What you can do about Unwanted hair

UNWANTED hair on the body or face does not necessarily indicate an hormonal imbalance. It is prevalent in a large number of perfectly normal women, especially as they get older. It is frequently an inherited characteristic common to either specific families or races.

But unwanted hair is unwanted for one simple reason; because it looks ugly.

All through the ages women have been trying to get rid of hair from their bodies. They wax it, they scorch it, they burn it, they rub themselves sore with pumice stone.

Asians have been known to tweak it off with cotton, or burn a mixture of sugar and lemon juice and use the resulting goo to remove it. It is a sensitive subject, almost the last of the taboos.

WHY EXCESS HAIR?

Women are particularly prone to develop hair where they don’t want it during the big glandular changes connected with fertility. Most girls can trace the beginnings to the onset of puberty. Menopause is another culprit.

Doctors quote the late teens and the years past 50 as the most common time for the problem to occur. Hair can suddenly sprout as one of the many body changes during pregnancy but usually it grows out after the birth.

Some women say, “The Pill started it” and others claim, “It got rid of it for me.”
These are considered the “normal” causes and, therefore, not cases for medical treatment.

Occasionally excessive hair can be the result of a physical ailment, a glandular disturbance resulting in an imbalance of male and female sex hormones. It could even develop as a side effect of steroid creams or hormone pills prescribed to treat other conditions. But these disorders are infrequent causes of excess hair.

If you do not have a family tendency toward superfluous hair and a relatively sudden increase in undesirable growth appears, consult your doctor.

WHEN ENOUGH IS ENOUGH ….

Personal and aesthetic judgment on what constitutes excess hair differ enormously. What is acceptable to one person may be “hideous” to another. There are cultural differences, too; preconditioning responses about what is right or wrong for a woman. Attitudes depend on where you are in the world.

South American women wear a moustache as a status symbol, showing they are of pure race. A young Italian model lost an assignment for sleeveless summer clothes because her indignant husband wouldn’t let her tamper with that manifestation of nature.

Even for men, body hair can be a case of what is in vogue. In ancient Rome they used to shave everywhere except the head!

Today’s abhorrence of hair appears to be an Anglo-Saxon passion, possibly signifying the playing down of our animal nature and perhaps part of the general Puritanism which has blanketed the world over the past few hundred years of western history.

But to be smooth and hairless is terribly important, especially in some places where outdoor life is the way of life all through the long hot months of summer.