Art and a Woman's Body Hair

 Gustav Courbet(1886)

Recently, I had a look at some ancient works of art in the form of paintings and sculptured statues and figurines from India and Greece, the two foremost ancient civilizations. A look at the nude figurines showed that all of them though faithful to the female form depicted women as completely bare of hair and even the pubic hair are never depicted. The famous Indian temples at Khujaraho show hundreds of women with ample breasts and hips but are devoid of hair. This is hard to explain as the ancient artists perhaps considered hair a sign of ugliness or perhaps just plain taboo and never ever depicted or alluded to it. Thus the ancient paintings and depictions of Eve are all devoid of hair, which perhaps was not possible as a razor at that age had not been invented.

This phenomenon continued well into the modern age when some artists woke up to the fact that women do have hair and it does not detract from their beauty. Thus the hair on the mons began to be shown, with the growing realization that a nude woman in natural garb as created by God is a very beautiful creation.

Many painters started painting nudes and showing hair on the body as well. One of the first to paint a woman in the nude with body hair was Gustav Courbet. His painting of a nude in 1886 is famous. Francisco  Goya also in his famous the Nude Maja alluded to body hair.  However fine art paintings and sculpture created before the 20th century in the Western tradition usually depicted the female form without body hair. This was perhaps because of a sense of morality that cannot be understood now. The famous writer, artist John Ruskin is reported to have been horrified by the sight of pubic hair on his bride on the nuptial night and that resulted in the marriage ended in divorce.

There must be some explanation why an artist with either the brush or the chisel would like to paint a nude woman. Firstly let us accept that sex is a motive, that cannot be denied, but again great art does not rest on sex alone and there are other more sublime emotions. I feel the main reason is that the female body in nature arouses mans greatest interest. Hills, Mountains, ice and snow are good as are animals like the lion and the elephant and do arouse admiration, but it does not compare with the natural female form which in proportion and beauty cannot be surpassed by anything. Part of this natural beauty is the body hair on a woman. This adds to her sexuality and makes one feel closer to God.