Believe it or not, the practice of women shaving their armpit hair in the United States is only about a century old. Before, apparently, around 1915, society didn’t really expect women to shave their underarm hair at all. This had a lot to do with the fact that razor companies weren’t shaming women into doing it yet, but also because, according to sources, back in 1915, even the mere mention of female underarm was enough to give men of the time an extreme case of the vapors.
Perhaps even more surprising, though, is the fact that the shaving of armpit hair among women didn’t catch on in China until the 1990s – a mere two decades ago! And despite, or perhaps because of, the practice’s relative newness, Chinese women are taking to the Internet in droves to proudly post photos of their armpit hair as a show of gender empowerment in the 2015 Armpit Hair Competition!