Armpit Hair Plucker
We know that the practice of plucking armpit hair was rife during the early Roman Empire because one of its contemporaries tells us. In one of his letters, Seneca the Younger, the Stoic philosopher and tutor to the emperor Nero, suggested that not to pluck one’s armpit hair was to be unreasonably negligent in one’s personal care. The practice makes sense, especially given the presumed stench (Roman baths could only do so much, and Rome really does get hot in the summer). But a Roman man had to be careful not to go too far the other way however: in the same passage Seneca criticises men who depilate their legs, implying that doing so is the hallmark of someone who is vain and effeminate.
So what were the beauty standards of when it came to body hair in the Roman world? Well, thanks to a work called the ars amatoria (the “Art of Love”) written by the Roman poet Ovid, we have a pretty good idea. Women were expected to depilate lest, as Ovid writes, they reek of “wild goat under the armpits” or have “legs bristling with harsh hair”. Men, on the other hand, had a little more flexibility when it came to removing their body hair.
While removing armpit hair was considered acceptable (if not to be encouraged), depilating other parts of your body was seen as overly-effeminate and not becoming of a good old fashioned military Roman. Julius Caesar, for example, ran into some stick when it was pointed out that in addition to his meticulous preening routine (shaving his face, combing over his bald patch etc.) he would have his body hair plucked.
We have another example linking the plucking of body hair with effeminacy from imperial times. Suetonius tells us that Nero’s immediate successor, Galba, received news of his predecessor’s demise from a slave-boy called Icelus. Initially overjoyed, Galba then became inexplicably horny, and requested that Icelus have all of his body hair plucked before he took him aside.
