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Authors: Susan Brownmiller
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Lady Godiva as she rode her horse through town to honor her husband’s oath seem
less a “signe of subjection” than a very sexy image, and although it was hardly Saint
Luke’s intention, the unnamed sinner of his Gospel (often confused with Mary Magdalene)
who penitently wiped the feet of Jesus with her hair became a paradigm of sensuality
to Renaissance artists who delighted in painting this Biblical scene.
In Paradise Lost, Milton crystallizes the theme of subjection and feminine sexuality when he describes
the hair of Eve as seen by Satan:
She, as a veil down to the slender waist,
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved,
As the vine curls her tendrils—which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
A woman’s act of unpinning and letting down a cascade of long hair is interpreted
as a highly erotic gesture, a release of inhibiting restraints, a sign of sexual readiness
which may be an enticement or a snare, a frightening danger or, in some cases, a possible
salvation. According to psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, the prince who called to Rapunzel
to let down her hair was pleading for rescue from an impotent condition. The erotic
appeal of a full mass of hair was recognized in the extreme by the denial of a natural
head of hair to the Catholic nun and the orthodox Jewish wife, an attempt to desexualize
them in the eyes of strangers. After the liberation of France in 1944, the common
form of retribution inflicted upon a woman accused of consorting with Germans was
to forcibly shave her head and parade her in shame through the village, a far cry
from the ride of Godiva.
In addition to the erotic value attached to sheer length,elaborately arranged coiffures requiring the work, and often the hair, of others were
regarded historically as imposing signs of aristocratic grandeur. Marie Antoinette
and Lady Pompadour are the enduring examples, but the wigs of British barristers still
derive from this conception of the noble head. Under the laws of supply and demand,
impoverished women were encouraged to view their own hair as peasant women in Europe
and Asia were expected, as wet nurses, to view the milk from their breasts. Hair and
milk were exploitable commodities that could serve the upper classes, an exploitation
less stigmatized (and less financially rewarding) than the selling of sex. Liane de
Pougy, the great courtesan of France during the Belle Epoque and herself of middle-class
origins, remarked with some surprise in her diary that daughters of the poor quite
often had glorious heads of hair. Of sociological note, the elaborate coif lost its
usefulness as a status symbol in America during the 1950s when the beehive hairdo
became identified with tackiness and the lower classes.
We remember the Roaring Twenties as a time when women demonstrated their newfound
emancipation by bobbing their hair, though the trend actually began during the first
World War. The flapper experience has been trivialized as just so many flat-bosomed,
short-skirted, short-haired debs drinking gin and dancing on tables, but the decision
to bob, like the decision to go without a corset, was for many women an anguished
act of rebellion.
Two classic American short stories published less than fifteen years apart illustrate
the deep sense of loss from a romantic male perspective when a woman cuts off her
hair. In O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” (1906) Jim and Delia sacrifice their proudest
treasures to buy Christmas gifts for each other. Jim sells a gold watch that belonged
to his father and grandfather to purchase a set of jeweled tortoise-shell combs for
Delia, whose hair ripples and shines “like a cascade of brown waters.” But Delia has
sold her brown cascade to buy a watch fob for Jim.
less a “signe of subjection” than a very sexy image, and although it was hardly Saint
Luke’s intention, the unnamed sinner of his Gospel (often confused with Mary Magdalene)
who penitently wiped the feet of Jesus with her hair became a paradigm of sensuality
to Renaissance artists who delighted in painting this Biblical scene.
In Paradise Lost, Milton crystallizes the theme of subjection and feminine sexuality when he describes
the hair of Eve as seen by Satan:
She, as a veil down to the slender waist,
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved,
As the vine curls her tendrils—which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
A woman’s act of unpinning and letting down a cascade of long hair is interpreted
as a highly erotic gesture, a release of inhibiting restraints, a sign of sexual readiness
which may be an enticement or a snare, a frightening danger or, in some cases, a possible
salvation. According to psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, the prince who called to Rapunzel
to let down her hair was pleading for rescue from an impotent condition. The erotic
appeal of a full mass of hair was recognized in the extreme by the denial of a natural
head of hair to the Catholic nun and the orthodox Jewish wife, an attempt to desexualize
them in the eyes of strangers. After the liberation of France in 1944, the common
form of retribution inflicted upon a woman accused of consorting with Germans was
to forcibly shave her head and parade her in shame through the village, a far cry
from the ride of Godiva.
In addition to the erotic value attached to sheer length,elaborately arranged coiffures requiring the work, and often the hair, of others were
regarded historically as imposing signs of aristocratic grandeur. Marie Antoinette
and Lady Pompadour are the enduring examples, but the wigs of British barristers still
derive from this conception of the noble head. Under the laws of supply and demand,
impoverished women were encouraged to view their own hair as peasant women in Europe
and Asia were expected, as wet nurses, to view the milk from their breasts. Hair and
milk were exploitable commodities that could serve the upper classes, an exploitation
less stigmatized (and less financially rewarding) than the selling of sex. Liane de
Pougy, the great courtesan of France during the Belle Epoque and herself of middle-class
origins, remarked with some surprise in her diary that daughters of the poor quite
often had glorious heads of hair. Of sociological note, the elaborate coif lost its
usefulness as a status symbol in America during the 1950s when the beehive hairdo
became identified with tackiness and the lower classes.
We remember the Roaring Twenties as a time when women demonstrated their newfound
emancipation by bobbing their hair, though the trend actually began during the first
World War. The flapper experience has been trivialized as just so many flat-bosomed,
short-skirted, short-haired debs drinking gin and dancing on tables, but the decision
to bob, like the decision to go without a corset, was for many women an anguished
act of rebellion.
Two classic American short stories published less than fifteen years apart illustrate
the deep sense of loss from a romantic male perspective when a woman cuts off her
hair. In O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” (1906) Jim and Delia sacrifice their proudest
treasures to buy Christmas gifts for each other. Jim sells a gold watch that belonged
to his father and grandfather to purchase a set of jeweled tortoise-shell combs for
Delia, whose hair ripples and shines “like a cascade of brown waters.” But Delia has
sold her brown cascade to buy a watch fob for Jim.
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