@Angela,
People rarely took showers back then but that doesn't mean they didn't prefer cleanliness. The same goes with women shaving. I would bet lots of money a poll from any culture would find men prefer women shaved. It isn't just cultural. If it was there'd be more men who shave body hair. And about straight vs curly hair, by curly I mean African/Oceania curly. That isn't the type of curl straight haired people who curl their hair are trying to get.
You said there is an innate preference for
straight hair. There isn't. Rather it's the opposite if we go by what history teaches us. Nicole Kidman's hair is not West African in texture or type but it is
very curly. That was the style. People follow styles. The same has happened with BMI. The fashion industry and then the film industry have pushed a BMI for women which is very low. In the 50s it was different. Rent "The Devil Wears Prada" if you don't want to read on the subject. Sample sizes for photography and advertising shoots used to be a 6-8 even thirty years ago. Then it went to 4-6. Now they're 2s and 4s and sometimes O. Do you have any idea how tiny that is, especially if the girl has to be over 5'9" tall?
As for body hair, you have only your own preferences as a source, so it's irrelevant. In Middle Eastern countries removal of body hair on women was a custom for centuries; it wasn't the custom of the west. There were as many razors and other methods of hair removal in the west as in the east in centuries past, but they weren't used. It's called different cultural norms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_removal
As was stated above, there are certain givens, in terms of women, mostly having to do with health and fertility such as thick, shiny hair, smooth, glowing skin, a "feminine" figure, perhaps regularity of feature. Societies tinker around the edges after that. I don't understand how the Chinese made a fetish of shrunken, diseased feet on women which left them incapable of walking without assistance, but they apparently did do it, and found them very erotic. There are poems about it.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/73/a3/26/73a326197765fe69ef90b356627d55d4.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JRUxvtPLqA8/VdBWv0kxCsI/AAAAAAAAADI/fGX1zTrhGX4/s1600/aaaddd2.jpg
I have no idea what you mean by the showering reference. It very much depended on the culture how much people bathed. The Romans bathed all the time. In the Middle Ages people rarely bathed. For poor people it probably wasn't possible to bathe often, but royals could have bathed every hour on the hour if they chose, and yet they didn't choose. It was considered unhealthy by some, but still! How could anyone stay "clean" under such conditions? They must have stunk to high heaven.
Some fun trivia:
"
Anne of Cleves
"The Germans had long shocked the rest of Europe by not washing their hands before eating and bathing infrequently. Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves was no different. Before she was presented to Henry, her advisors worked hard to get the stinky German Princess to take a bath." (The bath didn't help; he took one look at her and told his ministers to get him a divorce. She had the last laugh, though.
He chopped off the head of his next Queen and was on the verge of doing the same to the last one when he mercifully died!)
"Elizabeth I
Rumors abound that Elizabeth professed that she bathed once a month, “whether she needed it or not.”
3 But given Elizabeth's keen sense of smell and her access to the sunken bath that her father built, I suspect she bathed far more often.
Peter the Great
Peter traveled the world learning new customs, but no amount of enlightenment could get the czar practicing good hygiene. He found nothing wrong with relieving the call of nature on the glittering palace walls. These were good times to be a germ. Peter did swear by the curative properties of an occasional natural mineral spring bath, but didn't make a habit out of bathing regularly.
Ferdinand and Isabella
Ferdinand and Isabella didn’t help in the quest toward cleanliness. In Spain, the early Christian doctrines taught that bathing was a corrupt practice that could only lead to…nakedness. Cleanliness was next to Ungodliness. After the conquest of Granada, the Moors not only had to give up their religion to survive the Inquisition, they also had to give up bathing. Isabella and Ferdinand ordered the Moorish baths to be destroyed and bathing was strictly forbidden. When Columbus reported back on the daily bathing habits of the Taino people, Isabella was horrified and commanded her new subjects to stop this blasphemous bathing practice at once.
Isabella boasted that she herself had only bathed twice in her life and I am going to take her word for it.
Phillip II and his Daughter Isabella
His daughter Isabella because a national martyr to germs when she vowed in 1601 that she would not change her shift until the siege of Ostend ended. Unfortunately, the siege lasted over three years! Eeeeeuw…. that’s an awfully long time to be wearing the same underwear. After three years, her white shift had turned a lovely shade of brown.
Henry IV
Henry’s first wife, Marguerite de Valois, complained bitterly about Henry’s lack of bathing worsened by his proclivity to eat large amounts of garlic."
http://blog.raucousroyals.com/2008/09/royal-vapors-and-foul-rumors.html
In fact, most Europeans of the 19th century apparently stank. It didn't seem to bother them or affect their intimacy, what with all the families with 10 or more children. The Japanese, among whom bathing is very important, complained about having to be in a room with Europeans to do commercial negotiations.
It's a mistake to take the customs of one place at one time and attempt to draw vast conclusions about what is nature and what is nurture in human beings.