I am currently reading the book In Our Time by Susan Brownmiller. It is a first-person account of the start of the American Women's Liberation Movement.
In the third chapter of the book, Brownmiller describes a scene that took place at the Emmanuel College conference of 1969 (a conference on women's rights). A radical feminist group called Cell 16 performed a Chinese revolutionary drama onstage, during which they cut off their long hair in front of 600 audience members.
The audience had a very strong reaction to this public hair-cutting. Women were crying and screaming for the cutting to stop. Roxanne Dunbar, a member of Cell 16, tried to explain to the crowd that "long hair belongs to men". Later on in the evening, Dunbar and some fellow activists broke into an ABC news anchor's bag and destroyed the video footage of the event, so that no record would remain.
Although this public shearing is mentioned only briefly in Brownmiller's book (which is great so far, by the way) I have been thinking about it ever since. Why did a group of activist, feminist women react so stronly to seeing other women chop off their own hair? What is about long hair that makes it so feminine and powerful?
According to Dunbar, it is heterosexual men's fondness for long hair that makes us value it so highly. Women are taught that long hair makes us look sexier and more feminine, and that men will pay more attention to us if we grow our hair long. This message is constantly reinforced in the media, and in our interpersonal interactions.
So as feminists, should we eschew long hair for short? Does it matter? If a woman wants to grow her hair long, does it matter where that desire comes from, or as feminists should we just support her right to look however she chooses?
The more I think about it, the more there really is to hair. Think about how America reacted to Britney Spears's head-shaving incident, or how the stereotype of a butch lesbian involves a short, spiky haircut. When a woman goes through a major life transition, she often radically changes her hair to match her changing moods.
This is a complicated issue, and I am not surprised that the women in Dunbar's Emmanuel College audience reacted so strongly to seeing women cut their hair. I wonder, do men have anything comparable to women's hair? It's not as if an audience would mind terribly if a man cut his hair short in front of them.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Have you or anyone you know cut your hair as a feminist statement? Would you? Why do you think we care so much about hair?
3 comments:
I cut my hair short in response to a huge amount of sexist comments; I wanted to break free of the idea that I was a sexual object(freshman girls were prime pickings!). After I shaved my hair I knew people who still stuck around liked me for me, since the rest of the school hated me, and most of the guys assumed I was a lesbian.
ultimately I was expelled, because I wasn't "making the school look good".
I assume my outspoken, feminist nature didn't help, on top of the hair issue.
So I go to art school, and it might be said that hair means more here than it does most places. I am, for example, one of only 3 blonde females I have seen on campus, and it has been an issue more than once. Whatever stereotypes you imagine about art school are probably mostly true when it comes to hair. I probably don't need to elaborate.
I wanted to talk about my one experience with public hair-cutting. It was my first year here, and it is the most "art school" thing I have seen at art school. It was a performance piece that was done in a graphic design class (hehe). About a minute in, an attractive Korean girl dressed very 50s walked to a very understated part of the "stage," knelt on a white square of fabric, and proceeded to cut off most of her very long, black hair, albeit into a pretty fashionable bob (impressive without a mirror.) There were audible gasps. You could hear MANY people ask their neighbor, "is that a wig?!" It was so hard to watch, I don't know why. She continued to cut, and another girl came to front/center, squirted an entire bottle of Ketchup into a large bowl, and then rubbed it all over her. This, I remember, got a MUCH bigger reaction. People were squirming and really vocally reacting. This confused me. I COULDN'T TAKE MY EYES OFF THE GIRL CUTTING HER HAIR. I wanted to shout, "Are you all kidding me? That girl is just going to SHOWER later. THAT girl is STILL cutting her hair off!!" I still don't know why it bothered me. She was obviously happy to do it. In recounting it to others, I have suggested that it isn't a feminist issue, but one about time. Long hair usually represents years, or at least several months. It can't be sped up in its growth. However, losing it completely only takes a few minutes. The juxtaposition is jarring. Another reaction that my friend articulated, was that it was watching a personal transformation live, that made her uncomfortable. Surely anyone who has changed their hair dramatically during a time of extreme personal/life change can relate.
PS.Kelsey, what say you about Yoko Ono's, "Cut Piece?" We had to study it from an Art History perspective, but I would love your educated Feminist one.
It seems like female's generally having longer hair than men has been around for a while. I wonder why that is. Like, I wonder if cavewomen generally had longer hair than cavemen.
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