I checked several sources, and at Today I Found Out, I discovered the following quote:

When did our modern-day obsession with silky-smooth armpits and legs first take hold? As far as armpits are concerned, we can pinpoint it almost to the day. In May of 1915, the upscale magazine Harper’s Bazaar ran an ad featuring a young model in a sleeveless, slip-like dress posing with both arms over her head.

You may be thinking, “So what?” Well, up until that time, fashion – and propriety – dictated that women were covered to the wrist and to the ankle. A dress that exposed the underarms was nothing short of revolutionary. In fact, just the utterance of the word “underarm” out loud was enough to call for the smelling salts mere weeks earlier. Now, it was becoming perfectly acceptable. It also meant since underarms were body parts that had always been covered, whether or not they needed shaving had been a moot point and little discussed. If it didn’t show, why bother? And yet, here was an ad cajoling women that it was necessary to remove “objectionable” hair. To think just days earlier women had no idea such a problem even existed!

There were several marketing strategies employed to lure women into jumping on the shaving bandwagon, most of which appealed to the timeless desire to be trendy. The obsession worked its way down to the middle class slowly but surely, as sleeveless and sheer dresses became popular among that demographic. Women’s razors and depilatories were finally being offered for sale in the Sears Roebuck catalog in 1922. This was the same year they started to sell – you guessed it – sleeveless and sheer dresses.

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