The luscious locks of lust: Hair and the construction of gender in Egypt from clement to the Fāṭimids

Christina Thérèse Tineke Rooijakkers*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

This article examines the tensions between normative discourses on gender and the hair on top of the head, and actual practices in Egypt from the late Roman to the Fāṭimid period. Early Church Fathers preached a clear gender binary, naturalised through oppositions in hair, but reality was often more fickle. Whereas women’s hair was discursively connected to immorality, “big hair” also embodied femininity and attractiveness. Long and well-groomed hair was used to accuse men of effeminacy, but hair fashions grew steadily longer in the Byzantine period. Normative views on the length and grooming of male hair were markedly different under Islam, however. Gendered boundaries shifted, as the turban also blurred the existing association between large headdresses and women. In addition to the opposition of male versus female, two categories are discussed that defied the gender binary: wayward ascetics, who denied their worldly gender through hair, and gender-bending entertainers, from pretty long-haired boy servants to slave girls dressed and coiffed as adolescent boys.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)26-55
Number of pages30
JournalAl-Masaq
Volume30
Issue number1
Early online date15 Mar 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2018

Funding

Amsterdam, the Netherlands 1I would like to thank the editors for inviting me to contribute to this fascinating volume. I am also grateful to the reviewers for their stimulating comments, which gave me the opportunity to further hone my analysis. This article is based on sec-tions of my PhD thesis, “Dress Norms and Markers: A Comparative Study of Coptic Identity and Dress in the Past and Present”, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2016, which will be published in the Late Antique History and Religion series (Peeters). The additional research was part of the Fitting In/Standing Out project, led by Prof. Bas ter Haar Romeny and funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), Vrije Competitie Geesteswetenschappen. 2Clement of Alexandria, “The Instructor” (Paedagogus), in Fathers of the Second Century: Hermes, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theo-philus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), trans. William Wilson [Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume II] (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1885), pp. 207–96, esp. Book III, chapter iii, p. 275. 3In line with Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 179–80. Figure 7. Portrait of a donor in the Red Monastery, sixth century, Sohag. Reproduced by permission of the American Research Center in Egypt, Inc. (ARCE). This project was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Photo © Gustavo Camps. This work was supported by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (360-25-130).

FundersFunder number
Vrije Competitie Geesteswetenschappen
United States Agency for International Development
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek360-25-130

    Keywords

    • Early medieval
    • Egypt
    • Gender
    • Hair
    • Late antique

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