Were women dirty, smelly and hairy before the 20th century?

Question

This is not a misogynistic question. I have often seen portraits of historical figures where they look stunning, but as I understand it modern hygiene practices (i.e. shaving, daily bathing with soap) are a comparatively recent innovation. So were women in the old west, medieval europe, etc. mustached and dirty by today's standards?

Answer 1

Heh, yes, they were - and some still are! Did ya know, back in the days when French women wore those mile-high hairdos, they were tormented by head lice? They never took those do's down to shampoo - they carried long, metal rods with hooks on the end, and used those to scratch their heads under all that hair!
Women (and men) would not bathe, nor would women shave their pits or their legs - that was considered unhealthy, and among religious fanatics, sinful! And you don't EVEN want to know the state of their teeth! Not unless you're fond of being sickened to the point of vomiting just from the smell of their breath!
Heh - right up into the Twentieth Century, most women and men in the world bathed very infrequently - like once a week or less - and wiped their behinds with their bare left hand...and didn't wash it afterwards. Soap is indeed a recent invention. So are toothbrushes - a few people in the Eighteenth Century realized that cleaning one's teeth was a good idea and so made "toothbrushes" out of twigs off of trees or shrubbery. Toothpaste wasn't invented until around 1889 - for several decades before that, people used powdered chalk to rub on their teeth with a fingertip.
You know why perfume was invented, don't ya? To cover up the stench of a person who rarely, if ever, bathed - and those were the edcuated, wealthy members of society!
At the time of the American Revolution, you could tell, when you were traveling, when you were coming to a town by the stink of untreated sewage. Houses didn't have flush toilets, they had holes in the ground out back that might be covered by an "outhouse" - but at night, you didn't go to the outhouse, you peed and crapped in a bucket or jar and tossed the contents out the window into the street!
Don 't ya wish y'had a time machine so you could travel back in time to experience those early "civilizations" first-hand?

Answer 2

Well, this is a little bit of a silly question, because the same could be said for men. Why would the women not wash and the men wash?

There is evidence for gross daily practices of hygiene in history for both men and women.
i.e in many parts of Europe, the whole family used the same bath water to wash, the husband went first, then the wife, then the children by ages. hence comes the saying 'Don't throw out the baby with the dish water'
The reason why perfume was so popular a few centuries ago and wigs was because the perfume was used to cover bodily smell and the wigs to cover up dirty ratty, perhaps infected hair.
These practices were not consistent of all social classes however, the upper classes perhaps had more money to be hygienic. However the lower classes would never have had money for wigs and perhaps took better care of their hair for appearance sakes.

However soap has always been prevalent throughout history, many times the fat of a dead animal was used as soap. There is evidence of women using moisturising creams as far back as the Egyptians great era.

This is a question that can not be answered correctly without serious research and study and the worst thing a historian or a student can do is to make assumptions based on little evidence, conjecture and to find the answer that he or she particularly wants.

Answer 3

Dirty Hairy Women

Answer 4

Shaving of legs and underarms is still a relatively recent phenonmenom and one that is not practiced by women around the world. According to Cecil Adams of "The Straight Dope"- it was advertising agencies that convinced women that shaving under the arms was the thing to do--ca 1915. Shaving of legs came later, as hemlines rose.

As for cleanliness--at one time, people took baths once a week. There were reasons for this-some places had a lack of water, and others simply a lack of HOT water. Most people took "sponge baths"- quickly washing the areas of the body that tend to hold odor. But clothes washing was also a tedious chore--and most folks felt lucky if they had two sets of clothes. So odors lingered there, even if the person washed.

As for women shaving mustaches--a bearded lady was considered an oddity and was often exhibited for large sums of money. But some women with facial hair did shave, or have a barber shave them. See the book "Very Special People" by Frederick Drimmer, Bantam Books, 1973 pp 107-148.

Answer 5

Not just women. Men too were dirty by today's standards.

In the 13th century, the worst king England ever had was Bad King John. He is the figure of evil in the Robin Hood legends. One of his many defects was that (like our present President Bush) he was quite ready to bankrupt the national treasury to pursue his own purposes. Hot baths cost a lot of money, yet King John insisted on bathing every three weeks, while the common people were satisfied to bathe twice a year.

The great cathedrals, such as Salisbury (700 years old) were packed with worshippers at times. Imagine thousands of unwashed peasants' bodies jammed close together. The solution to this problem was to burn lots of incense.

Right up into the twentieth century, soap was a valuable commodity. Within the lifetime of people still living today, you took your own soap when you went to stay in a hotel. In WW2, fats were needed to make munitions, so Americans were asked to save all kitchen grease from cooked meat and turn it in to the government for collection and use. Shortage of fats means shortage of soap.

Answer 6

I have to laugh, because only an American would ask this question.

Daily bathing and shaving are not worldwide practices.

As for "women," yes, we used to be dirty, smelly and hairy. Why do you think they had perfume?

But, thankfully, we girls "evolved" and learned to bathe and shave. I mean what guy likes a smelly, hairy girl? (Unless she has a french or Italian accent, that is.)

So now that we've learned to keep clean and hairless, when are you guys going to learn to do the same thing?

While you're at it, caveboy, work on that picking up your laundry off the floor trick we ladies managed to learn eons ago. Oh, and the toilet paper goes ON the spindle? ;)

Answer 7

maximum married women individuals were at living house and did no longer have jobs. obviously there have been exceptions. Farm different halves usually were out contained in the fields all day like their husbands, some were, some were no longer. If a guy owned a keep, his spouse may artwork alongside with him (likely no longer paid a income) so he did no longer could employ workers. there have been many women individuals in the course of the commercial revolution who worked in factories, even married women individuals, fantastically some immigrants. there have been also turning out to be nurses, maximum unmarried, yet some worked after marriage. also college instructors and librarians. yet they were usually unmarried, because many college districts does no longer in reality no longer enable married instructors, yet a unmarried instructor seen contained in the organization of a guy, no longer her father or brother may be fired for 'impropriety". women individuals had few living house equipment, regardless of the truth that some such issues as ice bins (forerunners of electric powered fridges, with large blocks of ice to save food chilly) were round by technique of the early 1900's, i imagine. human beings usually had large households and the oldest or older females were anticipated to be at living house helping protect youthful babies and doing housework. Boys may be despatched out at 10 or before to discover astounding jobs if the family members became undesirable. females were very secure and before WWI there became little courting, maximum females were 'courted' by technique of youthful adult males, quite usually sitting in her parlor with the father and mom interior attain.

Answer 8

Yes. I remember reading about a famous artist who choose children over his wife. He reasons resons where due the the smell, mentration, and pubic hair. His biographer stated that the women didn't look like they did in the paintings so he was repulsed by the "real thing."

Answer 9

it depends were they lived if they lived in the farm yes in the cities they were cleaner but have you read the first immigrants in NY they were stinking so much buck in 1800s they put public bath rooms to bath and shower in the dark ages they stink in the grecoroman times they had perfumes and cosmetics to decorate baths like they say roman baths you see in museums in the Greek vases the paintings how women looked almost like today women do now in north pole they were rubbing them self's with fat from whale and kept the mosquito's out good luck..

Answer 10

>>Not any more dirty, smelly or hairy than the men of the same period. People like you probably believe that you are not dirty, smelly and hairy.