From Iranian dirt to bleaching: how women in the USSR struggled with excess body hair

While in Europe women began to actively resort to hair removal in the 20-30s of the last century, Soviet women discovered this beauty procedure only in the 80-90s. However, this does not mean that they have not basically got rid of unwanted hair all this time. Many, especially with the onset of the bathing season, have sought to make their legs, armpits and bikini perfectly smooth. And here are some unusual and even dangerous methods they used to do so.

The most popular means of hair removal in the USSR was razor hair removal. Most often, a machine with incredibly sharp Neva blades was used: with them, hair removal became an incredibly long and traumatic process.

Usually, the girls applied a little shaving cream or ordinary soap suds to the skin, and then proceeded to depilate. A rare Soviet beauty could come out of this “battle” without minor cuts and injuries. But they endured it steadfastly: they simply stopped the blood with a piece of newspaper.

Some Soviet women used homemade wax strips to remove their hair: they simply applied wax to a piece of cloth or paper, then heated it up, stuck it to the skin, and ripped it off with a sharp jerk. the hand. However, the process was not debugged to perfection. Sometimes the wax was so hot that it burned and irritated the skin.

Alternatively, some girls used tweezers. However, depilation in this way on large areas of skin was so laborious that the procedure was most often used only in addition to wax strips.

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Some women in the USSR did not want to torment themselves with shaving or waxing and resorted to gentler methods to deal with excess hair. To make the hairs less noticeable, they bleached them with a solution of hydrogen peroxide or other harsh substances. Security here also did not smell: often such procedures turned out to be burns for owners of delicate skin.

Another popular hair removal method in the USSR was the use of a special Nuri powder made from Iranian mud. The product, which was sold in pharmacies, was diluted with water to form a paste and applied to the desired areas of the skin. When the powder dried, it was scraped from the skin along with the unwanted hair. The smell of this paste was quite specific, but many closed their eyes because of the quick effect.

French cream “Bocage” served as an alternative to Iranian powder. It worked on the same principle as Nuri, but lacked the suffocating smell. But it was not so easy to get this tool in Soviet times: here you had to either go to several stores, or resort to the help of speculators.