Our cultural fixation with hairless women is the pits

As English Heritage unearths evidence that the Romans were as obsessed with tweezing and plucking as many of us are today, Ellie Muir asks if we will ever get over body hair

- Ellie Muir

The premiere of Notting Hill in 1999 was upstaged by Julia Roberts’ underarms. Wearing a sequined cowl neck Vivienne Tam dress on the red carpet, Roberts waved to her adoring fans by lifting up her arms, revealing two dark tufts of hair. The tabloids were in disarray. The next morning, conversation was more focused on Roberts’ armpits than her actual performance, as people questioned what had possessed the glamorous Pretty Woman star to go against the ideals of femininity so publicly.

Speculation about her motives ranged from it being a radical feminist statement, to the preferences of her then-boyfriend Benjamin Bratt. Except it wasn’t calculated. Roberts revealed almost 20 years later that it wasn’t a revolutionary feminist act – she simply didn’t shave.

More recently, Mean Girls actor Rebecca McAdams bared some fluff as she draped herself across a chaise lounge on the cover of Bustle magazine – people similarly gawped. There was nothing gargantuan or obscene about the size of the tufts underneath her arms, yet they were all anyone could seem to talk about. Depending on what social media accounts you looked at in the hours after the shoot dropped, McAdams was either “disgusting” and unkempt or a feminist icon.