This came about for two very different reasons. Since antiquity, sculpture had depicted men and women in an idealized, beautiful state. Ancient Greek statues featured gods and goddesses with perfect musculature and sleek, smooth skin. It was very difficult to find fault with their form. Almost two millenniums later, the titans of Renaissance art returned to this practice. Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael, and countless others emulated this and built upon it, creating sculpture and paintings that portrayed humans in a highly idyllic form. It was something that the House of Bourbon envied and wanted to replicate in the real world.
However, they chose to take things one step further, more so out of necessity than anything else, for it was an age when bothersome bugs could make themselves at home on a person and be very difficult to get rid of. So bad was it that many took to shaving their heads and dawning powdered wigs as a means of staving them off. This gave the French kings an idea. Why not remove all of the hair from their bodies while at the same time trying to look like the great statues of the past? This way they could become the pinnacle of beauty while at the same time dealing with those pesky lice.
Things began slowly with the king and higher ranking nobility partaking in the practice, setting the trend that many more in high society quickly took up. Eventually grand soirees were held at midnight on the last day of the month in Versailles, culminating in the participants ceremoniously waxing one another. It was a great honor to be the one selected to wax the king. Two weeks before the event, when all of the invitations were sent out, one would come in a golden envelope. The recipient was deemed L'Honourable Homme de la Cire and would be tasked with the duty of de-hairing the king for that month.
It was actually a very stressful position to have bestowed upon one's self, maintaining the fragile balance of delicacy and vigor that the king required, nay demanded, of his waxer. If one was particularly adept at this role, they would receive great favor from the monarch. Most performed admirably, however there was one instance where the waxer did such a poor job that the king became enraged, stripped him of his title, seized his land, and forbade him or his family from cutting their hair, shaving, or waxing. They were referred to as the Shamed Hairy Ones, and were called thus in English, the language of France's eternal enemy, as the king did not wish to sully his beautiful language when referring to such a disgrace.
As the years passed, the event became more and more extravagant. All the while, the lot of the masses grew ever worse. While the nobility was feasting and admiring their hairless forms, the commoners suffered. This all eventually lead to the French Revolution (not just the waxing, though that certainly played a role), as the people rose up against their rulers. To symbolize their united disdain for the nobility, people simply stopped cutting their hair, or shaving so to be the antithesis of their lords. Interestingly, this is where the stereotype that French women don't shave their armpits actually comes from, as they did grow their hair during this time as a bold act of defiance against the bourgeois and their decadent, hairless ways.
In time, the monarchy was overthrown, and France became a republic. The people enjoyed great freedom, and a new age was born where the French realized that they had the power to affect change, there were other forms of leadership besides a king, and one simply should not wax their entire body.
