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Authors: Susan Brownmiller
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growth, so it is not surprising that
both sexes in Japan and China treasured long hair until Western influence established
a new concept of masculine appearance. It may be recalled from the lessons of American
history how the pigtail on the Chinese railroad worker became an object of racist
scorn.
Belief in the intrinsic femininity of long hair took centuries to establish even in
the West, for an older tradition identified long hair with physical strength, holiness
and other masculine values. Luxuriant tresses are not significantly associated with
feminine beauty in the Old Testament, but references to long hair as a sign of beauty
and strength in men abound. Samson’s uncut hair was the secret source of his fabled
power, as the wicked Delilah discovered. The beautiful Absalom had long, heavy hair
but it got entangled in an oak tree, where King David’s soldiers finished him off.
Etruscan warriors prided themselves on their noble tresses and the soldiers of Sparta
spent hours combing and preening their manes before they went into battle. But Caesar’s
legionnaires who set out to conquer longhaired Gaul were close-cropped and clean-shaven,
and the apostle Paul, who lived under Roman rule, made the grand mistake of assuming
that the customs of Roman warfare were a natural rule of God. Christianity owes to
Saint Paul the erroneous belief that the length of male and female hair is a gender
characteristic.
It was Paul who told the Corinthians that a woman’s long hair is “a glory to her,”
but the saint did not mean his words as a compliment to feminine beauty. He was laying
down the creed that Christian men should offer up prayer with their heads uncovered
because they were created as the image and glory of God, but women should cover their
heads in church because they were created as the glory of man. “Judge in yourselves,”
he wrote in his epistle, “Is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered? Does
not even nature itself teach you that if a man have long hair it is a shame unto him?
But if a woman have long hair it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for
a covering.”
Paul’s thoughts about hair come after his famous creed that “the head of every man
is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man.” “It follows,” wrote Saint Chrysostom,
“that being covered is a mark of subjection and authority. For it induces her to look
down and be ashamed and preserve entire her proper virtue.”
Puritan moralists in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England hammered away at this
theme. The feminine woman, the virtuous woman, the woman who knew her place, was the
female who wore her hair long, neatly arranged, with a concealing cap on her head.
A wife’s long hair, railed the pamphleteer Philip Stubbes, was her God-given “signe
of subjection” before her husband and master, “as the Apostle proveth.” Pamphleteer
William Prynne also called up the apostle’s proof. Women’s long hair, he echoed, was
something that “God and nature have given them for a covering, a token of subjection,
and a natural badge to distinguish them from men.” Denouncing the worldly fashions
of his day—“our shorn English viragoes”—Prynne blasted off, “A woman with cut hair
is a filthy spectacle and much like a monster.”
So the male moralists protested, but always with the understanding that although a
woman’s long hair might be sacred it was also profane. Since it was given her by God
to cover her nakedness, it was also a distressing symbol of her sexual nature. Out
of control—unpinned, disheveled or free of a concealing cap—it was invested with dangerous
powers. In myth the beautiful Lorelei, who sang while she combed her long blonde hair,lured sailors to wreck their boats on treacherous rocks. Sight of Medusa’s hair of
living snakes turned men into stone. The long, loose tresses that covered the nakedness
of
both sexes in Japan and China treasured long hair until Western influence established
a new concept of masculine appearance. It may be recalled from the lessons of American
history how the pigtail on the Chinese railroad worker became an object of racist
scorn.
Belief in the intrinsic femininity of long hair took centuries to establish even in
the West, for an older tradition identified long hair with physical strength, holiness
and other masculine values. Luxuriant tresses are not significantly associated with
feminine beauty in the Old Testament, but references to long hair as a sign of beauty
and strength in men abound. Samson’s uncut hair was the secret source of his fabled
power, as the wicked Delilah discovered. The beautiful Absalom had long, heavy hair
but it got entangled in an oak tree, where King David’s soldiers finished him off.
Etruscan warriors prided themselves on their noble tresses and the soldiers of Sparta
spent hours combing and preening their manes before they went into battle. But Caesar’s
legionnaires who set out to conquer longhaired Gaul were close-cropped and clean-shaven,
and the apostle Paul, who lived under Roman rule, made the grand mistake of assuming
that the customs of Roman warfare were a natural rule of God. Christianity owes to
Saint Paul the erroneous belief that the length of male and female hair is a gender
characteristic.
It was Paul who told the Corinthians that a woman’s long hair is “a glory to her,”
but the saint did not mean his words as a compliment to feminine beauty. He was laying
down the creed that Christian men should offer up prayer with their heads uncovered
because they were created as the image and glory of God, but women should cover their
heads in church because they were created as the glory of man. “Judge in yourselves,”
he wrote in his epistle, “Is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered? Does
not even nature itself teach you that if a man have long hair it is a shame unto him?
But if a woman have long hair it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for
a covering.”
Paul’s thoughts about hair come after his famous creed that “the head of every man
is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man.” “It follows,” wrote Saint Chrysostom,
“that being covered is a mark of subjection and authority. For it induces her to look
down and be ashamed and preserve entire her proper virtue.”
Puritan moralists in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England hammered away at this
theme. The feminine woman, the virtuous woman, the woman who knew her place, was the
female who wore her hair long, neatly arranged, with a concealing cap on her head.
A wife’s long hair, railed the pamphleteer Philip Stubbes, was her God-given “signe
of subjection” before her husband and master, “as the Apostle proveth.” Pamphleteer
William Prynne also called up the apostle’s proof. Women’s long hair, he echoed, was
something that “God and nature have given them for a covering, a token of subjection,
and a natural badge to distinguish them from men.” Denouncing the worldly fashions
of his day—“our shorn English viragoes”—Prynne blasted off, “A woman with cut hair
is a filthy spectacle and much like a monster.”
So the male moralists protested, but always with the understanding that although a
woman’s long hair might be sacred it was also profane. Since it was given her by God
to cover her nakedness, it was also a distressing symbol of her sexual nature. Out
of control—unpinned, disheveled or free of a concealing cap—it was invested with dangerous
powers. In myth the beautiful Lorelei, who sang while she combed her long blonde hair,lured sailors to wreck their boats on treacherous rocks. Sight of Medusa’s hair of
living snakes turned men into stone. The long, loose tresses that covered the nakedness
of
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