Hair Part VI: Honor Killing

I have selected today's quote from a New York Times article from 2004 by Hadil Jawad and Lauren Sandler.   As Sandler explains, the tradition of honor killing "gives family members the right to kill a woman who has sexual intercourse (even if it's a case of rape) without her family's permission."  In her interview with Ms. Jawad, included in the article in translation, she attempts to capture how this practice affects the family dynamic in surprising ways. 


Having read accounts of women who have been disfigured and killed through the practice--many of these accounts quite graphic---this particular quote captured my attention for its directness as well as its understatement of what this practice can entail.  As Ms. Jawad recalls:

"When I was a young woman and still living with my family, I once went out to the market and let my hair down my back without tying it up.  My brother saw me, and when I came back home, he hit me repeatedly with a hard plastic hose.  I nearly died.

My brother was very difficult to live with and would not allow my five sisters or me go out of the house or wear trousers.  My father was also strict.  My mother was helpless; she could not open her mouth."

The reference to hair appears only in passing, and yet in conjunction with Ms. Jawad's reflections on her mother's muteness, it suggests how we assert ourselves through our bodies as well as through our words. Although the exposure of hair might suggest the importance of modesty, conjoined with muteness and helplessness it also suggests the importance of containment, and the threat of self-expression.


Ms. Jawad later fell in love with a married man with children, and the two eloped, eventually becoming refugees in Pakistan, and finally returning to Baghdad after Saddam Hussein's regime ended.  While Ms. Jawad's actions seem to suggest a sense of agency, her testimony reveals her curiously bifurcated feelings about her family upon her return to her homeland:  

"I was terrified that someone from my family might see me.  Yet at the same time, I was eager to see them. I heard that my sisters are married now, and that my youngest sister married an old man who was married and had a big family. When I walk down the street, I worry  that someone from my family will recognize me and kill me.  I try not to show it but I am terrified. I have no objection to death, but it seems unfair: my only crime is that I fell in love with someone and wanted to marry him."

--Hadil Jawad and Lauren Sandler,  "When Love Is a Crime," New York Times, October 7, 2004

Hair Part V: Big Hair/Bald Head, Or, An Allegory

Today's quote comes from Charles Chesnutt's short story "The Goophered Grapevine."  This story was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1887, and was reprinted in Chesnutt's collection The Conjure Woman (1899).  In this tale, a plantation owner has the conjure woman, Aunt Peggy, put a "goopher" on his scuppernong vines to prevent them from being eaten by slaves from other plantations in the vicinity. The "goopher" is supposed to cause those who pilfer the grapes to die within twelve months.  Unfortunately, one of his own slaves, Henry, eats the scuppernongs.  While the overseer takes Henry to Aunt Peggy to remove the goopher, she is only able to partialy remove it.  Henry's state of heath begins to follow the life cycle of the grapes--he waxes in the summer and wanes in the winter.  His master, seeing an opportunity to capitalize on this new situation, begins to sell him during his waxing period and re-purchase him during his waning months.   Gradually, Henry begins to fade away in a story that is an allegory of slavery's misuse and destruction of both land and bodies.  This quote describes Henry's new life cycle in terms of the growth of his hair.  While initially "bald as a sweet potato" as the story goes, he begins to exhibit hair that resembles the grape vines--unmanageable "grapy hair,"  the "biggest hair on the plantation":

"So Henry 'n'int his head wid de sap out'n de big grapevime des ha'f way 'twix' de quarters en de big house, en de goopher nebber wuk agin him dat summer.  But de beatenes' thing you eber see happen ter Henry.  Up ter dat time he wuz ez ball ez a sweeten' 'tater, but des ez soon ez de young leaves begun ter come out on de grapevimes, de ha'r begun ter grow out on Henry's head, en by de middle er de summer he had de bigges' head er ha'r on de plantation.  Befo' dat, Henry had tol'able good ha'r 'roun' de aidges, but soon ez de young grapes begun ter come, Henry's ha'r begun to quirl all up in little balls, des like dis yer reg'lar grapy ha'r, en by de time de grapes got tipe his head look des like a bunch er grapes.  Combin' it didn' do no good; he wuk at it ha'f de night wid er Jim Crow, en think he git it straighten' out, but in de mawnin' de grapes 'ud be dere des de same.  So he gin it up, en tried ter keep de grapes down by havin' his ha'r cut sho't [...]

But de mo's cur'ouses' thing happen' in de fall, when de sap begin ter go down in de grapevimes.  Fus', when de grapes 'uz gethered, de knots begun ter straighten out'n Henry's ha'r; en w'en de leaves begin ter fall, Henry's ha'r 'mence ter drap out; en when de vimes 'uz bar', Henry's head wuz baller 'n it wuz in de spring, en he begin ter git ole an stiff in de j'ints ag'in, en paid no mo' 'tention ter de gals dyoin'er de whole winter.  En nex' spring, w'en he rub de sap on ag'in, he got young ag'in, en so soopl en libely dat none er de young niggers on de plantation couldn' jump, ner dance, ner hoe ez much cotton ez Henry.

--Charles Chesnutt, "The Goophered Grapevine," In The Conjure Woman, Ed.Richard H. Brodhead

Hair Part IV: High (or Low?) Resolution

In today's quote taken from Margaret Edson's play W;t,  Professor Vivian Bearing reflects on the briefing she receives from her oncologist regarding her upcoming treatment for Stage IV ovarian cancer:


Kelekian: The antineoplastic will          Vivian: Antineoplastic. Anti:
inevitably affect some                           against. Neo: new.
healthy cells, including                          Plastic: To mold. Shap-
those lining the gas-                              ing. Antineoplastic.
trointestinal tract from                           Against new shaping.
the lips to the anus, and
the hair follicles. We                             Hair follicles. My
will of course be reyling                        resolve.
on your resolve to with-
stand some of the more                        "Pernicious" That
pernicious side effects.                          doesn't seem---


Kelekian:  Miss Bearing?


Vivian: I beg your pardon?


Kelekian: Do you have any questions so far?


Vivian: Please go on. 

--Margaret Edson, Wit: A Play, (1999)

Hair Part III: Assimilation

Today's quote is taken from Sioux Indian Zitkala-Sa's "American Indian Stories."  This scene describes one of  her experiences as a student at a Quaker mission school in Wabash, Indiana--an institution that required assimiliation.  In this scene, Zitkala-Sa is hiding under a bed at the mission, and is forceably removed for a haircut:

     Women and girls entered the room.  I held my breath and watched them open closet doors and peep behind large trunks.  Some one threw up the curtains, and the room was filled with sudden light.  What caused them to stoop and look under the bed I do not know.  I remember being dragged out, though I resisted by kicking and scratching wildly.  In spite of myself, I was carried downstairs and tied fast in a chair. 
     I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids.  Then I lost my spirit.  Since the day I was taken from my mother I had suffered extreme indignities.  People had stared at me.  I had been tossed about in the air like a wooden puppet.  And now my long hair was shingled like a coward's!  In my anguish I moaned for my mother, but no one came to comfort me.  Not a soul reasoned quietly with me, as my own mother used to do; for now I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder.

---Zitkala-Sa ("Red Bird") (b. 1876), American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings, Edited by Cathy N. Davidson and Ada Norris

Hair Part II: Pieces of Me

Today's quote for this multi-part series on Hair  is taken from Helen Sheumaker's fascinating study, Love Entwined: The Curious History of Hairwork in America. This study traces the rise and fall of hairwork (hair jewelry, wreaths, portrait miniatures including locks of hair) as an object of sentiment and devotion as the once hand-made fanciwork became increasingly commercialized:

     In the eighteenth century, the sentimental associations of hair were obliquely displayed; by the nineteenth century, hairwork and the sentimentality it conveyed was worn for others to observe. This practice revealed a paradox about sentimentality. While display of one's sentimentality was essential to being regarded as sentimental, that same exhibition could easily be construed as ostentatious, vulgar, and insincere. Fashion was constantly in flux, it was superficial, and it was self-aggrandizing. It opposed the sincerity that women in particular were supposed to possess. Fashion was expressed with goods, and therefore was opposed to the domestic sphere. Thus, those constant fluctuations in styles threatened to undermine the premise of sentimentality itself.
     Even as hairwork revealed the dissonance between genuine emotion and frivolous fashionableness, it attempted a remedy.  Hair's undeniable relationship to an individual asserted a sincerity of character that transcended the hypocrisy that fahionableness implied.  The mid-nineteenth century was the height of the popularity of hairwork perhaps because as fashion was criticized as being particularly hypocritical, hairwork's genuiness was being asserted.  On the one hand, hair jewelry was very much a commodity, buttressed as it was by marketing and salesmanship; on the other hand, it was exactly that which could not be completely commodified.  Hair jewelry provided a way to forestall the apparent effects of fashion in the market and in the social world" (20-21).

--Helen Sheumaker, Love Entwined: The Curious History of Hairwork in America, (2007)

Hair Part I: Sweet Tensile Strength

Last week's entries on the boundary between life and death have prompted me to think about material memory, sentiment, and the body.  Along these lines, the entries for the next few days will focus on one particular bodily manifestation of sentiment, memory, selfhood, sexuality & health: hair.  The first entry is taken from a familiar fairy tale:

"One day, after three years had passed, it happened that a young prince who was hunting in the forest passed close to the tower and saw Rapunzel standing in her window singing and brushing out her hair.  She sang so sweetly that the prince fell in love with her at once.  But since there was no door to the tower and no stiarway or ladder, he despaired of reaching her.  Still, after that day, he went to the forest again and again and made his way to the tower and listened to her songs. One day, as he was standing concealed in the shadowy wood, he saw the wtich come down the path and call, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down thy hair."  And she, thinking it was the witch, let down her hair, not braided now, but flowing like a golden waterfall, and drew him up."

--"Rapunzel," in The Magic Carpet and Other Tales, Retold by Ellen Douglas with the Illustrations of Walter Anderson (1987)