
Photo by Flickr user wanderingmagpie. Used under a Creative Commons license.
First Bloomberg News breathily exclaimed Brazilian Bikini Waxes Make Crab Lice Endangered Species.
In Save The Pubic Lice! Or, Adventures In Lousy Reporting the staff of the respectable Sex and the 405 called their bluff.
I've mentioned in the past that humans around the world and through time -- from the ancient Egyptians to observant Moslems to King Louis XIV's France to Laura Ingalls Wilder's fellow "Little House on the Prairie" pioneers to 1960s hippies in Haight Ashbury used shaving, plucking, threading, sugaring, and, yes, even waxing to remove their body hair in order to... control pubic and other body lice. Not to disappoint Larry Flynt or Gwyneth Paltrow but for most people hairlessness hasn't been a synonym for "hot!"
And yet pubic lice have persisted despite something on the order of billions of people depiliating for reasons far more personal and urgent than to tickle their partner's fancies (or, I guess since we're talking about hair removal, not tickle them)
And now, if you're inclined to believe studies of unknown size or provenance, here's another reason why lice may still be with us for a while.
About a year ago a journal called Medical News Today published the following, under the keywords "Dermatology; Tropical Diseases:" Want To Stop Bed Bug Bites? Don't Shave Off That Body Hair.
So. Bedbugs vs. body lice. Whee!
All I can say is thank goodness we here in the 21st Century can condemn, celebrate, and otherwise debate it as a fashion issue instead of a health one.
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So what we need is a twin
Submitted by Irene (not verified) on Sun, 2013-01-20 17:01.So what we need is a twin study. "My brother Esau is an hairy man, but I am a smooth man."
Exactly! Thanks, Irene! --fl
Submitted by figleaf on Mon, 2013-01-21 00:32.Exactly! Thanks, Irene! --fl
You're committing the fallacy
Submitted by MaMu1977 (not verified) on Thu, 2013-01-24 12:17.You're committing the fallacy of cultural equivalence.
The cultures on the planet that have (and still do) practice depilation as a matter of course are in desert/tropical climates, where the main (acknowledged) reason for doing so was prevention of stale body odour. On top of that, the three religions in which corporeal hairlessness was/is seen as a sacrament are the (former) Azteca/Mayan religion(s), Islam and Judaism, all three of which were/are derived from civilised edicts for living in sweltering weather (with aboriginal records showing no exposure to lice pre-European contact.) Despite the contraindicatory nature of the practice (due to the potential for infection due to ingrown hair), there were plenty of non-Muslim African cultures which practiced depilation as well (and who, likewise, have no pre-European contact records of pubic lice.) On top of that, there are no non-European people on the planet who are especially hirsute. The few non-pale skinned people on this planet who developed "excessive" body hair have either a steady influx of European genes (due to cultural mixing) or had/have direct genetic links to the offshoot of the European fork of human diaspora (Hindus would be the largest example.) Seeing as how pubic lice require an abundance of hair in which to thrive, people(s) with limited or almost no body hair (whether through genetic structure or lack of nutrition) would have had a lessened ability to maintain and eventually transfer lice.
"For many years, lice experts
Submitted by Irene (not verified) on Thu, 2013-01-24 12:32."For many years, lice experts thought that pubic lice were not a New World problem until the Europeans brought them, along with all of their other Old World threats. Then, in 2002, researchers found Phthirus pubis eggs attached to the pubic hairs of a 2000-year-old Chilean mummy, and adult pubic lice have been found in clothing from a 1000-year-old Peruvian mummy. The lice were stuck to the pleats of some cloth from a female mummy, and the enthusiasm of the authors in describing the louse specimens is worth transmitting in their own words (Rick et al., 2002)"
Rick, F.M., et al. (2002) Crab louse infestation in pre-Columbian America. Journal of Parasitology 88(6): 1266–1267.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/02/14/of-lice-and-me...