Ubercool

Hair Removal

March 27th, 2008

In April 1968 a groundbreaking musical opened on Broadway. The theme echoed a contemporary sentiment, “Give me down to there hair. Shoulder length or longer. Here baby, there mama. Everywhere daddy daddy. Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair.”

The musical was “Hair.” And the message was clear: hair was “in.” But over the next 40 years, a sea-change shift occurred: body hair became the bane of humankind.

The 1968 debut of the Broadway musical “Hair” made long hair an icon of hippie culture. Today, long hair is out and, esthetically, body hair is out altogether.

The trend began in 1915, when Harper’s Bazaar ran the first ad to feature a photograph of a young woman with shaven underarms. The ad read, “Summer dress and modern dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair.”

The underarm shaving trend then spread to women’s legs during World War II, when pin-up posters showed movie star Betty Grable with shaven legs. As they did in the 40s, Hollywood stars and movies are helping spread the hairless doctrine.

Only today’s frontrunners are Britney Spears. And the movies are of the adult variety. There are no statistics of how many women shave what parts or their bodies, or how many men are joining their ranks for that matter, but it’s clear from media coverage that going hairless is one of today’s most pervasive body-care trends.

And the viral forces at work are far more powerful than a World War II poster. While underarm and leg-shaving were once largely limited to U.K. and North American cultures, the removal of “private hair” is riding the waves of the Voyeurgasm Ubertrend, resulting in a much more pronounced phenomenon.

The hair removal market could stand a boost. According to Mintel, the global shaving and hair removal products market grew 14.5% between 1998 and 2003 to $2.1 billion, equal to only 1.5% annual growth when adjusted for inflation.

A Packaged Facts report put the 1996 U.S. women’s hair removal market, primarily shavers, at $586 million, and the European market at $861 million. Today, the global hair removal market is estimated to be north of $4 billion.

Movie stars like Brad Pitt and George Clooney gave a lift to the facial hair trend, yet 55% of women surveyed by a 2004 Harris poll said they didn’t like kissing a man with stubble, while 70% prefer a clean-shaven man. The number one reason why men don’t like to shave, mentioned by 58%, is laziness. Luckily, the challenges of shaving are being reshaped by rapidly changing hair-removal technology.

On March 24, Israel-based Home Skinovations received FDA approval to market Silk’n, the first photo-therapeutic hair-removal device in the U.S. designed for home use.

This week, the FDA approved the second appliance designed for home hair removal. Israel-based Home Skinovations, founded in 2006 by Moshe Mizrahy, announced on March 24 that its Silk’n “Home Pulsed Light” device ($800), which still requires a prescription, was approved by the FDA.

On February 8, Pleasanton, Calif.-based SpectraGenics received FDA approval to market the first laser-based hair removal device, the TRIA ($995). SpectraGenics has been selling a version of the TRIA, called i-Epi, in Japan since 2005, and uses the same diode-laser technology used in professional hair removal for more than a decade.

Silk’n by comparison uses a “pulsed light” system, a technology that’s also found in professional systems and which increasingly is being adapted for a wide range of uses, including acne treatment.

Laser hair removal is the fastest growing non-surgical aesthetic laser application, reports Millennium Research Group. A projected annual growth rate of 18% will lead to 6 million laser hair-removal procedures in 2010.

While hair removal is most popular among women — with virtually all of them ages 12+ engaged in the practice on a regular basis — laser hair removal for men already comprised 15% of the total procedures performed in 2005.

Consumer-products players, like Procter & Gamble Co., Johnson & Johnson and L’Oréal are also said to be pursuing these technologies, eying growing consumer spending on medical procedures to improve appearance. In 2007, Americans spent $13.1 billion on such procedures, up from $7.7 billion five years ago, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

Hair removal alone accounted for about $547 million of spending last year. It was the most frequently performed aesthetic treatment for women under age 35, and the second most popular, after Botox anti-wrinkle injections, for older women.

In one respect, the musical Hair was right on the money, this is truly the dawning of the “Age of Aquarius.”

Entry Filed under: Health and Beauty