Some people want more in some places and less in others.

But overall humans are pretty invested in grooming our body hair.

So what is body hair for?

Exactly?

And maybe you were told that removing your body hair makes you cleaner or healthier.

So let's find out if that's actually true on average were covered in about five million hair follicles.

That's around the same number as other non human primates are is just isn't as visible because most of it is that short soft peach bus that's called vela's hair and our fuss has a job.

It helps us regulate our temperature by helping us cool off when our sweat evaporates and when we're cold, minuscule muscles in our skin contract around those hairs and make them stand on end.

That's what goose bumps are now.

The longer coarser, more distinctive hair on our head, face, legs and groin is terminal hair.

Terminal.

Here is what we tend to be a little more preoccupied with.

Its found in specific places for a reason like your eyelashes and your eyebrows for example, keep sweat and debris out of your eyes with the added bonus of helping us express ourselves and recognize each other.

Terminal hair on the head, legs, chest and other large services also regulates our temperature and may protect our skin from UV damage and prickly pokey stuff in our environment.

But also these are just our best guesses for why we have body hair in the places that we do because for evolutionary biology, body hair is actually still something of an enigma.

Now, pubic hair actually does have a really specific known job, but we'll get down into that a little bit more later.

Something else we do know is that hair growth is partially influenced by sex hormones and age.

Some of it only appears once you hit puberty.

So it's one of your secondary sex characteristics.

Those are traits like breast development, facial hair, the beginning of menstruation and body composition changes.

So almost like testosterone, which kind of fall in this family of androgens can affect the follicle to grow hair that's more coarse or thick.

People go through puberty, they start getting thicker hair in more androgen dependent areas whether it is armpit hair or pubic hair.

So your terminal hair is one external sign that internally you've rounded the corner into reproductive age, regardless of biology, it's obvious that we modern humans care a lot about what our body hair looks like, but why people have removed body hair for centuries for all kinds of sociocultural reasons.

But in modern hygiene history razors only really became popular for those who identify as women.

A little over 100 years ago when Gillette invented the first men's safety razor, they saw an opportunity to target an even broader client base.

They started marketing campaigns that tide female body hair to shape and this was especially effective because the fashions of the day started to put lady's armpits on display and this made their product a razor now indispensable to self confidence and as hairless nous became more and more desirable, the consequences of hair removal also got more gruesome.

Like some hair removal creams of days past were made from rat poison.

One method required the user to sit in front of an X ray and expose themselves to highly dangerous radiation for hours talking about beauty is pain plus some colors, textures and densities of body hair are deemed more socially acceptable than others.

Like someone's gender or race or sexuality plays a role in the pressure they feel to remove or change their body hair.

And on top of that there is still the pervasive view that removing body hair is more hygienic, funnily enough, it can actually be the opposite.

I think that we're trying to fit like with these cultural norms, but a lot of times it ends up causing more problems.

Now, any method of hair removal runs the risk of damaging your skin.

You can open your hair follicles to the outside world can result in ingrown hairs and can introduce micro abrasions, all little portals through which microbes can enter and wreak havoc like infections staph.

Anyone there are issues that can happen with waxing because you're really pulling on the hair, you're pulling on the skin at the same time when you're removing the wax and by pulling on the skin if you have sensitive skin and I mean it could potentially even cause tears in the skin and it's not just waxing like laser hair removal is becoming increasingly popular and is safer in terms of infection risk when compared to many at home methods.

But that's only when it's performed by a certified professional because shady discount laser clinics are much more likely to cause skin damage or severe burns.

So when it comes to laser procedures expertise of the practitioner counts now many of us have probably felt particular pressure to alter our pubic hair but it's also the kind of hair removal we probably feel the least comfortable talking about.

However you decide to do it removing hair down there can result in genital inflammation or long term changes to the skin.

And according to some studies removing your pubic hair can also actually increase your risk of contracting some sexually transmitted infections.

Although on the bright side pubic lice are kind of going extinct I guess because of habitat destruction, our pubic hair protects us.

It minimizes damage caused by friction.

It helps keep out the bad microbes that can cause U.

T.

I.

S.

And other infections and once again it keeps everything the right temperature.

So I'm on team leave your hair alone.

But of course there's a huge cultural aspect to you know to body hair and not having it.

So so I get it but I would love to help kind of shake up that idea a little bit and really, you know, make it normal to have body hair.

It's all normal natural and part of vegan a mammal babe, you don't need to remove it unless you have a really good reason to that.

Really good reason can be some kind of medical conditions where removing hair is part of treatment, but it can also be just because you want to.

So if you do landscape, here's some ways to do it safely.

So a big thing, changing out your razor blade regularly at least once every two weeks or every 7 to 8 shades when you store your razor, make sure it's facing up when it's facing down.

There's a higher chance for to rust.

And then I do think that it is helpful to exfoliate regularly because a huge cause of ingrown hairs is the build up of skin over the hair follicle and that traps the hair.

In words, I'm going to be honest, I didn't know most of these until my early twenties.

And another big one is to use a separate razor for your genitals.

And the microbiologist in me is begging you to avoid high infection risk scenarios like maybe don't go in a hot tub if you recently accidentally nicked your leg shaving and just know what we think our bodies should look and act like.

Often doesn't have its roots in science or medicine, you are not gross or dirty if you decide to skip the shape, it's just a choice like any other one we make in the modern cosmetic world.

And now, armed with more information, you get to decide what works best for you and your follicles.

Thanks so much for watching body language.

If you want more topics from this series and you can check out season one here.

What other topics do you want us to cover in future videos?

Let us know in the comments down below.

And thanks for watching as an extent.

Yeah.

Mhm.