I’ve recently read of some very interesting archaeological discoveries in a number of countries:

– In London, an ornate Roman mausoleum has been unearthed beneath a construction site near the south bank of the Thames River.

– Construction workers have excavated a perfectly-preserved, white marble carving of a head in the historic center of Rome.

– A 4,000-year-old Stonehenge-like sanctuary has been unearthed in the Netherlands.

– And archaeologists in Britain have dug up dozens of ancient Roman . . . tweezers???

Yes, I said tweezers — reportedly revealing the obsession of ancient Romans with hairlessness. According to experts, in the days long before Victor Kiam liked the Remington electric shaver so much he bought the company (remember the commercial?), the tweezers would have been used, not just for plucking eyebrows, but for removing any unwanted body hair, including from their underarms — presumably by both men and women. How the archaeologists know all of that, I can’t imagine — but they’re the experts, not I. Although I can imagine how it must have felt:

Ouch!

The newfound tweezers are now part of a larger collection of artifacts installed in a museum near Shrewsbury at Wroxeter Roman City, a settlement believed to have been as large as Pompeii in its heyday. These include perfume bottles, jewelry, makeup applicators, amulets to ward off evil, and something called a strigil — a skin scraper.

Double ouch!

Now, I have to ask: Am I the only one who sees the irony in this Roman hairlessness thing? Has anyone ever checked out the armpits of modern Italian women? Or their legs? (Don’t answer that — I really don’t want to know what you’re into.) Although shaving has become more common in recent years, it appears that body hair is making a comeback. Italian men — themselves largely unshaven — seem to like their women au naturel.

And it’s not only in Italy that you will find this belief in the beauty of naturalness. One such country is the Czech Republic — which comes as no surprise to me, as I was introduced to this phenomenon when I lived and worked in Prague in the summer of 1991.

I’ve already written at length about my memorable experiences in Prague in Chapters 11 and 12 of my first series of blog posts. But I neglected then to mention my introduction to the wonderful world of womanliness as practiced by the beautiful ladies of what was then still Czechoslovakia.

When my flight from Washington landed at Kbely Airport in Prague on that early May morning, I was met by one of our firm’s Czech employees, a delightful young man named Rudy. Giving me a guided tour along the way, he drove me first to the apartment that had been rented for me, dropped off my luggage, and then headed directly to the office less than a mile away, where I was to meet the people who would be both my co-workers and my adopted family for the next three months.

We rode the tiny elevator up to the fifth floor, and as the door opened, I walked directly into . . . a wall of body odor such as I had never in my life encountered. It smacked me in the face with the force of a tsunami, simply because it was so unexpected. But I managed to compose myself, and decided that I would have to figure out who the culprit was and try tactfully to help that person deal with the problem later. But as I was introduced to each person in turn, I realized with dismay that it wasn’t that simple, because the odor was not emanating from just one individual, but from nearly every person in the room. And they all seemed completely oblivious to it! What the hell . . . ?

Now, I’ve always been particular about personal grooming. And I’ve always considered good grooming to include the way we smell. Maybe it dates back to the otherwise cute little boy in my first-grade class who always smelled as though he’d just peed in his pants — I’m really not sure. But I do know that as far as I’m concerned, deodorant is our friend.

So what was it with my new Czech family? They looked clean. And it turned out that they were clean — meticulously so. Just two years out from under Soviet occupation, they still didn’t have large wardrobes, so they did a lot of laundry. And since most apartments and older offices — ours included — were not air-conditioned, they took a lot of showers. So that wasn’t the problem. When the young women — three blondes, all named Jana — wore sleeveless blouses, I did notice that they didn’t shave; but soap and deodorant should have taken care of that.

In time, I actually became accustomed to the smell. I can’t say I liked it — but I learned to live with it. Without air-conditioning, we kept the office windows open during the day, which helped some. I didn’t want to use air freshener, for fear of hurting my co-workers’ feelings. But finally, as I settled in and got to know the oldest of the three Janas pretty well, I mentioned off-handedly one day that I had to stop at a pharmacy to buy some toothpaste and deodorant. Bingo! That opened the conversation as I had hoped, and she launched into a diatribe on the evils of chemical deodorants. The Czech people, it turned out, did not like putting chemicals into, or onto, their bodies. Their soap and cosmetics were all pure, and their deodorants, such as they were, all chemical-free. The fact that they didn’t work didn’t seem to bother anyone.

*. *. *

There’s an old saying — “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” But is that always a good idea? I mean, there are places in the world where people defecate in the streets. Should we join them? Or societies where old people are put onto boats or rafts and set out to sea when it’s time for them to die. Not for me either, thank you. So in Prague, I kept using my deodorant, and left my new friends to enjoy their chemical-free lives. And peace and harmony prevailed.

As for the ancient Romans, I’m sure they would have appreciated a razor with a nice sharp blade; but they did the best they could with what they had. I have no doubt that one day our descendants will be thinking the same about us.

Just sayin’.

Brendochka
7/27/23