Women shave their armpits primarily because of a social norm that took root in the early 20th century and became so deeply ingrained that most people now experience unshaved underarms as unusual or even unclean. The practice has no medical basis. It began as a marketing strategy and evolved into a cultural expectation so powerful that many women describe it less as a choice and more as something they’ve never questioned.
How the Norm Got Started
Before 1915, most American and European women didn’t think much about their underarm hair. Sleeveless dresses weren’t common, so the hair simply wasn’t visible. That changed when fashion shifted toward sleeveless and sheer styles in the 1910s, and razor companies saw an opportunity. Gillette launched the first razor marketed to women in 1915, and advertisements in women’s magazines began framing underarm hair as embarrassing and unfeminine. By the 1920s, sleeveless dresses were mainstream, and hair removal advertising was everywhere.
World War II accelerated the trend further. Pin-up imagery featuring smooth-skinned women circulated widely, and nylon shortages during the war made leg shaving more visible as women went without stockings. By the 1950s, shaving underarms and legs was standard practice for most women in the U.S. and much of Western Europe. What started as a fashion-adjacent marketing push had become a baseline expectation within a single generation.
Why the Habit Feels So Natural
The social pressure behind armpit shaving runs deeper than most people realize. In studies where women were asked to stop removing body hair for 10 weeks, participants reported feeling dirty, sexually unattractive, and disgusting. Other people in their lives openly expressed disgust at their visible hair. Even women who said hair removal was their personal “choice” used words like “unclean,” “gross,” and “unnatural” to describe women who didn’t shave.
This reveals how thoroughly the norm has been internalized. The association between smooth skin and cleanliness is so strong that natural body hair can feel genuinely wrong to people who grew up with the expectation. Women with conditions that cause increased hair growth, like polycystic ovarian syndrome, have described their hair as “freakish” and “unfeminine,” reporting real emotional distress over something that is, biologically, completely normal.
The norm also carries a social cost for breaking it. Research has found that women who don’t remove body hair are perceived as “alternative” or “independent thinkers,” but also as outside the mainstream. Choosing not to shave is often read as a political statement, whether or not the person intends it that way. Women’s liberation movements have long questioned the link between hairlessness and femininity, and visible body hair on women is still frequently interpreted as a feminist act rather than a neutral personal preference.
Does Armpit Hair Actually Affect Hygiene?
The idea that shaving is “more hygienic” is one of the most common justifications, but the reality is more nuanced. Underarm hair does create a larger surface area where odor-causing bacteria can thrive. The hair follicles in your armpits are surrounded by dense sweat glands, and factors like hair density and temperature influence how much odor disperses. So removing hair can modestly reduce the conditions that promote body odor.
One clinical study found that hair removal reduced bacterial colony counts slightly and that about 63% of participants noticed an improvement in sweat smell after treatment. But the reduction was small, and 20% of participants noticed no change at all. The bacteria most associated with body odor decreased, but other bacterial strains filled the gap. In short, hair removal may make a minor difference in odor, but it’s not the dramatic hygiene upgrade that marketing has long suggested. Regular washing does far more than shaving to control underarm smell.
What Shaving Does to Your Skin
Shaving your underarms is not without trade-offs. The razor physically strips away the outermost protective layer of skin, which leads to increased dryness and reduced hydration in the area. It also causes visible irritation, particularly in the center of the armpit where skin folds against itself. Cuts from the blade can further weaken the skin’s natural barrier.
For people with medium to dark skin tones, repeated shaving can trigger post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, a darkening of the skin caused by melanin production in response to irritation. This is the reason many women notice their underarms becoming darker over time. Ingrown hairs and folliculitis, an infection of the hair follicles that looks like small red bumps, are also common side effects of regular shaving.
All common hair removal methods, including waxing and plucking, trigger an inflammatory response in the skin. But shaving specifically tends to cause the most dryness, while waxing and plucking cause more redness. If you do shave, using a moisturizing or soothing product afterward can help counteract the dryness and irritation.
What Armpit Hair Actually Does
Underarm hair serves a few biological functions, though none of them are critical. It reduces friction between the skin of your upper arm and torso during movement, which can help prevent chafing. It also plays a role in dispersing scent from the sweat glands, which in evolutionary terms helped with mate signaling through pheromones. The hair wicks moisture away from the skin’s surface, allowing it to evaporate rather than pool. None of these functions are essential in modern life, but the hair isn’t purposeless either.
A Shifting Cultural Landscape
Attitudes are starting to change, particularly among younger women. The “Januhairy” movement, founded by Laura Jackson, encourages women to grow out their body hair each January and has expanded into a year-round campaign. Its Instagram account has over 40,000 followers posting images that normalize visible body hair. On TikTok, the hashtag #bodyhairpositivity has accumulated over 214 million views. Even razor brand Billie, which sells the very product in question, now shows body hair on its models.
These shifts haven’t overturned the norm, but they’ve created more visible space for women who choose not to shave. The core dynamic remains the same one that’s existed for over a century: women shave their armpits because the culture they grew up in told them to, and the pressure to continue is reinforced by the reactions of the people around them. Whether to keep shaving, stop entirely, or land somewhere in between is increasingly treated as what it always should have been: a genuinely personal decision with no medical stakes.