Modern Neanderthal

1116 Words5 Pages
In the beginning of time, men had been applying mixtures of mud, minerals and even blood to decorate themselves. Throughout all of recorded history men have used scented oils as part of religious ceremonies and rituals. Of course, the invention of the disposable razor in the 1960’s wasn’t the first time men started to shave or remove hair from their bodies. Historians and Archeologists have pointed out that, Neanderthal men, around 100,000 B.C. were the first users of beauty aides, including filing their teeth and painting and tattooing their faces and bodies. The Modern Neanderthal would also pull hair from the head and body to alter their appearance and had even invented tweezers, (just like the Flintstones!)by using two shells to pluck…show more content…
that the Greeks started to use altering the appearance became a fad for the upper class. Wigs were widely used as well as makeup made from chalk and lead kept in ornate boxes (tragic trannies even back then….). By 500 B.C. when Alexander the great rose to power, his vanity gave birth to what would be the modern salon. Alexander the great kept his hair short and was clean shaven for every battle and insisted that all of his men were clean-shaven as well so that the enemy couldn’t pull on their beards ( but I like my beard pulled…..Meh!). From this trend sprung the creation of the modern barber shop. A Greek business man introduced the barber shop concept to the Romans around 300 B.C. and men would line up at the “Tonsor” (barber) just to get a shave. The barber shop soon became the place to be seen, gossip, and discusses news and business. The Roman’s took the concept to a whole new level, spending hours getting mani’s, pedi’s, massages and haircuts, and applying cosmetics. (That brings new meaning to “When in Rome….”). These trends continued until the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, came into power, 138-76 B.C. Hadrian had horrible skin problems (the first Roman Pizza Face!) including pimples and warts, so to help conceal his skin condition, he grew a beard. As men do, the Romans followed the trends of their leaders, so they once again grew…show more content…
Around the 1830’s Men began wearing hair pieces and hats to conceal baldness. Antiperspirants and deodorants came on the scene in the 1890’s, first with the use of the irritating ingredient aluminum chloride but was then replaced in the 1940’s with aluminum chlorohydrate. Also in the 1800’s, homemade shaving soaps and aftershave were made from cherry laurel water, stemming from the first safety razor patent in 1880 invented by the Kamfe brothers. But it was King Camp Gillette and William Nickerson, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineer design the first T-razor with disposable blades. In 1903, Gillette sold only 51 razors and 168 blades, but in 1904, after a marketing campaign he sold 90,000 razors and 123,000 blades. During WWI, Gillette pulled of the marketing ploy of the century, in which he made a deal with the military to include his razor as standard issue for every
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