This week in history: Ann Landers gets hairy

As reported in the Chicago Daily News, sister publication of the Chicago Sun-Times:

For 47 years, Chicagoans read Ann Landers’ advice column over breakfast. Landers, the pen name of Esther “Eppie” Lederer, was known for her wit and sage advice. She died June 22, 2002.

The Chicago Daily News published her columns intermittently. In a Feb. 18, 1977 column, Landers doled out advice in two hairy situations.

In one letter, Landers received an update on a waitress who was fired because she refused to shave her legs. The columnists’ original advice was simple: have the men and women serving food wear opaque tights.

“The hairy-legged woman is going back to work Monday at her old salary, with the understanding that she will wear opaque stockings,” the update read.

In the second letter, Landers soothed a woman who loved her husband’s hairy body and proclaimed that “any woman who would ask her husband to shave his body because hair turns her off ought to have her head examined.”

“Enjoy it, honey,” Landers wrote. “Hair today, gone tomorrow.”