After logging out of my e-mail account at Hotmail, the MSN home page came up and I happened to come upon an item where the tweeter people were upset at the depiction of the new Wonder Woman because, are you ready? Her armpits were clean shaven.
Whaaat?
The purists out there argued that as a superhero, she wouldn’t have time to shave her armpits. But, hey, she is Wonder Woman, you know — nothing is impossible. Then there was the question of being an Amazon from an island of all females and no Schick commercials — how would she have even known to shave her armpits? Really? This is what the citizenry has to worry about? Wonder Woman’s arm pits?
Who cares?
I can tell you this, some of us may not shave every day, and most of the time in the winter, we don’t — even though we never admit it. But when it comes to no-sleeve weather, you can bet your sweet patootie we make a concerted effort to have clean, hairless pits.
Why? Okay, so I had to look this up. After all, there is nary a hairy on the pits of Venus de Milo, even though her arms are cut off at the elbows, so this clean-pit thing must be going on for quite some time.
According to that handy Google search, hair depilatory has been around for a very long time: “forms of hair removal have been practised in almost all human cultures since at least the Neolithic era. The methods used to remove hair have varied in different times and regions, but shaving is the most common method.”
Look it up! The Neolithic era had Raquel Welch cavorting in a fur bikini, with very clean pits and legs, I might add.
Since hairy armpits are to be avoided at all costs, tactics to remove hair have included tweezers made from seashells, pumice stones (yikes!), and even beeswax and sugar-based waxes (Egyptian), which they’d apply and rip off with fabric just like we do today. According to the Encyclopedia of Hair, copper razors dating back to 3,000 B.C. were found among ruins in Egypt and Mesopotamia too. There’s also evidence that women in Turkey used homemade pastes to remove much of their body hair.
So there you have it — clean pits have been around as long as Methuselah, and then some.
Not for Nuthin’, but in this time of turmoil, rebellion, and unrest, it’s nice to see that Wonder Woman takes the time to not only keep the streets free of crime, but also her armpits free of hair. For all you tweeters out there, tweet about something really important — like how come Wonder Woman’s hair stays in place even when she’s kicking some b—– villain?
Follow me on Twitter @JDelBuono.
