Abstract In Clement of Alexandria’s long section against false beauty in the Paedagogus , he gives his readers two passages that parody scenes of male body waxing. This article argues that the two passages represent different locations of waxing with different connotations about public display. The first, sharing a source with Athenaeus’s Deipnosophistae , represents body waxing as occurring in public shops, and laments the banal and money-grubbing aspects of the practice. The second represents waxing that happens in a gymnasium, contrasting the appropriate gymnastic exercises with the gyrations of the man being waxed. By combining the lesser-known setting of a professional waxing studio with a setting famous for its display of manly excellence and competition—the gymnasium—Clement keeps our focus firmly on the fact that men submitting to this treatment are doing so under the scrutiny of the public gaze. Clement’s rhetoric strives to make such “feminine” debauchery painfully public.
Dawn LaValle Norman (Wed,) studied this question.