Hair Symbolism: What does your hair say about you? (Special Topic 1)

Zappa being Zappa

What does your hair say about you?

What do you hope your hair says about you? I guess I want my hair to say, "I don't really care about hair, I'm above all that". In other words, I pretend that I don't care! But I would be embarrassed if an uptown barber gave me a fancy haircut for free, because it would undermine my carefully cultivated "I-don't-care" image.  So I use hair as a symbol, a vehicle to convey meaning. Again, what does your hair say about you? If you are a woman with long hair, should you tie it up? If you are a guy, how long do you let it grow? If you are a Jewish woman, should you wear a wig. If you are Afro-American, should you rock an afro?

New Directions in Hair Research

In the 2000s, the question of African-American hair in the United States became a focus of anthropological research. The Afro-American hair debate is something I am not fully across, but several observations seem to be central to it: 

Ice Cube in pre-gangsta days with beautiful jheri curls.

1. African-Americans were subjected to slavery. 
2. African–Americans still experience racism and disadvantage. 
3. Many African-Americans share a sense of kinship based on race (think of “brothers from different mothers”). If you are African-American, you might consider other “black” women as your sisters. 
4.  In many African-American cultures, hair care is crucial. For instance, if a child has 'bad' hair other people will assume the child is neglected. In other words, the state of your hair is believed to reflect your overall health.  For another example, see the jokes Eddie Murphy makes about a fictional hair curling product ("Soul Glo" and 'jheri curls') in his movie "Coming to America".
5. Hair in this context also has implications of politics and identity. For example, when Black Panthers wore 'afro' haircuts with pride; it was a statement of their radical politics and pride in their African identity. 
   
6.  African-American hair requires different treatment and care compare to other types of hair.

In her "White Parents, Black Care", Mariner discusses how haircreates problems for White parents who adopt African-looking children. Mariner's argument seems to go like this: For many Whites, the state of a child's hair is not a big issue. For African-Americans hair symbolizes a child's wellbeing--poorly kept hair means a poorly kept child. When a White mother takes her Black adopted child to the grocery store, Black people judge the White mother. It's not easy for the White mother to care for the Black child's hair, because Black hair requires a special set of skills. Mariner ties this hair into general questions of race, kinship, history, and racism. She also ties the question of White adoption of Black children  into a specific line of anthropological inquiry into the symbolism of Black hair:

Scholars are certainly aware of the importance of hair in transracial adoption, exploring interracial adoptive couples’ experiences of hair-care classes aimed at white adopters (Dalmadge 2006, 221), the use of hair as an idiom to discuss the social constructedness of race among adoptees (Patton 2000, 80), the way hair serves as both metaphor and method for “weaving” a Black child into a white family (Rothman 2005), and hair’s potential for connecting adoptive families to African American communities (Seligmann 2013, 160– 62). However, with the exception of Rothman (2005), hair has not received more than fleeting attention in most scholarly accounts of transracial adoption, despite its immense importance for understanding American Blackness.

Ciara with cornrows. Not an easy hairsytle for white parents to give to their black adopted children 

Mariner and these scholars have opened a new and fascinating direction in research on hair. Most of the earlier anthropological writing contributed to a great debate.

Debates in Anthropology

Before this issue of African American hair emerged, the symbolism of hair was debated. Periodically, a debate breaks out in anthropology. Sometimes everybody is civil and all ill-feelings are carefully subdued; Redfield vs Oscar Lewis was rather tame. Fortunately, for those who like a good fight, things often get very nasty, very quickly. Freeman vs Mead; Chagnon vs everyone; showed this. Their spitefulness added entertainment and luster to already fascinating differences of opinion.

The Great Hair Debate

This brings us to the Great Hair Debate. No, not a debate about what hair looks great on me. But rather anthropologists debating about the significance of hair. One such debate--mostly subdued regrettably--relates to the symbolic significance of hair. Hair might seem like a random topic around which to form a debate. However, it turns out to be surprisingly fruitful and rich. There are many possible reasons for this including:

1990s Glamor boy,
David Beckham

• we all have hair.
• it seems to be more maleable, alterable etc. than, for example, noses or legs (I cant easily tie my nose up, or put it in piggy tails).
• it constantly grows

Hair cutting often features in rites-of-passage (rituals which transform your status), in particular, in initiations. Consider, for example, the first haircut of a newborn where I do fieldwork, on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. This helps initiate them into the community.

Different Theories

For an overview of different theories of hair symbolism, please see my presentation:

Please feel free to use my slides. Below are some of the authors I cover in the presentation.

Frazer: hair is magically connected with the person / safe place for keeping soul

For Frazer, hair is a symbol of the person by being part of the person. We make a magical connection between the two:

For the savage believes that the sympathetic connexion which exists between himself and every part of his body continues to exist even after the physical connexion has been broken

 This is what Frazer called the contagious (not homeopathic) type of sympathetic magic. Read Golden Bough, Chapters 21, Sections 6, 7, & 8.

Also, using Frazer we can argue that in many cultures there is a belief that the life force or the soul resides in the hair:

the idea that the soul may be deposited for a longer or shorter time in some place of security outside the body, or...in the hair, is found in the popular tales of many races. 

Frazer calls this "the external soul in inanimate things".

Berg: Hair unconscious expression of the phallus

In The Unconscious Significance of Hair, Berg argues that hair unconsciously symbolizes a penis. Cutting your hair is associated with sexual restraint; think of monks, nuns, widows in India shave their head (or so my student Durandara tells me). By contrast growing hair is all about sexual freedom: think hippy, biker, 'cock rock' heavy metal bands. Berg says this is because we unconsciously equate our hair with a penis:

We are repeating the unsolved struggle between instinct drives...and the castrating efforts of the repressing forces, at the instigation...of the superego. The whole conflict has been displaced upwards to the socially visible hair of the head and the face.

Matted hair, dreadlocks, is a symbol, for my devious unconscious (in particular, the 'id' the seat of desire to love and kill), of the penis. Cutting hair is a symbol (for my saintly unconscious superego) of castration.



This is a widely discredited book. Could we say that Berg's approach is Freudian? Like Freud, Berg asserts that there is an unconscious mind which expresses itself through symbols. The unconscious mind gives the symbols meanings the conscious mind is unaware of. But Freud was opposed to this general or even universal view of symbols. For Freud, each person's unconscious mind creates symbols in its own way. I think Freud was far more subtle and adaptable in his thinking than Berg. And as Freud never asserted Berg's argument, I'm not sure if it's fair to say Berg represent a solid representation of Freud's views. Rather, my feeling is that his representation of Freud's views is shonky.

Leach: Hair is what you want people to think you are feeling, not what you are actually feeling 

Leach tries to establish the significance of hair (or any other symbol) in anthropology is opposed to psychology.

If a monk shaves his hair, he is demonstrating and showing to others that he has faith, regardless of his actual feelings. He might actually desire women and act on that desire. So hair is about public significance, not unconscious (private) significance. Leach argues that hair might have unconscious or private significance; however, this is not for anthropologists to worry about.


Put another way, Leach wouldn't think that a monk with shaved hair is deprived of sex. Leach thinks that the monk is trying to show the world he is celibate; but the monk may in fact be the village stud, with a long history of saucy and sordid sexual encounters! For Leach, the  monk is consciously trying to send a message. It might be the exact opposite of how he maintains his private of personal life. 


Leach agrees with Berg that hair in the West hair might have an unconscious significance to individuals; it might mean the penis. In might thus be that when Westerners trim their hair they are expressing castration anxieties. But Berg's (matted hair is a neglected penis) is ethnocentric. It could would only apply to a neurotic European pseudo-ascetic who has matted locks of hair. His hair is could be seen as a symptom of psychological malady. But, Leach insists, this would not work in India, where hair has a conscious, overt, manifest meaning; it is explicitly associated with a penis. In India, Berg's theory cannot work. 

In summary, Leach argues that (public) symbols are about expressing what you SHOULD feel. Private symbols may relate what you ACTUALLY of unconsciously feel, but what an individual feels should not be the concern of anthropologists.

For more detail read this section from the original Leach; for a summary, you might also like to look at my blog on Leach. 

Gluckman

Gluckman, in "Witchcraft and Gossip", makes a similar point; namely, we anthropologists should not confuse what Gluckman calls the "psychical" (our true emotions and feelings) with the "psychological" (actions and stated feelings).

Obeyeskere: Hair has both private and public meaning of hair (& and can be a rejection of phallus)

For Obeyesekere, hair can have both private and public meaning. If I cut my hair when I found out my brother has cancer, and refuse to cut it again at least until he's cured, then it is probably a personal meaning (no one else knows about it unless I tell them). If I cut my hair because I become a Buddhist monk, then it also has a public meaning. 

Obeysekere discusses female ascetics who grow what we would call dreadlocks. They call their dreadlocks "penises". So it's definitely not an unconscious meaning; it's very conscious. But, Obeyesekere says, said that when female ascetics cut their hair then it is public expression of devotion to a goddess; a private expression of the rejection of her husband.

Hallpike: Hair expresses discipline & authority

Hallpike moves away from the private-public meaning debate and instead considers hair in a more strongly social context. For Hallpike, long hair symbolizes freedom from constraints of society (think of hippies, bikers and hermits) cutting hair symbolizes submitting to rules and authority (think of pilgrims at Mecca, soldiers, monks, and initiates):

 "long hair symbolizes being outside of society and... the cutting of hair  symbolizes re-entering society, or living under a particular disciplinary regime within society" (262)

For instance, shaving the hair of a new prisoner, army conscript, or monks and nuns symbolises their entry into a world of discipline and submission to authority.

Mageo: Hair expresses active sexuality

Mageo argues that in Samoa hair expressed active sexuality. This Word file contains a selection from Mageo, JM 1994 'Hairdos and Don'ts: Hair Symbolism and Sexual History in Samoa', Man, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 407-432v. If it's hard to read just go to the original at pp 408, 410-411

Douglas: cut hair is not whole/holy

Using Douglas we can also develop a theory of hair. Nails and hair when attached to the body are fine but when cut are polluting. Douglas also relies on the idea that the hair is a part of the self. Holiness comes from wholeness. Cut hair is is filthy.

Synott: hair belongs to different zones

In passing, only on pages 104, 123-124, Synott's book The Body Social provides a radically different approach. Synott suggests we need to look further than just at head hair and whether it's cut. We need to look at the different hair zones (head, face, and body) and different ways altering hair (cutting, styling, coloring, and adding). From these different types of deviation and zones, you can use hair to express identity. If you can't access this book, you might look at my summary.

Application: Samson & Delilah

OK now I want you to try to apply the different theories of hair (and from the unit) to the Bible story of Samson & Delilah (as told in Judges 16 NIV). Delilah succeeds in getting Samson to admit the secret of his strength lies in his long hair. We learn that Samson:

he fell in love with a woman... whose name was Delilah. The rulers of the Philistines went to her and said, “See if you can lure him into showing you the secret of his great

strength and how we can overpower him so we may tie him up and subdue him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred shekels of silver.” So Delilah said to Samson, “Tell me the secret of your great strength and how you can be tied up and subdued.. With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was sick to death of it. So he told her everything. “No razor has ever been used on my head,” he said, “because I have been a Nazirite dedicated to God from my mother’s womb. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man"... After putting him to sleep on her lap, she called for someone to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him. And his strength left him. Then she called, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!”... Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding grain in the prison. But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved. Now the rulers of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to celebrate, saying, “Our god has delivered Samson, our enemy, into our hands.” When the people saw him, they praised their god, saying,“Our god has delivered our enemy into our hands,the one who laid waste our land and multiplied our slain.” While they were in high spirits, they shouted, “Bring out Samson to entertain us.” So they called Samson out of the prison, and he performed for them. When they stood him among the pillars, Samson said to the servant who held his hand, “Put me where I can feel the pillars that support the temple, so that I may lean against them.” Now the temple was crowded with

men and women; all the rulers of the Philistines were there, and on the roof were about three thousand men and women watching Samson perform. Then Samson prayed to the Lord, “Sovereign Lord, remember me. Please, God, strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other,  Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived.

Medusa

Another story I want you to analyze comes from the Greek myth of Perseus and Andromeda. I've edited a version I found in the Ancient History Encyclopedia:

 Perseus was the son of Danae and Zeus. It was foretold to Perseus's grandfather, Acrisius, that he would be killed by his grandchild. Acrisius hurled his daughter (Danae) and grandson (Perseus) in a wooden chest into the sea. The mother and son were rescued by Dictys. Dictys raised Perseus to manhood. However, Dictys' brother Polydectes fell in love with Perseus' mother and wished to marry her.  But Perseus was protective of his mother. Polydectes decided to trick Perseus; he held a large banquet and asked that his guests bring horses for their gifts. But Perseus did not have a horse to give, so he offered any gift the king would name. Polydectes seized his opportunity to disgrace and even get rid of Perseus. Polydectes asked for the head of the only mortal Gorgon: Medusa. Medusa was a formidable foe, since her hideous appearance was able to render any onlooker into stone. Most authors assert that Perseus was able to behead Medusa with a reflective bronze shield.

 ... In later myths (mainly in Ovid) Medusa was the only Gorgon to possess snake locks, because they were a punishment from Athena. Accordingly, Ovid relates that the once beautiful mortal was punished by Athena with a hideous appearance and loathsome snakes for hair for having been raped in Athena's temple by Poseidon. Perseus, with the aid of divine gifts, found the Gorgons' cave and slayed Medusa by beheading her. 

 Application 

Which theories would you use to understand Samson & Delilah? Which theories for Medusa?

Manscaping

Another phenomenon that emerged in the 2010s or earlier was 'manscaping'. This is a joking term that refers to men shaving body hair--under the arms, on the arms, on the back, the legs and, of course, around the pubic region! This advertisement contains some intriguing symbolism and humour to address an issue that seems uncomfortable:

At the same time head hair and facial hair seems to have got longer. We could analyse this using Synott, but what do you think it says about cultural change? 

Hair extension

If you're interested, you might like to extend your study of hair by looking at these sources:

     Boroughs, M, Cafri, G & Thompson, JK 2005, ‘Male body depilation: Prevalence and associated features of body hair removal’, Sex Roles, vol. 52, no’s. 9-10, pp. 637-644.

     Delaney C, 1994, ‘Untangling the meaning of hair in Turkish society’, Anthropological Quarterly, vol.67, no.4, pp. 159-172
     Firth, Raymond. "Hair as Private Asset and Public Symbol." In Symbols. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973, pp. 262-298.

     Hershman, P 1974, ‘Hair, Sex and Dirt’, Man, New Series, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 274-298
     Hiltebeitel, Alf & Miller, Barbara D., 1998, Hair : its power and meaning in Asian cultures, State University of New York Press, Albany.

     Horseman 1974 "Hair, sex and dirt" Man, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Jun., 1974), pp. 274-298

      Strathern A, 1989,  ‘Flute, birds, and hair in the Hagen’, Anthropos institute, Vol. 84, No. 1/3   

      Anthony Synnott, "Shame and Glory: A Sociology of Hair" The British Journal of Sociology Vol. 38, No. 3 (Sep., 1987), pp. 381-413

     Terry, G & Braun, V 2016, ‘“I think gorilla-like back effusions of hair are rather a turn-off”: ‘Excessive hair’ and male body hair (removal) discourse’, Body Image, vol. 17, pp. 14-24.

Psychoanalytical Antrhropology

The hair topic in Anthropology was focused on psychology/psychoanalysis. For more on psychological anthropology, see To see a psychoanalytical approach to the image of the witch, see my blog on cannibal mother.