Huh. I could have sworn that there was something about this very topic in the FAQ. Seeing as there isn't (or that it's just early in the morning and I'm as blind as a bat), I'll go ahead and write something up on Roman women and their body hair!
Luckily for us, there are a few sources that discuss this, my favourite one being the famed poems of Ovid - which we know today as the Art of Love. Also luckily, I happen to have a solid translation of books 2 and 3 handy. We'll be looking specifically at book 3, section 4: "Make-up, but in private," which begins with the lovely lines:
How near I was to warning you, no rankness of the wild goat under your armpits, no legs bristling with harsh hair!
Considering that The Art of Love is essentially a guide for teaching men and women how to get laid, it's got some hilarious stuff in there, if you want to give it a read :) However, this small section already does note that Roman women did distinguish themselves with depilation, and the most common ways they would accomplish this was with either plucking (generally with tweezers, eyebrows were also plucked), razors (not always the most desirable option, because the razors of the time had the unlucky tendency of leaving lots of nicks), and, the biggest one, rubbing your skin with pumice to remove unwanted hair, which honestly also sounds incredibly uncomfortable. Being absolutely fair, I've never done it.
Their artwork just confirms this - some of the following being a bit NSFW (Quite a few of them are of people having sex in different positions).
Women exercising, Leda and the Swan, sex, more sex, even more sex, cowgirl, topless lady, more exercising, back to sex, Pompeii has lots of these, even threesomes!, this one's less erotic, unless you're into flagellation, but this one goes back to the fun stuff. For the record, the Romans weren't afraid of depicting pubic hair in general.
If you click through those, there's a pattern that does make itself clear - there's no body hair on any of the women in question, which does lend itself to the idea of depilation. So the fashion, at least with this snapshot of the end of counting backwards and the beginning of counting forwards, was that women denuded themselves of their body hair.
Sadly, it'll be about 3 hours before I can access my other books on the topic, but feel free to ask questions :)
Hello everyone,
In this thread, there have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, and as such, they were removed by the mod-team. Additionally, many have simply commented about the deleted comments, which serve to merely compound the issue. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind our rules concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. In regards to quotations from primary sources, we love those! But, we do require there be some level of contextualization for the answer to stand. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed.
Finally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to modmail, or a META thread. Thank you!
Not Romans but I think it is interesting that Julias Caesar says this about the Britons:
They permit their head hair to grow long, but shaving all parts of the body except the head and the upper lip. http://www.elfinspell.com/PrimarySource55BCBritons.html
