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Gilette. During WW2, they didn't have anyone to sell their products to, so they started marketing shaving to women. Before this, a woman shaving was akin to cla
by blaireaug 14y ago
Gilette. During WW2, they didn't have anyone to sell their products to, so they started marketing shaving to women. Before this, a woman shaving was akin to claiming yourself to be a prostitute. Now, it's a cultural norm for women to shave...all because of manufactured desire.
- eli 14y agoThis sounds apocryphal. Women were shaving their armpits in the 1920s.
- blaireaug 14y agoSorry, WW1. I get those two mixed up all the time. And yeah, actually, it may be apocryphal, but here's why I believe it to be true. [1]http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/625/who-decided-women-should-shave-their-legs-and-underarms http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/625/who-decided-wom... "The gist of the article is that U.S. women were browbeaten into shaving underarm hair by a sustained marketing assault that began in 1915. (Leg hair came later.) The aim of what Hope calls the Great Underarm Campaign was to inform American womanhood of a problem that till then it didn't know it had, namely unsightly underarm hair." [2]http://history.barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/kirstenhansenthesis.pdf http://history.barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/kirste... "In July of 1915, the first Gillette razor for women came on the market. But where Gillette had responded to a clear void in the men’s hair removal market, he now faced the dilemma of promoting to a market that did not yet exist. Hence Gillette was responsible for introducing to American women the revolutionary concept of shaving." [3]http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1542-734X.1982.0501_93.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1542-734X.1982....
- alexsb92 14y agoThough not shaving, women and men had been removing bodily hair with a variety of creams/razors way before WW1.