Ancient Hair Removal: Beyond 2026’s Myths

It’s a common myth that our obsession with hair removal is new, something cooked up by modern advertising. The truth is, people have been trying to get smooth skin for thousands of years, using everything from sugar pastes to seashells, and their reasons weren’t so different from ours.

Myth 1: Hair Removal is a Modern Invention Driven by Advertising

The idea that we only started wanting smooth skin because of 20th-century razor ads is just flat-out wrong. Long before any ad agency existed, archaeological evidence and ancient texts show that hair removal was a big deal. Just look at the Ancient Egyptians. For them, being hairless was a sign of cleanliness, youth, and status, and they were serious about it. We see men and women with smooth skin in their art all the time. Their methods were actually quite advanced, they invented an early form of sugaring with a simple paste of sugar, lemon, and water that’s almost identical to what estheticians use today. Papyri from the University of Manchester’s Egyptology department even detail recipes for these depilatory mixes for both men and women in their daily grooming. They also had bronze tweezers, used clam shells to tweeze, and rubbed away fine hairs with abrasive stones. This practice was deeply ingrained in their culture and even their religious life.

Myth 2: Only Women Practiced Hair Removal Historically

That old line about hair removal being “for women” is another myth that needs busting. Men have been doing it for centuries, especially those with money and status. In the Roman Empire, smooth skin was for everyone. Roman baths were social clubs where grooming was part of the experience, and upper-class men would have their body hair removed by slaves to show off their class. The poet Ovid even gave men grooming tips, including hair removal, in his work Ars Amatoria. They had tools for it: bronze razors, tweezers (called volsellae), and even rough depilatory creams made with some pretty harsh stuff like resin, arsenic, and quicklime. So, this whole idea that “real men” are supposed to be hairy is actually a pretty recent invention.

Myth 3: Waxing is a Modern Invention for Hair Removal

People hear “waxing” and think it must be a modern torture device, but the core idea, stick something to hair, then rip it out, is ancient. The Egyptians had their sugaring, which operates on the exact same principle. Other cultures had their own versions, too. In the Middle East and South Asia, people used sticky plant resins and beeswax as part of beauty rituals that were passed down for generations. Some records even point to ancient Persians using heated beeswax to get rid of hair. Sure, it wasn’t the pre-made strips or hard wax beads we have today (those are definitely an improvement). The big change in the 20th century was simply mass production, which took these localized, almost artisanal practices and put them on store shelves for everyone.

Myth 4: Hair Removal was Always Painful and Primitive

When you think of ancient hair removal, you probably picture someone scraping their skin off with a sharp rock. And yeah, some methods were rough (and dangerous), but they also developed some surprisingly gentle and effective techniques. Take sugaring, it’s often less irritating than modern waxing because the paste sticks to the hair, not the live skin. Using pumice stones to gently buff away fine hairs was another common practice that doubled as exfoliation. In Roman and Greek baths, they’d use metal scrapers called strigils, not just to remove oil but also to scrape off hair that had been softened by the steam. So while our formulas have definitely gotten better, the idea that our ancestors were just hacking away at themselves is wrong. They knew what they were doing, often using oils and balms to soothe the skin afterward. A good esthetician today knows that proper skin prep is everything, and you can see that same thinking in their approach. You can even borrow some of those ideas for your own waxing prep for calm skin.

Myth 5: Hair Removal Trends Are Universal and Static

We tend to think our current beauty standards are universal, but history shows they’re always changing, driven by everything from fashion to technology. In the West, hairless legs and underarms for women really only became a thing in the early 20th century when fashion changed and suddenly hemlines went up and dresses lost their sleeves. As historians of consumer culture have pointed out, ads for razors and creams quickly followed. Before that? Body hair on women was just… hair. But in some Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures, full-body hair removal, known as “Nafada” or “Halawa,” has been the standard for centuries, tied to ideas of religious cleanliness. As Dr. Susan Bordo notes in her *Psychology of Women Quarterly* article, “Body Hair, Body Image: An Exploration of Women’s Hair Removal Practices,” these practices are completely tied to their specific cultural context. You can see this evolution today in something as simple as hair removal cream, which went from being a harsh chemical product in the 50s and 60s to much gentler formulas because consumers demanded something that didn’t burn their skin. This history shows that today’s trends are just one more stop on a long road. And once you’ve achieved that smoothness, you want it to last, which is where modern botanical products can help with post-wax longevity. All these practices, old and new, are about how we present ourselves and finding what works to boost our own confidence.