Rebecca Herzig’s Plucked of 2015 sheds light on the tumultuous history and divisive nature of hair. Although it was not always the case in the past, today more than 99% of women in America voluntarily remove their hair by shaving, waxing, or lasering (Herzig 9). This leads to the questions, was hair removal always voluntary? Is it really voluntary in the present? Herzig delves into questions such as these taking a scientific approach to the history of technology of hair removal in the United States. She chronologically highlights the progression of American attitudes on body hair and hair removal from the 1700s to 2015, culturally critiquing the way that American society has used hair or lack thereof to divide and categorize people since colonial times. The concept of hair makes the constructs supporting such societal divisions more visible. In the early 18th century, American colonists looked down upon Native peoples who removed their facial hair, calling them lazy and unmanly (25). However, by the 21st century, American scientists developed advanced depilatory technologies, and society uses body hair as a means of social control over women. Although today’s society uses these technological methods of hair removal to promote the idea of choice and self-determination over depilation, the fact that over 99% of women regularly remove body hair brings Herzig to push the reader to reflect whether hair removal is truly voluntary, necessary, and can prevent suffering.
Rebecca M. Herzig is a Gender and Sexuality Studies professor at Bates College and a historian of science. She received her doctorate in history and the social study of science and technology from MIT. Her other works include Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America and The Nature of Difference: Science of Race in the United Sates from Jefferson Genomics. Before publication of Plucked in 2015, several mentors and colleagues told Herzig to give up on the topic of hair removal and that it was not worth the extensive research and work that went into this monograph (194). However, Herzig continued to delve into this topic while being conscious of her own privilege as a “white, straight, able-bodied, middle-class American woman” (195).
Herzig completed extensive research on the history of technology of hair removal to develop her monograph, with an emphasis on the changing political, social, and scientific attitudes towards hair removal. She analyzed advertisements in magazines and newspapers such as Ms. And Science News Letter, as well as scientific studies regarding hair. For instance, an 1892 study on “insanity” in women found that “insane women [presented] excessive facial hair more frequently than the sane” (73). She also investigated books on evolution, including Darwin’s Descent of Man. Her thorough research on the beliefs and stances of popular historians over the generations provides a reflection of the dominant perspectives on hair and hair removal since the 1700s. Herzig received a grant from the National Science Foundation in 2008 to conduct research on RNA-interference, the most advanced, and potentially effective, means of hair removal to date. Chapter One, “The Hairless Indian: Savagery and Civility before the Civil War”, reveals how hyper-fixation on hair led to distinctions between races and similarities between minoritized races and animals. These classifications were used to “support the continuing enslavement of men, women, and children of African descent” (30). Chapter Two, “‘Chemicals of the Toilette’: From Homemade Remedies to a New Industrial Order”, emphasizes how smooth, white, hairless faces were ideal in the early 1800s, making hairlessness a symbol of purity, status, and wealth for white people. Hair removal powders and creams appeared in advertisements during this time as well. Chapter Three, “Bearded Women and Dog-Faced Men: Darwin’s Great Denudation”, marks the first medical pathologizing of hair in the early 20th century with hypertrichosis, the condition of excessive hair. In 1871, Darwin’s Descent of Man explained man’s hair loss as a result of sexual selection, which subsequently led to excessive hair being viewed as a sign of sexual and mental deviance.
Chapter Four, “‘Smooth, White, Velvety Skin’: X-Ray Salons and Social Mobility”, introduces new hair removal technologies: electrolysis and X-ray radiation. Throughout the mid-1900s, hairiness was associated with lesbianism and feminism, while hair removal became a way for middle-class women to dissociate themselves from “cruder people, lower class and immigrants” (79). X-ray salon marketing targeted these people to give them the perception that hair removal led to upward class mobility. Chapter 5, “Glandular Trouble: Sex Hormones and Deviant Hair Growth”, explains how endocrinology linked hairiness to internal hormones of the glands, leading glandular remedies and hormonal drug therapies to become popular hair removal treatments within a culture of self-improvement in the 20th century. Hirsutism, the disorder of abnormal hairiness due to glandular trouble in women was first diagnosed in 1922 (107). Although there was no official classification for what constituted abnormal hairiness, the Journal of the American Medical Association reflected that “the level of patient distress drove medical diagnosis – distress that was itself dependent on mutable social norms” in the mid-1900s (109). Chapter 6, “Unshaven: ‘Arm-Pit Feminists’ and Women’s Liberation”, highlights the role of visible body hair as a symbol of political activism in second wave feminism. On the other hand, the innovation of private bathrooms further mobilized middle-class women’s obsession with hygiene and depilation with Gillette’s new safety razors (124). World War I soldiers were required to shave, making facial shaves a new daily routine for men. Meanwhile, Black Power groups rejected white norms of straight hair during this time, challenging society’s implicit association between Black people, hairiness, and lower status.
Brazilian waxing is introduced in Chapter 7, “Cleaning the Basement’: Labor, Pornography, and Brazilian Waxing”, as a means for self-enhancement, hygiene, and sexual desirability. Around 1977, the economy saw a shift towards producer and consumer services with a growth of personal care services. Service workers, mainly lower-class female immigrants, were “tied to their client’s bodily location” and received very minimal protections from the government (147). Chapter 8, “Magic Bullets: Laser Regulation and Elective Medicine”, presents the invention of laser hair removal in the 1990s and its popularization in the early 2000s. This technology initially did not work on dark pigmentation, limiting people of color’s access to advanced hair removal technology. However, medical professionals considered hair removal as cosmetic and not a legitimate medical need, and thus were hesitant to provide laser hair treatment at all, putting hair removal “on the edges of professional medicine” (162). The final chapter, “The Next Frontier: Genetic Enhancement and the End of Hair”, delves into RNA-interference (RNAi), genetic technology that could be used to stop growth of unwanted hair. Despite great financial investment in research for this type of hair removal, scientists have not focused resources on this technology. Interviews with pharmaceutical employees revealed that RNAi for hair removal is considered low-prestige work and the potential harm may be greater than the potential benefits. Scientists prefer to work on “life-saving” drugs, whereas hair removal therapies tend to be called “lifestyle drugs” (176). Herzig notes that the “line between lifestyle indication and serious medical need was flexible, shaped by ‘general cultural shift[s]’” (177). The stigma against cosmetic drug development suggests that suffering from ‘excessive’ hair is deemed less important than other forms of suffering.
The distinction between “the superfluous and the truly necessary” in terms of bodily hair has evolved over time, yet Herzig concludes it will never be clearly defined (191). Medical professionals’ resistance to providing hair removal treatments and developing drugs to inhibit hair growth is reflective of how today’s society sees hair removal as a trivial cosmetic treatment, because many people do not believe that body hair causes suffering. However, hair has been used to mark racial, class, and gender differences and socially categorize people throughout history. Access to ever modernizing technology allows those with privilege – wealthy, white people – to become “enhanced”, whereas those who cannot afford these expensive treatments, the “unenhanced”, are discriminated against (189). Thus, who is to say whether hair causes suffering and who is truly suffering? Herzig asserts that the changing methods of hair removal and self-enhancement inherently necessitate the reliance of those with privilege to access expensive treatments on those socially ranked below them. In Herzig’s words, Plucked is a “call to remember those excluded others: the staggering volumes of sweat and blood and imagination and fear expended to produce a single hairless chin” (190). Participation in the trends of hair removal is to unconsciously separate yourself from others, creating a divide between those who remove hair and those who do not. Herzig argues that no matter what we decide to do with our body hair, we are “unconsciously pressed by society” and the “enthrallment to consumerism” to perceive body hair as dirty, wrong (137). In other words, each person’s perception of body hair and other people’s choices about their body hair in modern society is influenced by this division.
One of Herzig’s strengths in writing Plucked is her thorough descriptions of each type of hair removal technology, including their development, use, and psychological, physiological, and social impact on users. From the homemade hair removal concoctions containing arsenic – causing skin damage, convulsions, and even death to women in the mid-1880s, to the laser hair removal devices created over one hundred years later with the potential to cause blistering and hyperpigmentation of the skin, Herzig guides the reader through the history of each new technology through a scientific lens. She facilitates an understanding of the differences in access to each type of hair remover, as well as of the reliance of those with privilege on those socially ranked below them for development and treatment services of hair removal. For example, Brazilian waxing in the early 2000s, which targeted new audiences and hard-to-reach body parts, relied heavily upon skilled service workers. Herzig compares waxers to housekeepers and child or elderly caretakers, highlighting how essential waxers became to the daily lives of middle-class women. Many of these workers are female immigrants whom society views as “shunned, ‘wasted,’ disposable workers in the contemporary global economy” with little chance to climb the socioeconomic ladder (150). These detailed analyses of each piece of hair removal technology enhance her argument that no one individual can determine the collective’s suffering and are indicative of society’s, mainly women’s, apparent desperation for improving hair removal methods. This desperation stems, of course, from the implicit and explicit societal expectation for women to be hairless in order to be sexually desirable and feminine that has been developing in the Unites States since the 18th century.
One of Plucked’s weaknesses is its specificity of exploration of white, Eurocentric, post-colonial examples regarding body hair. Herzig provides far fewer specific examples of the body hair removal trends and issues for the many racial groups in the United States, including Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Indian. Rather, she focuses more heavily on white, gender, and socioeconomic issues and provides many concrete examples. Herzig’s arguments on suffering and the lack of acknowledgement of excluded, oppressed groups would be stronger if she included transnational observations and specific examples of the use and impacts of body hair removal technologies for other racial groups in Plucked.
Herzig effectively guides the reader through the history of hair removal in the United States while continually evoking the difficult issues of what constitutes suffering and who gets to decide this. Her journey through the development of hair removal technology articulates the privilege dynamics between those removing hair and those getting their hair removed, as well as those with access to modern society’s advanced, expensive technology. Thus, I believe white people would benefit from reading Plucked to further understand their privilege and how it has evolved since the 1700s, even in a seemingly “trivial” context. Herzig makes clear that body hair and hair removal is far from trivial and is implicated with gendered, racist, and classist roots.
Works Cited
Herzig, Rebecca M. Plucked: A History of Hair Removal. New York University Press, 2016.