OK, so we’re mammals, right in there with leopards and door mice, Irish setters and chimps. It’s just that hair doesn’t serve us in the same way it serves most of our mammal kin. We can don a coat on a cold Manhattan day; we don’t need a coat…of fur!
Thankfully, you have Romeo & Juliette Laser Hair Removal to help you become less of a mammal, at least on the areas you’d like to be. We have 12 different lasers that we use for our patients, ensuring we can match the perfect laser for your hair type and skin tone. This is a far cry from 1960 when Theodore Maiman produced a laser using a small ruby gemstone for the first documented use of a laser for removing hair. It didn’t really go so well. Fortunately, 23 years later in 1983, laser hair removal changed to targeting the single hair follicle. The rest is hair-free history.
But humans have long wanted to rid themselves of the extra pesky hairs on their bodies, starting, of course, with the Egyptians. Every now and then it’s fun to take a trip down hair removal memory lane. So, in this springtime in New York pair of blogs, let’s do just that.
Pyramids, chemical peels, and hair removal
Cleopatra, that most stylish of Pharoahs, was really the one who originated wearing makeup and other beauty rituals. She is credited for being the first to use chemical peels to help with exfoliation by applying sour milk to her skin. Ah, the lactic acid functioned as a peeling agent, which is still used today. She also didn’t want to be bothered by unwanted hair. Hair removal was kind of an obsession for many Egyptian women of higher standing. Egyptian women removed all of their body hair, including on their heads, with tweezers made from seashells, pumice stones, and by waxing with a mix of beeswax combined with sugar.
Rome wasn’t cleared of hair in a day
When the Romans ruled the world from 27 BC to 476 AD, they didn’t want body hair. Actually, the less body hair a person had, the higher their standing. Women and men of means used razors made from flints and stones (serious razor burn!), along with tweezers and nasty depilatory creams to get rid of hair. Pubic hair was considered uncivilized, hence why Roman and Greek statues of women don’t have any. Who knew Brazil didn’t even invent going Brazilian down there?
Of the crown
Once we stumbled through the Dark Ages, where everyone was more concerned with avoiding the plague than with the state of their body hair, we came out into the days of monarchies. When it came to hair, the first Queen Elizabeth was a trendsetter. She removed all the hair from her face, but not her body. This included the eyebrows and the forehead. The goal was to make a higher forehead. She used bandages soaked in ammonia that had been taken from their cats. Meowwwww. This would have made her possibly smell like the first true cat lady.
That brings us up to the dawning of America. Let’s finish this hair removal history lesson in April’s second blog. Until then, do you want your unwanted hair to be history for the upcoming summer beach season? Call us at Romeo & Juliette Laser Hair Removal, (212) 750-2000, and we’ll help you be a modern-day Cleopatra or Augustus.
