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    Hair and politics

    This article by Laurie Penny on women and short hair, which in turn is a response to another article claiming that women with short hair are ‘damaged’, has been making the rounds on the internet (H/T Gillian Russell on Facebook). It makes a number of very important points concerning ideals of femininity, and the kind of policing that women are submitted to, by men and women alike, concerning their appearance.

    Wearing your hair short, or making any other personal life choice that works against the imperative to be as conventionally attractive and appealing to patriarchy as possible, is a political statement. And the threat that if we don’t behave, if we don’t play the game, we will end up alone and unloved is still a strategy of control.

    (There is a lot of serious, interesting scholarship on hair out there (not only restricted to hair that grows in heads), which I am not able to address here – but do go check it out, for example this book).

    I’ve had fairly long hair for most of my life, but when I was 17 and a bit of a capoeira fanatic I had my hair cut really short (I felt all that hair was in the way for my capoeira moves). Reactions were mostly positive (including my boyfriend at the time), but one comment I got was epic. The guard at my high school (!!) deemed himself in the right to comment on my new haircut, in fact to ask a question: “Is this a penitence?” Why else would any woman want to wear her hair so short?

    Many years later, after having my second child, I developed a condition that made me lose patches of hair (all good now: all grown back, and no more hair loss). I was very surprised by my reaction of total panic; I was suddenly made painfully aware of the equation ‘hair = attractiveness’ that Laurie Penny talks about in her piece (which includes the story of her sister who also went through a period of losing hair.) Sadly, I can’t say I am no longer under the grip of this equation, but reading this piece made me reflect once again on the complex relationships between bodies and politics, which are for the most part still somewhat neglected within (analytic) philosophy.

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    9 responses to “Hair and politics”

    1. Sara L. Uckelman Avatar
      Sara L. Uckelman

      Something that I’ve found interesting reading the reactions to this article as it’s circulated amongst my FB friends is that there is a class of women who routinely have short hair that don’t seem to be being mentioned: Moms. Get a group of women of a certain age together, and try to guess on the basis of their haircuts whether or not they have small children. If they have short, sensible haircuts that require little or not maintenance, the odds that they have kids are high. (Though now that I think about it, I don’t know if this is an American thing, or if it is more widespread). Once you start paying attention to it, “Mom-hair” becomes easily identifiable. In fact, it was the discovery that I was pregnant, about a year after I had cut my nearly waste-length hair to chin-length one morning on a whim, that helped me get out of the wishy-washy “Do I keep my hair short/cut it short again or do I grow it out long?” stage that I’d been in: I knew immediately I was going to continue growing it out, because I very much did not want to end up with mom-hair!

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    2. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      No thread on this topic should be without this song, even if it’s not exactly on the point of the OP.
      Anyone who’s had the flu for Christmas can relate.

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    3. Charlotte Witt Avatar
      Charlotte Witt

      I can attest to the normative significance of long hair for women having just lost my hair to chemotherapy. Most women will tell you that hair loss is one of the worst aspects of treatment. (And believe me it has some pretty awful competition.) My hair is now very short, and –although I like it for many reasons–I probably will grow it back out. Or maybe not.

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    4. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      I hope it’s not inappropriate, but can I express my wishes for a speedy recovery here? (Not that it’s relevant to the point in question, but I’m a big fan of your work on Aristotle, on form and matter in particular, but also more generally.)
      I’ve heard the same remark from female friends who went through chemotherapy; it’s prima facie surprising that a symptom which does not cause physical discomfort (unlike many of the other symptoms of chemotherapy) can be one of the worst aspects of the treatment. When I was losing hair, as I reported in the OP, I asked myself: what is so bad about it? It’s not like it was a life-threatening condition or something entailing physical pain, and yet I was terrified.

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    5. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      😀

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    6. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      I suspect there is such a thing as ‘mom-hair’ here in the Netherlands too, but I think it applies mostly to mothers of very young children. Thinking of the moms at the school of my kids, many of them look all ‘glamorous’ already when bringing their kids to school early in the morning, but of course that’s not much to generalize on…

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    7. Curtis Avatar
      Curtis

      There is a famous (as “famous” as one can get in religion/philosophy) manuscript by Obeyesekere on hair among the women of Sri Lanka. While I have only read ABOUT the work, not the work itself, it seems like it’s probably right in line with the ideas expressed above.
      http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo5951080.html

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    8. Berit Brogaard Avatar
      Berit Brogaard

      Once again, this is spot on, Catarina! I used to have long hair. Then I started wearing it in a tight psych knot. Then I cut it to my shoulders. That’s where I am now. People hate it. Why? I don’t get it. They hated the psychologist hairstyle, too. No one ever complained about my long hair. WTF? Why do I have to have long hair? Truth be told, I actually like to have long hair. I feel good about it. It fits my inner psyche (if there is such a thing). I was going to grow it out. But now I am having second thoughts. If everyone wants me to have long hair, I am not sure that I want to any longer. It’s outrageous. When men (e.g., in philosophy) cut their hair short, people are all over them with compliments. “Oh, it’s just so nice.” “Wow, you should have done that ten years ago,” “You look like a real stud now.” When I cut my hair, it’s: “What happened? Did you get into a fight with your hair stylist?” Just another little way that things are unfair for women in philosophy (PS: these were the comments of philosophers.)

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    9. Charlotte Witt Avatar
      Charlotte Witt

      Thanks for your good wishes Catarina; I’m on the mend. And thanks for mentioning my Aristotle scholarship–we write into the void don’t we?

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