Through various works and artists who have worked with her, we can understand the main meanings given to it and understand what control over one’s own hair means for female identities.
Cutting or growing hair, dyeing or showing gray hair, showing off their hair or covering it up modestly are everyday actions by which millions of women claim their identity, try to belong, stand up for their rights or follow rules in which they too often have had no voice or voice.
This could be a trivial topic were it not for the 21st century Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, was arrested last September by the vice squad in Tehran, accused of violating the law requiring women to cover their hair. Apparently she wasn’t wearing her veil properly. A few days later, the news of his death shocked the world.
Some Iranian women started showing and cutting their hair in protest, which some also associate with ancient traditions of mourning. Since then, famous and also anonymous women, from different countries and cultures, have shared images and videos cutting their hair to show their support.
The culture has countless references in which hair is related to strength, power, punishment or even intelligence: starting with Samson or Medusa to the “dumb blondes” of the cinema. As for this last cliché, an academic study showed that while it’s not true that blond hair implies less intelligence, very few blond people hold positions of leadership in the Fortune 500. They analyzed it by crossing hair color and its stereotypes with economic problems with numerical data and labor.
Currently, images and videos are circulating on social networks of women claiming all sorts of causes with haircuts on their heads while growing or dyeing their armpits. Among them are those in which some women shave their heads as a gesture of sisterhood with relatives and friends with cancer, usually touching. Some are going viral, such as the case of Gerdi McKenna, whose family and friends also donated their hair and their gesture went viral on networks.
Some groups associated with certain beliefs try to strictly control women’s hair. In some cases it is forced or recommended to shave it when getting married, cover it with scarves, hats or wigs in the name of “modesty”. Some women accept it voluntarily, but for many others it is a problem.
Series like Unorthodox make these practices visible, in this case in the Hasidic Judaism of the Satmar community. Other artists reflect in their works the passive or silent rebellion of many women who in these cases use flashy fabrics and accessories, or very indecent blond wigs. This was the case of Iranian Shirin Aliabadi in works like Miss Hybrid (2008).
Hair historian Rachel Gibson recalls that hair has become a political means of expression. A clear example is the Afro style, linked to the justification of one’s own beauty and the struggle for civil rights. For Gibson, hair in this case has been a form of protest since the dawn of slavery, when it was imposed how to wear hair to anonymize people by erasing their culture and basic rights.
Cultural identities of African descent and its diaspora attach great importance to hair, which is considered art and shines in songs such as “Don’t touch my hair” or “I’m not my hair”. How important is her? It seems that it is. Mena Fombo, with the campaign «No. You can’t touch my hair!” helps to understand why something as seemingly harmless as touching a stranger’s hair can cause deep discomfort and be a sign of racism.
The image of a woman with shaved hair is usually associated with illness or punishment. It’s unusual and usually shocking. This is reflected in the backlash suffered by actresses and singers who have had their heads shaved.
Most did it because of script requirements and some confess it was “liberating”. However, for a minority like Sinead O’Connor or Adwoa Aboah, it has also been a way of confronting stereotypes and commercial pressures for feminine beauty ideals. Ideals confronted by Frida Kahlo in her Self-Portrait with Short Hair (1940) after her divorce from Diego Ribera.
Not every claim involves shaving the head. In my own work Reliquary: Family Manes I have tried to capture her various aesthetic, political and religious connections for the women in my family.
In Wigs (1994), Lorna Simpson examines the way people are often identified, judged and classified based on their hair, especially African Americans. María Magdalena Campos-Pons uses long hair as an element of self-recognition and reconnection with her Yoruba roots in works such as De las dosaguas (2007).
Among Middle Eastern women artists, the issue of female hair control is often symbolized by the hijab and chador, as in the case of the aforementioned Shirin Aliabadi.
Finally, it is interesting to mention The Hijab Series: Mother, Daughter & Doll, by Yemeni artist Boushra Yahya Almutawakel, which deals with the progressive invisibility and social disappearance of women in her culture.
A work as powerful as it is devastating. Behind it, the latest work by a controversial artist, AleXsandro Palombo, depicting Marge Simpson cutting her peculiar blue hair in a graffiti in front of the Iranian consulate in Milan to show her support for Mahsa Amini and the rest of the women of her country. The graffiti disappeared the next day. Palombo painted it again, but with a more provocative and aggressive expression and gesture. A treatment of the subject that differs from that of the women authors analysed, who are usually powerful but generally more subtle in their forms when they use their hair to claim political, identity issues or their most fundamental rights, as it can show without fear of being killed by it.
This article was published in ‘The conversation’.
Source: La Verdad
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