There *are* stories that deal with these sorts of realities that are not to be talked of in polite society. THE RED TENT by Anita Diamant comes to mind. So does Anne Rice's MEMNOCH THE DEVIL and Chuck Palahniuk's short story "Guts."
I recently re-watched Peter Jackson's THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and I applaud Jackson for not sanitizing his movies ala the 1950s. Aragorn, the hobbits, and the rest of the company trek through the woods or fight battles for most of the trilogy. Their hair is lank and greasy, their skin and clothes filthy with dirt and sweat. You can practically smell the body odor and bad breath. And it's totoally realistic. Living in a pre-technological society is not pretty nor easy. Taking a bath or conducting personal hygiene is a luxury, not a right.
But in many books/movies set in a time before indoor plumbing, the characters are always clean, their clothes bright and crisp, their hair full of luster and body, the women's legs and armpits shorn of hair as if they had stepped out of a time machine from the present into the past.
But I like to see the stark nitty gritty in my entertainment. Because otherwise, it's a big fat lie. People sweat, menstruate, and smell bad if they don't bathe. Their hair gets greasy if they don't wash it. They have messy sex. They urinate and defecate. And they don't wake up in full make-up with fresh breath (unless they use magic). That's what I call fantasy and if it's your cup of tea, then great. But I like to know how people live, even if those people are fictional. Because finding the truth in fiction is what it's all about. Otherwise, it's just a sanitized version that presents a false assumption. And I say no thank you to that.