THAT hair is an element of female seduction, but also of feminist rebellion. A symbol of ethnic pride, but also of religious dogmas. Yes, it’s not just about the hair, as a recently published essay says: scattered in the air. Cultural history of hair
“Do you know you’re going to lose that beautiful hair?” nurse says to Elena before starting chemotherapy at a day hospital in Rome. Wigs are waiting for her at home, because when she has to temporarily say goodbye to her long blond hair with bangs, “my hallmark, my obsession, once it was cut too short, and I cried for a whole month.” There is nothing strange about realizing the importance of something when you start to miss it.
The book tells about the cultural history of hair
In the case of Elena Martelli, the author of the essay scattered in the air. Cultural history of hair (Assayer), those little hairs that, after treatment, slowly begin to prickle her head, making her cry with emotion, because they herald her rebirth, are the spring that, in the next 3 years, will plunge headlong into an unprecedented study: human history, political , ethnic, religious, anthropological complex universe that we have been carrying in our heads since we came into the world. “The shock of seeing myself hairless couldn’t be just vanity, I felt something hereditary, connected both with my femininity and with the fact that I am 50 years old. I was approaching menopause, and there was a caesura in front of me: there would be “before”, “after” and farewell to my hair – in truth, not a single hair was left in my whole body – they arrived like a seal.
Hair is our passport
If we were to draw up a trichological map of mankind, we would even have to start with Homo sapiens: his thick head over his naked body is the species element that made it possible to immediately identify him as a non-primate. “We wore our strange hair like a flag,” writes sociologist Desmond Morris. Foliage made us recognizable even from afar and told us who we are. This is our passport today: it tells us about our age, health, mood, tastes, social status, ethnicity, religion. It’s a “statement” when it’s a very short pixie cut on the heads of women like Judi Dench or gender-bending girls like Kristen Stewart, when it’s a fluorescent bob and a mutant bob like Billie Eilish, and even when we it doesn’t care. . “Even if we live in an era of liberation from classical aesthetic canons, hair still defines us, it is a manifesto, even if we are disheveled, because it confirms our desire to be beyond parameters,” explains Elena Martelli.
Symbolic cutting of the castle in solidarity with Iranian women
Women’s hair was often banned
Used in all religions to codify rigid aesthetic prohibitions, considered an element of seduction, up to accusing women of witchcraft, who wore them for a long time and rebelliously in the Middle Ages, turned into flirtatious wigs for the nobility of the eighteenth century, hair – especially women’s hair – was the object of any transformation and imposition and is still a very strong symbol of gender discrimination. “It happened in Iran when the vice police arrested and killed Mahsa Amini last year for wearing a veil “badly,” Elena Martelli recalls. “And now it’s back in the Taliban in Afghanistan: after the restoration of the veil, the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice decided to close hairdressers and beauty centers for women.” And what about the Russian journalist Elena Milashina, who was attacked in July in Chechnya, completely shaved and doused with green herbicide?
Shaving can have different meanings
“Shaving is a sign of humiliation, for Primo Levi it was the first step in which the Nazi camps annulled your identity,” explains Martelli. When it’s a self-imposed gesture, it’s seen as instability: Britney Spears’ breakdown in 2007 when she cut her blonde hair to zero is remembered. In 2019, #MeToo symbol actress Rose McGowan echoed the gesture with this motivation: “I did away with the Hollywood ideal that Barbie saw in me and that I helped feed, I thought he looked like an inflatable doll. Neo-feminism’s refusal to adhere to patriarchal canons goes hand in hand with the rediscovery of hair as a symbol of ethnic identity. If in the 1950s it was Malcolm X who liberated the African American community from the habit of chemically ironing curls to adhere to the aspen aesthetic model (“I subjected myself to cruel tortured to resemble the ideal of white beauty, and not only betrayed my identity but I hid it”), today we owe to the muses of the star system confirmation and pride in our origin also through natural hair.
Straight or curly hair also becomes a political message
Like Beyonce, who effortlessly goes from super smooth to super curly, especially when she wants to talk about female power. join black movements “and maybe even do some marketing,” jokes Elena Martelli. Or like Ifemelu, the protagonist of the novel americana Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who returns to Nigeria after living in the US and often talks about the strict canons of braids for African Americans. Politics is also “affected” by the problem of black hair: only after leaving the White House did Michelle Obama boldly wear her real curls during her autobiographical tour. BecomingIn 2019, days after California approved the first law against any form of discrimination against Afro or other ethnic hair, the Crown Act. a smoothed out crease, and until now, in her rare appearances, she cannot let go of the brush.
Male leaders also communicate with hair
Even male leaders know that a hairstyle says more than many words. Isn’t former US President Donald Trump’s obviously fake light orange crest meant to make him look like a cartoon villain? Conversely, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s hair represents beauty and youth, as evidenced by the success of the @TrudeausHair Twitter account. “Even when the hairstyle looks “stupid”, we underestimate it,” advises Elena Martelli. “About the hairstyle of Silvio Berlusconi, for example, everything was written, even in a very sarcastic way, but for him it had a precise meaning: if he can fix his head, he can fix Italy.”