Comment by rrrrrrrrrrrryan

Ancient Egyptian women, above a certain socioeconomic threshold, also removed their body hair. (So did the men.)

Hair traps odors (ever smell your hair after a campfire, or going to a Korean BBQ?), but it's kind of a bitch to constantly remove. People with the means and the time to remove their body hair have done it at various periods throughout history.

Women in ancient Egypt also wore makeup, could own property, could divorce men without social repercussions, etc.

Many aspects of society that we think are new are actually things that just kind of arise given a couple hundred years of peacetime and abundance, and/or things that wealthy people have been doing on and off at various periods throughout history.