Marquis De Sade, Judy, Reddit discussed on Woman's Hour
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It's also, I think, ordinary folks too, who are thinking, wait a minute, wouldn't these women have leg hair and armpit hair? That Judy messaged in, say, hair has been removed since Egyptian times, various chemicals and tweezers she puts it, read the Marquis de Sade. Yeah, no, that's totally true. Hair has been removed, especially for ritualistic purposes, and as well for aesthetic reasons. Usually by a particularly fancy people upper class people, but for most of history in most times and in most places, ordinary people would have had underarm hair and leg hair ordinary women would have had underarm hair and leg hair. In most times and places. Yes, and I think that's what you're getting to here, isn't it? We spend a lot of time or rather the people making these programs spend a lot of time on the accuracy of lots of different things. They are called out, aren't they? If there's, I don't know, a random remote control in the background or something. But why? Reddit goes wild. But why not this? Why do you think it matters though? You know, I've been thinking about this and I think the easy answer is that our contemporary aesthetic is a hairless for the most part. Underarms and legs for women, right? And so I think a lot of people very cynically, especially on Twitter to have said that it's because they want ratings and they think that underarm hair or leg hair will turn people off. I mean, that's an option. But I've actually been thinking more about this and I really think that period appropriate body hair wouldn't really turn people off, I feel like most people, I don't think we give viewers enough credit. And I think most people would say, oh, you know, I never thought of that. I suppose women wouldn't have removed their underarm hair, whatever. I think most people, I don't think it would turn people off too much. But I do think that there's an element now, I think nowadays that there's some celebrities who are kind of experimenting with having underarm hair and kind of showing it in public. I think that there's an element of it being sort of it's transgressive and it's sort of feminist and almost like a power move. And so I wonder sometimes if producers just kind of want to sidestep that whole thing entirely, or they think it won't, that that sort of power move feminist sort of could be off putting. Yeah, for the particular career, have you seen any TV or film showing a true representation? So I've seen it only on the great, which is by Hulu, about Catherine gray, but only I think one of the women on there had some very sort of taste armpit hair. And then 1883, which I haven't seen. But I think it's about sort of pioneer women. And the lead character on there has plenty of armpit hair. So both sort of American shows, I think. I find it anywhere else. Well, yes, and also just about how people's teeth would have looked and also body shape, in different in different times. Is that accurate? Would you say is a historian? No. For the most part now, I can remember watching the movie Joan of Arc and the English had horrible, terrible teeth, and then the French had beautiful white pearly teeth, and this is, you know, and I was like, wait, and I asked my dad, why is that? And he said, oh, they're just trying to make the English look extra bad. An extra villainous so I think it's sometimes used for cinematic purposes. But I think for the most part, we're not getting an accurate representation of dental hygiene or of hair removal. I will say though that shows like the last kingdom have done a really good job of portraying sort