Body Hair and Shaving

One realm of body art that many people engage in but don't necessarily think of as body art is the shaving of body hair. Some cultures hold certain beliefs around the shaving or growing of hair, and others treat hair as something to be utilized for fashion and display.

Head shaving - The ancient Egyptians were one of the first cultures to practic head shaving. They also like to scent their scalps with essential oils added to animal fat or wear elaborate wigs made from animal hair or plant fibers. Purposely short hair can sometimes be associated with a military affiliation or certain political beliefs (ie skinheads/punks). Shaving the head can also be a fashion statement itself, showing a certain disdain for all the elaborate hair styling that tends to be the dominant trend in personal fashion.

Facial hair - Growing or not growing facial hair for adult men is something that has gone in and out of style regularly, and will most likely continue to do so. In present-day Western culture, there is a debate about whether or not the wearing of facial hair is considered professional. The shaving and shaping of eyebrows is a practice most often effected by women, and is something that has gone in and out of style for the last few hundred years. The present modern trend is to lessen the eyebrow hair so that a more clean arch shape is formed, but sometimes the style is to remove the natural brow entirely and paint them on instead.

Body hair - Men and women both remove or keep various amounts of body hair as their personal preferences dictate. Modern methods have techniques such as waxing or depilatories supplanting shaving for larger areas or more intimate body hair. There is a trend currently for men and women to remove a lot of their body hair. Many women lighten or remove the majority of their hair from the neck down and more and more men remove or lighten hair from their necks to their waists.