Shaving Grace, Louise Tondeur

Wed, 22 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Buddhist novices, Thailand.

Over recent weeks, this theme has shown how hair can often be linked to powerful cultural signifiers, many of them conflicting, which influence our perception of ourselves.

Shaving, too, is part of this complex web of meanings. Fluctuating according to culture, circumstance, time and gender, it can signify a multiplicity of things: rebellion, conformity, virginity, promiscuity, madness, chastity, modesty, vanity strength, weakness, shame, sexual difference, stigmatisation, holiness, and profanity.

For women living in western cultures, for example, shaving legs is aligned with beauty, while for men it is aligned with being effeminate or gay. For a woman not to shave her legs can be perceived as a cultural badge of lesbianism. So then doing nothing becomes a political action or an expression of difference.

Bald is beautiful: shaving towards a new aesthetic.
Top: left and right, photographs by Gilberto Chen.
Top: centre 'Skinhead Woman' by Asta
Bottom: Scene from Ten, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 2002.

So-called ‘bikini line’ shaving is a similarly expressive act. Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues contains an episode narrated by a woman whose husband insists that she completely shaves her pubic hair, returning her to a child-like virgin state, for her husband’s enjoyment. It focuses on the discomfort the woman feels in doing this, and the empowerment that comes from her refusal, as she makes an assertive choice about her body and her sexuality. Shaving in this reading signifies a form of patriarchal control.

Katharine Ross cracks up as a Stepford Wife, 1975.

In fact, women’s sexuality is often linked to our sense of the ‘wild’, something to be feared, controlled, tethered and domesticated. In the same way that the ‘wild’ becomes civilised, and woman’s sexuality tamed, so her body hair is neatened and ordered - as an external sign of the ‘civilising’ process.

Left: Goddess Kali has a bad hair day.
Right: Sita, the ideal, well-coiffed Indian woman.

Styling your hair for victory: Soviet and British propaganda posters from WW2.

‘Wild’ and ‘tamed’ can also be read as metaphors for madness and sanity, with proactive or deviant sexual expression or even lack of chastity taken as a symptom of madness or feeblemindedness. (‘Feeblemindedness’ was a term coined by the emerging profession of social workers in the early 20th century, and was particularly applied to women who had children out of marriage.) Again, this can be expressed through hairiness of the body or untamed, unorthodox hair on the head. Shakespeare’s Ophelia is perhaps one of the most famous western examples of this: the description of her death by drowning, her hair loose and strung with wild flowers, is full of sexual innuendo.

Ophelia by Alexandre Cabanel, (1823-1889)
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene vii.

Brahmin has a red swastika painted on his head, in sign of peace

Shaving of the head can also function as a badge of shame, criminality and assumed political allegiance, often with the added implication of sexual licentiousness. For instance, French women collaborators at the end of the Second World War, marched shaven-headed through the streets.

The enforced removal of hair from the head can of course be more than shaming. It can also indicate the erasing or removal of the personality in preparation for death.

By contrast, the same action can be read quite differently in the case of a religious devotee. For a Buddhist, shaving signifies being apart from worldly things (such as sex, vanity and property) and indicates that the subject has chosen a spiritual or monastic path.

Historically, some Christian nuns and monks had a similar tradition. Nuns’ hair was cut short to signify a rejection of vanity and an acceptance of chastity. The monks’ tonsure serves a comparable purpose, likewise setting him apart.

In Sikhism, however, hair is considered sacred. So the removal of hair from any part of the body is forbidden, for both men and for women. Uncut hair is called Kesh and is one of the five holy Ks. For Sikhs this signifies the acceptance of the natural form given by God. Especially for orthodox men who wear turbans, it is a way of marking them out from other people. Holiness, in this theological reading, is linked to separateness, where to be holy is to be set apart for God. Whether shaved or deliberately unshaved, hair is just one of a number of signs that indicate this separation.

Mr Singh, a Sikh, oustide his haberdashery in Brixton Market, London.
Photographed by Flora Roberts.

For example, ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish women customarily have their heads shaved before marriage. This goes back to a traditional idea that they will then be attractive only to their husbands and their chastity will therefore be preserved. However, is it also now usual for married women to wear a wig or head-covering, in preference to shaving their heads. Rather than referring to their sexual practice, this then simply marks them out as members of their faith, performing a similar function to a Jewish man’s kippot, or skullcap.

The kippot, or yarmulke (in Yiddish).

Icon, if I want to. 'Dyke' icon, K.D Lang, and 'super' Cindy Crawford demonstrate that anything boys can do...

In a different context, for example where a woman identifies herself as lesbian, head-shaving can signify a rejection of traditional values – in this case, traditional ‘feminine’ values. (In constructing a typical ‘coming out’ story, a writer is likely to include the moment when the woman first had her hair cut short, if not shaved.) Within this subculture, head-shaving has further meanings: a lesbian with a shaved head might be perceived as a sadomasochist by her peers.

Interestingly, when referring to head hair, hairlessness has become part of a dyke stereotype. But when it comes to body hair, lesbian hairiness is firmly entrenched in the cultural imagination…

A close shave. Yul Brynner meets his match.

In the case of skinheads, head-shaving similarly indicates a rejection of traditional values, although this time it is linked in our cultural imagination to extreme right-wing politics, male aggression and violence, football hooliganism and neo-Nazism. Head-shaving in this instance signifies something quite different to a lesbian-identified woman who shaves her head as an expression of her private sexuality. But cultural identities continually clash. And hair, or the lack of it, is often a focus when challenging stereotypes and defining or redefining identities. Is it possible to be a lesbian skinhead or a dyke with long hair and shaved legs?

SKINS by Gavin Watson
"Just another youth cult", or "a threat to world peace"? Coming soon to Arts & Cultures, Gavin Watson's controversial photo-essay on British skinheads, updated from his book SKINS.

In western culture, shaving products are marketed on the basis of the virility associated with shaving: a razor said to make someone more manly and attractive to beautiful women, or (perversely) a fragrance to make him more sensitive and boyish (and therefore more attractive to beautiful women). Here, shaving is often regarded as a father-to-son rite of passage, something that ‘makes you a man’ – whatever form that takes in marketing-speak.

Untitled#12 (1998), oil on canvas by Wu Meng Chun

Wham, bam, he is a man. George Michael, baby-faced and butch.

Beards are similarly susceptible to multiple meanings and stereotypes. A long white beard is perhaps the most familiar motif in our cultural iconography, denoting the experience that comes with old age, so also implying wisdom. But while a bit of stubble is taken to suggest sexiness, or ‘manliness’, and might be used by a boyish pop star trying to change his image (George Michael did it), unchecked facial hair can equally be used to signify a lazy, ignorant man with no sense of personal hygiene or heterosexual etiquette, especially in mainstream movies.

Never trust a man with a beard. (Who came down your chimney last Christmas?)

Just like a hairstyle, beards can be disguises or masks allowing a man to perform his identity. Shaving a beard can be perceived as an act of sedition. Shaven, he becomes a ‘new’ man. In popular culture, beards perform a powerful transformative function: they can turn someone into a down-and-out, Santa Claus, a prophet, Jesus, Mohammed or even God…

Jesus, Mohammed and God.
The man without a face: in classical Perso-Islamic art, Mohammed's face is never depicted.
Popular opinion agrees however that he was bearded.

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Shaving Grace, Louise Tondeur