Cognitive Anthropology of the Shaved Head: The Body as Text

What follows originally appeared on a blog I kept briefly a few years ago. The content has, of course, been updated and refined. This is still very much a work in progress.

I'll start first with a quote of a post by Jim from the old Headscene forum (which regrettably vanished from the internet two or three years ago).

I realize I gave a tumble of facts here and there regarding ritual shaving acts in ancient times, but I am making a point—in ancient times the body was perceived as a ‘text.’ Not an obvious piece of literature, but more like a modern sign or billboard. Public roles and customs were a fundamental part of every day life. People communicated facts to one another through non-verbal displays, often through their clothes or grooming habits.

...Monumental stages in life were marked by head-shaving—full puberty for men and marriage for women. Obviously, one act or appearance in one context would meant something completely different in another. The symbolic act of shaving was read in different ways dependent upon the time and place of the interpreter. Sometimes, shaving the head was an act of mourning (like with Job in the Bible), other times for demonstrating a prophecy (Ezekiel 5: 1-4). We know Paul did so to both fulfill a vow and to ritually cleanse himself in Acts. Early Christians, men and women ritually shaved their heads for ascetic purposes, as an act of renouncing the materialism of the world in order to embrace the purity of the heavens above. As I mentioned before, Thecla was one of these early Christian women, shaving her head consistently. This ideal would later transfer over to monks and nuns shaving their heads. Yet, many of the shaving custom in general stemmed from roving Pagan priests and priestesses who were also bald-headed. The examples I gave in the previous message arrive from the contemporary Pagan world of the first and second centuries AD and hair (along with the shaving of it) had real meaning. Again, giving oneself to a deity is commonly expressed by shaving one’s head. Sacred prostitutes at Byblos, Tyre, Sidon and other port towns shaved for purity reasons, yes, but also to announce to the world that they were completely given over to Aphrodite/Astarte. They were priestesses in service to the goddess. Yet, the significance of those shorn locks did not end there, for they could now be used as magical ingredients—often to insure fertility. For early Christians, the bald head symbolized an act of devoted asceticism and purity, and for Pagans it was a mix—purity and devotion mixed often blended with sexuality and fecundity. The enlightened lady with a shaved head may walk into town and receive great acclaim for her piety and, yet, another lady could be sitting in the gutter nearby with her hair shorn as a mark that her husband rejected her. Both women had shaved heads but by their cultural placement, the same exterior markers were read by onlookers in two totally different ways. The problem with our society is that unlike the ancient world, reading the shaved head two ways—positive and negative, our readers today primarily see the negative for women except for that ‘fashion statement’ reason. Last year, one lady mystic told me she wished she shaved her head on a regular basis since she believed she felt more energy from the divine this way. Whether a phenomenological reality or a psychological convention, she said she felt such warm energy rippling through her body whenever her head was fully exposed to the elements. I wish for once I would run into a bald woman who upon asking why she shaved her head would respond: “Because it makes me feel closer to God!” Not that this reason is singularly omnipotent, but because it would be a different sound of reasoning resonating in my ear…a sound more of an echo from a time when the body was a text and ritual acts, even shaving acts, meant something. Obviously, I know shaving acts for all of you out there may have some deeper significance—yet, have you explored this uncharted terrain? Even those who love seeing bald women—for while, admittedly, the reasons may all be completely superficial, maybe there’s another reason. As for you shavers, did the first time you shaved your head mark any of the ancient criteria just mentioned? Did it mark a transition in your life—marriage, death, freedom from home, gender re-orientation, independence? Was it meant as a poster or a sign to tell others something?—for instance as an act of rebellion or to show an affiliation with an alternative group or lifestyle. Was it—or is it—a spiritual statement, a reminder to self and a sign to those all around. Even the act of taking a risk against the norms of society by actually going through the process of shaving one’s head (especially for women) is most definitely a rite of passage. Like any important ritual display, the first time you may have even had to have the mood just right—music—candles—and the right ritual tools—special razors and lotions all neatly laid out on the altar ...

There's quite a bit to that post by Jim that resonates with me. One thing in particular is an interest I have in viewing spiritual and sensual facets of the human experience as parts of a unified whole as opposed to being dichotomous entities: Yin and Yang, earthy and ethereal, Carl Jung's conceptualization of The Shadow, etc. I've always had an abiding interest in spiritual matters, especially in the Buddhist and Taoist traditions and as of late the Gnostic tradition within early Christianity. In the process I've grown to realize that a shaved head can symbolize much including both a spiritual purification and sexiness (and easily both at the same time).

In addition, the meaning of hair (or just about anything else in our physical and social environment) is fluid, namely because the definition or definitions that we hold are socially shared constructs. Across cultures we see the shaved head as a mark of beauty or a rite of passage into womanhood, and even within Western culture there has been quite a range of meanings for a shaved head over a span of several thousand years (e.g., as Jim points out above, women intellectuals in many Gnostic sects routinely shaved their heads). Much of our contemporary views of shaved heads in Euro-American cultures come from a narrow view of a Literalist interpretation of Biblical text that has held sway over at least the last couple millennia. From that perspective a shaved head on a woman was commonly interpreted as a symbol of shame, whereas the more "enlightened" might entertain an interpretation of mental or physical illness. The former view manifests itself in phenomena such as the forced head shavings of collaborators in post WWII Europe, as well as of female villagers captured during wartime (usually in conjunction with being raped, portrayed reasonably well, for example, by Hemmingway in the novel "The Sun Also Rises"). In such cases the standard reading would be of one who has been humiliated - either "deservedly" (to the extent that Westerners tend to accept the cultural myth of a "just world") or unfairly. Either way, there is an element of pathos, of victimhood involved. The latter view manifests itself in the view of the bald woman is physically ill - and hence to be pitied, or psychologically disturbed - and hence to be shunned or medicated. The latter is the most common reading given to Britney Spears' brief interlude with the bald look in early 2007, and also makes its way into popular works of television and film (think of "Smallville" and "Empire Records" for example).

That view lost its grip first in the various subcultures and countercultures over the last few decades, as witnessed by the acceptance of the shaved head among lesbians, and females in punk and goth subcultures since at least the 1970s. There is reason to believe that the standard Euro-American "reading" of the bodily "text" is also beginning to lose its grip within society's mainstream as women have become increasingly willing to shave their heads for charity events (often but not always for cancer research fundraisers), and even as a simple fashion statement or act of convenience.

In other words, what seems to be happening during the last two decades seems to be a transition in the way that the shaved head on a woman can be read by members of Euro-American cultures. Whereas before, the most accepted readings of the shaved female head were ones of pathos, in which case the standard response was one of pity, shock, or disgust; alternative readings are in ascendance - in some cases readings that have not been seen in the West since the Gnostics were driven out of the early Christian Church. It is quite conceivable for multiple individuals to read into a woman's shaved head radically divergent meanings, and even for the bald woman herself to read multiple meanings into her appearance to the extent that she has been exposed to differing ways of reading social and behavioral text.