that (at least some) body/facial hair was so undesirable that relatively extreme measures were undertaken to be rid of it. Something seems very odd about that.
Is there some plausible way to blame the patriarchy?
You tell me. Seriously, my best guess on face-shaving is lice -- that they were annoying enough to be worth a fair amount of effort to get off your face. On body-depilation, it can't be anything all that practical or it would be unisex; so, fashion. And fashion is clearly at least part of the face-shaving as well, given that historically, fashions have changed.
Something seems very odd about that.
I'll grant you it's odd, but is it significantly odder than, say, the bloody great spikes those Yanomani and Huli are wearing through their noses? People do a lot of odd things to themselves.
Hair's there; why not shave it? It's something to pass the time.
Women in America have been shaving their legs much longer than they've been shaving their armpits. Here's an unsatisfying article about the topic - it seems like it became a widespread practice after motion pictures featuring "bathing beauties" and women wearing sleeveless gowns swept the country. I guess it looked better on film if they were shaved, and that transferred itself to being expected in real life.
I recently saw a movie from the 1920's in which the glamorous female lead clearly didn't shave her armpits...I think it was Alfred Hitchcock's "Blackmail".
Beards are itchy and hot, too.
I quite like the look and occasionally grow a proper beard* and always end up shaving it off as it's just uncomfortable.
* I usually have some less expansive facial hair -- chin beard, or soul patch or both.
Almost all North and South American cultures had extremely rigorous standards of clean-facedness. According to almost every account of European explorers and settlers, they were shocked to find the American men tweezing their faces diligently. Most of those who came over as explorers on ships came with beards, and the Americans were kind of appalled by their animalistic preference for facial hair.
If I could find an Ursula Andress-style bikini, I doubt I'd ever even consider depilation in that area. (Considering is about all I do, though.)
Agree with McG. I don't find shaving particularly peculiar. Beyond itchy an hot, early beards are patchy and hideous. (Cf. the Yglesias Flicker Files.) Also, to the extent your culture delights at all in androgyny, beards are not so great.
"Hair's there; why not shave it? It's something to pass the time."
This, I think, explains it.
None of the above accounts seem to have much explanatory power regarding the fact that men everywhere since the dawn of time have been shaving their beards, but very few have shaved their heads (or even, in a great many cases, cut their hair short). Bugs? Heat? Sweaty-stink? All problems with head hair, no?
(And beard hair is not more itchy than head hair, by the way, once you get used to it. You think beards are itchy because you usually shave it off. This is like women who complain about how much their sock itch when they don't shave their legs. It's just because they're not used to it.)
I think this is all very good evidence for intelligent desing.
This, I think, explains it.
I got it out of a fortune cookie, years ago, and it's always stuck with me.
I once got a fortune cookie message that said, "The reason why you shave your face is intelligent design." But it was nonsense, so I threw it away.
re:
And beard hair is not more itchy than head hair, by the way, once you get used to it. You think beards are itchy because you usually shave it off.
I don't know. I've gone without shaving for a month or more. By which time I have a fairly heavy beard and it's still uncomfortable.
Don't forget that genital shaving can be done for mostly functional reasons....
I'd guess that Brock is right. I've not shaved my legs in the past, and the time it takes from stopping shaving to just hairy, not itchily stubbly is an awfully long time -- three or four months. The problem is that not all of your hair is growing at any given time. It goes through dormancy periods. So any portion of your hair that was dormant when shaved last is going to re-emerge as short sharp stubble when it cycles back into active growth. It doesn't hit stable non-itchiness until it's been a full dormancy-cycle for all your hair since the last time you shaved.
88: Matt, a month or so isn't long enough. I had a full beard for ten years or so, and I'd forgotten what the itchyness felt like. I'd say from regular shaving your are looking at more like 3-6 months, depending on growth rate.
re: 91
Ah, then it looks like I'll never have one. A month is about as long as I can stick it -- by which time it's a 'real' beard, I have fairly heavy facial hair -- before the itching is too much.
I'm thinking the pumice thing means "little sharp-edged flakes of rock". E.g., a premodern disposable razor. Not "scrubbing stones of the kind found in certain spas". Some pumice is very jagged and sharp, with lots of bits that could be broken off to use as a sharpedge for some short-term purpose.
As for why people do such things, hey, the lice thing is secondary. Messing around with your hair and body, including inserting things, changing the shape of body parts, and so on, is a powerful way to create an "us" that is distinguished from a nearby "them". The really unusual thing in world history are cultures that let hair grow, never alter or mess with their bodies or body shapes in any way, etcetera. I can't really think of an example outside of certain post-1967 communes in Vermont.
I have had a full beard since I think 1983. I shave my neck and trim a little every time I shower. Doesn't itch at all.
The Romans definitely plucked or tweezed.
What I have never understood is why Renaissance men, especially Italians as in Michelangelo or Caravaggio, totally lack chest hair. In fact there is very little chest hair in paintings until the 29th century. Some massive increase in testesterone (?) could explain a lot.
In fact there is very little chest hair in paintings until the 29th century.
The prophet speaks!!
Didn't know that about dormancy. If it takes that long, none for me either. Winter is the only time I could bear a beard, so by the time it got comfortable, it'd be time to shave anyway.
Pumice and those early razors would have to be murder on your skin. It seems that whatever the reasons for shaving, practical or cultural, they'd have to be pretty compelling to outweight the discomfort and risk of infection.
that chipping process seems to ususally produce what kind of looks like a serrated edge
Depends on the material and the chipping technique. The finer the material, the smoother and sharper the edge. Obsidian and the microcrystaline stones - chalcedony, jasper, agate, chert, flint, etc. - will all produce edges as sharp as an ordinary steel razor, or sharper.
The serrations are usually produced by retouching. That's used to make a flake into a desired shape, such as a projectile point. If one is skilled, and has good material, one can produce single flakes perhaps 6 inches long and 3/4 of an inch wide, with straight parallel edges. Ideal for shaving. Mesoamericans produced such flakes from obsidian.
We should invent a good explanation for why some groups grow facial hair and some don't, using evolutionary psychology based speculation. There's probably some reason why European females found hairy males more attractive, while Asian women didn't.
You are including Iran as part of Europe?
I call the guesthouse at Schneider's after the apocalypse.
Has anyone yet pointed out that in the linked pictures, people obviously have instruments sharp enough to cut hair? If you can cut hair, you can shave, or at least trim close.
also -- many people in the linked pictures have beards and moustaches. Unless my eyes are playing tricks on me.
Like eg. this guy. The Yanomami do seem pretty smooth-faced though.
("Many" because I was taking three different pictures of the same guy to be different people. Still.)
How do you know those aren't three different people, and you're just thinking they're all the same guy because you think they "all look alike"? Racist.
Yeah well, that's possible too.
It's a custom among the Huli to have plastic surgery in order to resemble each other as closely as possible. Village festivals are centered around mistaken-identity hijinks.
From the Classical blog mentioned above:
Philosophers were the exception to this ebb and flow of fashion. They always sported beards. It was almost part of their uniform.
It's comforting to think that hipsters haven't changed in over 2000 years.
No two people in this thread have spelled the Y-tribe's name the same way.
102 seems to get it right. Lucky guess?
Lucky guess?
No way dude -- take another look at who posted 102 before you ask a question like that.
I didn't know you were a Yanomamo, Clownę.
You've assimilated to the internet remarkably well.
On the internets, nobody knows you're a savage.
Oops, I reversed a couple of vowels in the post. My bad. 102 is, indeed, a lucky guess.
My 77 got the vowels right, but not the consonants. It's a slow process of collective refinement.
Threading is easier than tweezing, and requires less tech than shaving. I've watched little old Indian ladies do it at incredible speed. In tropical areas, it's not only insects that are the problem; there are fungi just waiting to cosy up under hair, where it's nice and warm and damp. In the cold north, beards would probably not be subject to this danger, and would provide extra warmth.
I have noted that the Kid, whilst lacking in facial hair, has hairy legs. Whether this is a common Asian thing or not, I don't know. I think he shaves the seven hairs above his lip once a month.
In the interests of science I tried shaving with a pumice this morning. Provisionally:
If you hold shares in Gillette, relax.
It's a lot more effective than I'd guessed, more like a crude electric than a crude multiblade.
I wouldn't want to try it if I had more than a 24 hour stubble - I think it would slide over.
It takes fucking forever. I managed to get some kind of result on a patch about two inches square before I got bored.
If I didn't have access to a proper mirror, I might just be tempted (I've never been that impressed by the reflective qualities of polished copper).
Progress is real, folks.
Next test, will the pumice shave a scrotum?
Your turn with that one, swiftie.
My beard never itches. Of course I never let it grow ver y long before I shave it off.
The itchy thing is relative to the location of the beard hair, in my experience.
Under my bottom lip, on the chin, or the moustache area -- not itchy. Whether in recently shaved mode, full-on beardy mode or whatever.
The neck and adam's apple area .... aaah, it burns, it burns...
So if you like the look of a beard, why not grow one but trim the neck and adam's apple area (are these two distinct regigions?)? That's what I attempt to do, though as I've said before it comes in kinda patchy.
