Women with Facial Hair ![3DSpacer](3D"WomenwithFacialHair_files/image002.gif")
Author: Ro=
bin
Whitaker
For: Source
Magazine Issue 22
Ring Source - Want anthropologist to write essay on
photographs of women with facial hair (!)
I think it might be worth starting with the significance=
of
that parenthetical exclamation mark and the appeal of an anthropologist's
perspective. They suggest there is something a bit odd or exotic about the
idea. Might it have anything to do with how, on hearing about the idea, the
mind jumps to the mythic bearded lady of carnival side-shows: the female
grotesque? This association is worth exploring despite its distance from the
substance of Trish Morrisey's photos. It points
toward something of the critical appeal of "women with facial hair&quo=
t;:
a dispute with taken-for-granted ideas about gender and sex, culture and na=
ture
and what makes a woman.
For all the tolerance, even celebration, of putative
transgressions in our society, for all that it seems like old certainties h=
ave
given way to an unprecedented fluidity, the dominant cultural logic still
operates some pretty resolute rules when it comes to embodying gender or
gendering bodies. The possibilities for personhood are restricted to member=
ship
in one of two discrete categories. The assignment of gender structures our =
everyday
interactions to such an extent that any ambiguity is quite distressing. Thi=
nk,
for example, of the discomfort caused by the rare experience of being unabl=
e to
tell whether someone is male or female. The uneasiness may have its source =
in a
desire not to embarrass the other person (who, we assume, wants us to know)=
by
saying something "inappropriate." Its benevolence in no way lesse=
ns
the force of this dichotomising logic, which operates even in situations wh=
ere
a person's gender is irrelevant.
The strictures increase as we move away from the safety =
of
the obviously staged. Drag queens may be feted on the catwalk; mundane fail=
ures
of gender identification still carry a whole host of minor and major risks.
Very few of us escape the childhood terror and shame of failing to measure =
up
to cultural expectations about what it means to "be" a girl or a =
boy.
Of course, not all violations of gender are equivalent. A
woman who prefers menswear might be thought odd by prevailing standards. She
might experience subtle or overt censure in certain contexts. Then again, if
she adopts the right poses, if she understands the stylistic nuances requir=
ed -
and if she has the right body - she may be regarded as the very embodiment =
of
femininity, reaping all the attendant rewards and pleasures.
To be a woman with facial hair is to engage in gender pl=
ay
of a deeper kind.
At the heart of the matter, I think, is the common sense
conviction that gender owes its existence to sex. Sex is taken to be the
biological basis for dividing bodies into male and female: an obvious and
absolute natural difference. Gender is a matter of cultural elaboration on =
that
division. We are born male or female; we acquire gender within specific soc=
ial
and historical contexts. The obvious variability of genders across and even
within cultures, then, need not challenge the idea that they are anchored in
something more stable, and, by implication, that there is an appropriate un=
ity
between biological sex and gender.
Women who stray too far from the acceptable norms may be
labelled "unnatural" or simply "unfeminine." Men who do=
so
may be labelled effeminate or effete. The implication, though, is that they=
are
acting against what their natures demand. That nature, those bodies - their=
sex
- is left intact.
The idea of "women with facial hair" intrudes =
on
these assumptions precisely because the "failure" involved appear=
s at
the level of nature, not culture. As much as we "know" that facial
hair does not, naturally, belong on women, that knowledge is confounded by =
the
evidence. What could be more natural than hair? What would it mean to say t=
hat
the biological processes of a female body were "unwomanly"? What
would that, in turn, say about how we know in the first place which bodies =
are
female, which bodies male?
The idea of "women with facial hair" is
unsettling, and not just because it trespasses against cultural norms of
femininity. Its power lies in its paradoxical character. As much as its som=
atic
quality suggests the precedence of nature over culture, the exoticism of
"women with facial hair" is evidence of culture's habitual triumph
over nature - a victory secured by all the mundane disciplines that elimina=
te
any sign of nature's ambiguity (think, for example, of the daily regime
prescribed by Bridget Jones). While Morrissey's photos might not shock their
studied conformity to convention sharpens the paradox. The transgression
entailed in a display of hair on female faces is set against lipsticked mouths, tweezed eyebrows, coiffed
hair. Even the genre of portraiture suggests certain conventions of feminin=
ity.
To take these as framing devices is to show the natural process of hair gro=
wth
as a matter of deliberate choice. As style, the notion of 'women with facial
hair' questions our presumption that nature exists somewhere beyond culture=
. As
much as culture seems to be trumped by nature's refusal to conform to the
proprieties of gender, in another sense, nature, it seems, owes its very
existence to culture.
These photos unmask the cultural work required to produce
sexed and sexable bodies. For the most part, the
effort involved is so mundane that it ceases to register; it seems entirely
natural.
These photos remind us that the sexed body, as such, does
not exist. This is not to say, 'there is no body,' but to suggest that the =
border
between nature and culture is less fixed than we are inclined to presume, a=
nd,
by extension, that the division between male and female is not self-evident
either. Like other borders, these are arbitrary and political - open to
renegotiation. It also suggests that, as much as it is a condition of
personhood, gender is produced by (always already gendered) actors, whose
agency is hidden because subject to the demand that gender appear as the mo=
st
natural thing in the world.
In a reading of Simone de Beauvoir's statement that one =
is
not born but becomes a woman, Judith Butler suggests that Beauvoir did not
intend to imply that 'one becomes a woman only finally to "be" on=
e.
... One never "is" a woman, for the act of becoming is never real=
ly
completed.' We may choose to act as though we 'are' women in some final way,
but even that requires a 'constant and tacit effort of freedom.' To be a wo=
man
in a way that claims one's womanhood is effortless - such being, suggests <=
st1:place
w:st=3D"on">
In one obvious sense the idea of 'women with facial hair'
reinforces rather than disrupts the dichotomising logic of sex and gender.
Indeed, its transgressive power depends on the
dichotomy. And yet, the critique implied by 'women with facial hair' lies in
its suggestion that the whole system is contingent - that it does not exist=
, as
Butler would put it, apart from the acts that constitute it. For
if gender depends on sex for its existence, we cannot know sex without gend=
er.
Each takes the ground from the other. This holds out some hope for freeing
gender from the tyranny of sex.
To question sex as the guarantor of gender is to threate=
n to
expose as insubstantial the very foundation of our culture's most basic sys=
tem
of categorisation. This is very far from saying there is nothing to it. Who=
le
industries are devoted to maintaining sex and gender, and the rewards and
punishments attached to getting it right or wrong have a perfect materialit=
y.
But it does say that the foundations for sex and gender are not the ones th=
ey
claim for themselves. The always present risk of exposure may help explain =
why
it is those identities that are apparently most intractable that also seem =
to
be those most in need of defence.
Finally, I think, this may help explain the exoticizing impulse. Exiling 'women with facial hair'= to the circus is a defensive move that puts trouble in a place where it can be safely contained.