I'm college faculty and teach an experimental archaeology course. One of my students is interested in the hair removal technique known as sugaring but is not finding good academic sources on the topic. I've done some quick searches, but haven't found much myself (though it's really far outside my specialty). What we do both find are a lot of modern cosmetology websites parroting the same lines about how sugaring is an Ancient Egyptian practice. It all sounds like marketing appeals to gullible clients to me because the wording of the claims is consistently so similar and lacks any sources. Further, they explicitly cite sugar and lemon juice as the ingredients, neither of which would have been available so far as I'm aware in Egypt, 3,000+ years ago. Is anyone familiar with this topic or have leads on sources about Egyptian hair removal? I feel invested now because rather than a conventional experimental archaeology project, I think she could design a project using authentic Egyptian materials to test whether or not there might be any truth to highly sus contemporary claims in the absence of any hard evidence.
From what I can tell, the concept of "sugaring" to remove unwanted hair--both the practice itself and the claims made regarding its supposed origins in ancient Egypt--can be traced to a woman named [S]andy Alford, a Canadian aesthetician who introduced it in her salons sometime around 1990. Alford claimed that she had discovered it "during her extensive travels through the Middle East." In another article, she says that she learned about it from an Egyptian friend who had very smooth skin. If Alford is still alive, perhaps your student could contact her and get to the bottom of it!
