Illustrate and critically discuss the symbolic significance attributed to hairiness and hairlessness of
the human body.
For general guidance about what is expected in your essays for this module,
see the
general criteria.
Please remember to avoid footnotes and to include an
alphabetical list of 'References' which have been cited in the text
(not a Bibliography of anything you have read for the essay). This list should include
author's names, date, book titles (in italics), place of publication and publisher.
Within the text always cite author's surname, date and page number. Double-space your
text and number your pages. For more detailed notes on writing essays in this
department, click
here.
Advice for this particular assignment: Attitudes to bodily hair tend to be polarised in contemporary society, which is in itself
suggestive of the deep cultural significance of this topic.
The most relevant semiotic concepts to investigate this are binary oppositions and alignments: for instance,
hairiness has often been associated with animality (nature) and hairlessness with culture and civilisation.
After the publication of Darwin's Descent of Man (1871), in the western world hairiness in men came to be widely associated with primitive
animality and at the same time with homosexuality (Haste 1994, p. 93). Depending on the historical, socio-cultural and situational context,
however, a more familiar association is of hairiness with sterotypical masculinity and hairlessness with stereotypical femininity (in such frameworks
hairiness can consequently connote activity and hairlessness passivity).
Show how such oppositions work within particular contexts, including the representational context in which advertising aligns such oppositions
(examine some fragrance ads, shaving ads and hair removal ads, for example).
You will also find it useful to refer to connotations, markedness and masculine and feminine codes
(both in representations and in everyday life). Your focus is on body hair, but note that this is in itself often framed in
symbolic opposition to head hair. For a general introduction to binary oppositions see Chandler (2007, pp. 90-106) and Valentine (2001).
Note that this is not an essay about whether individuals find hairy or hairless bodies sexually attractive!
In discussing sex and gender, remember the distinction: 'sex' being a biological category and 'gender' a cultural category. If you
are talking about males and females then you refer to sex (as in 'the two sexes'); if you are talking about
masculinity and femininity then you refer to (constructions of) gender (see Chandler & Munday 2011).
The concept of 'the opposite sex' only makes sense symbolically,
but in our constructions of social reality, such symbolism is fundamental.
This is an assignment for which the inclusion of relevant pictorial illustrations is expected: these should be
incorporated electronically rather than literally cut-and-pasted and should be labelled 'Figure 1...'
(etc.). Paired comparisons are often particularly useful. Remember to include a list labelled either Figures or Image sources after your
list of References.
Only some of the books on the suggested reading are explicitly semiotic and you may need to recast their
insights within a semiotic framework. If you consult dictionaries of symbolism, use academic sources such as
Cirlot (1983), Chevalier & Gheerbrant (1996) or de Vries & de Vries (2004) rather than popular or journalistic ones.
Some suggested reading
- Ableman, Paul (1982)
Anatomy of Nakedness. London: Orbis
- Adler, Kathleen & Marcia Pointon (Eds) (1993)
The Body Imaged: The Human Form and Visual Culture since the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- Aristotle (1989)
Generation of Animals (Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 13). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
- Basow, Susan A. (1991) 'The Hairless Ideal: Women and their Body Hair', Psychology of Women Quarterly 15: 83-96
- Basow, Susan & A. Braman (1998)
'Women and Body Hair: Social Perceptions and Attitudes', Psychology of Women Quarterly 22: 637-45
- Berg, Charles (1936) 'The Unconscious Significance of Hair', International Journal of Psychoanalysis 17: 73-88
- Berg, Charles (1951)
The Unconscious Significance of Hair. London: Allen & Unwin
- Berger, John (1972)
Ways of Seeing. London: BBC/Penguin
- Berger, Joshua (2003)
XXX: The Power of Sex in Contemporary Design. Gloucester, MA: Rockport
- Betterton, Rosemary (1987)
Looking On: Images of Femininity in the Visual Arts and Media. London: Pandora
- Biddle-Perry, Geraldine & Sarah Cheang (Eds) (2008)
Hair: Styling Culture and Fashion. Oxford: Berg
- Bordo, Susan (1999)
The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private.
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux
- Boroughs, Michael S. (2009)
'Correlates of Body Depilation In Men'. Tampa, FL: University of South Florida;
[WWW document] URL
http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2863&context=etd
- Boroughs, Michael S. (2012)
'Body Depilation among Women and Men'. Tampa, FL: University of South Florida;
[WWW document] URL
http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5181&context=etd
- Boroughs, Michael S., & J. Thompson (2002)
'Body Depilation in Males: A New Body Image Concern', International Journal of Men’s Health 1: 247-57
- Boroughs, M., G. Cafri & J. Thompson (2005)
'Male Body Depilation: Prevalence and Associated Features of Body Hair Removal', Sex Roles 52: 637-44
- Braham, Phil (2000)
Naked Men. London: Serpent's Tail
- Breazeale, Kenon (1994) 'In Spite of Women: Esquire Magazine and the Construction of
the Male Consumer', Signs 20(1):
- Burr, Vivien (1998)
Gender and Social Psychology. London: Routledge
- Chandler, Daniel (2007)
Semiotics: The Basics (2nd Edn.). London: Routledge.
- Chandler, Daniel and Rod Munday (2011)
Dictionary of Media and Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Chevalier, Jean & Alain Gheerbrant (1996)
The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. Harmondsworth: Penguin
- Cirlot, J. E. (1983)
Dictionary of Symbols (2nd edn). London: Routledge
- Clark, Kenneth (1960)
The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art. London: Penguin
- Coad, David (2008)
The Metrosexual: Gender, Sexuality, and Sport. Albany, NY: SUNY
- Cooper, Emmanuel (1995)
Fully Exposed: The Male Nude in Photography. London: Routledge
- Cooper, Emmanuel (2004)
Male Bodies: A Photographic History of the Nude. Munich: Prestel
- Cooper, Wendy (1971)
Hair: Sex, Society, Symbolism. London: Stein and Day
- Culbertson, Philip (1998)
'Designing Men: Reading the Male Body as Text'
Textual Reasoning 7; [WWW document] URL
http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/tr/archive/volume7/Culbertson1.html
- Darwin, Charles ([1871] 2009)
The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- Davis, Melody D. (1991)
The Male Nude in Contemporary Photography. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
- de Louville, Francois & Edward Lucie-Smith (1985)
The Male Nude: A Modern View. Oxford: Phaidon
- de Vries, Ad & Arthur de Vries (2004)
Elsevier's Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery. Amsterdam: Elsevier
- Dotson, Edisol Wayne (1999)
Behold the Man: The Hype and Selling of Male Beauty in Media and Culture. Binghampton, NY: Harrington Park Press
- Dutton, Kenneth R (1995)
The Perfectible Body: The Western Ideal of Physical Development.
London: Cassell
- Edwards, Catrin Mair (2011)
'Book Review: The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair, Edited by Karin Lesnik-Obertsein',
Asian Women 27(2): 141-6; [WWW document] URL
http://www.academia.edu/1023673/Review_The_Last_Taboo_Women_and_Body_Hair
- Elder, George R. (1996)
The Body: An Encyclopaedia of Archetypal Symbolism, Vol. 2. Boston, MA: Shambhala
- Ellenzweig, Allen & George Stambolian (1992)
The Homoerotic Photograph. New York: Columbia University Press
- Fehrer, Michael with Ramona Naddaff & Nadia Tazi (1989)
Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part 3. New York: Zone
- Firth, Raymond (1973)
Symbols: Public and Private. London: Allen & Unwin
- Greer, Germaine (1971)
The Female Eunuch. London: Paladin ('Hair', pp. 42-3)
- Greer, Germaine (2007)
The Boy. London: Thames & Hudson
- Hallpike, C. R. (1969)
'Social Hair', Man 4(2): 256-64; reprinted in Polhemus (Ed) (1978), pp. 134-46 and in
revised form in C. R. Hallpike (2011)
On Primitive Society and Other Forbidden Topics. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, pp. 280-95.
- Hansen, Kirsten (2007)
'Hair or Bare?: The History of American Women and Hair Removal, 1914-1934' [WWW document] URL
http://history.barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/kirstenhansenthesis.pdf. New York: Columbia University
- Haste, Helen (1994)
The Sexual Metaphor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
- Heller, Steven (Ed) (2000)
Sex Appeal: The Art of Allure in Graphic and Advertising Design. New York: Allworth Press
- Henley, Nancy (1987)
Body Politics: Power, Sex and Nonverbal Communication. New York: Simon & Schuster
- Hennen, Peter (2008)
Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen: Men in Community Queering the Masculine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
- Hershman, P. (1974) 'Hair, Sex and Dirt', Man 9(2): 274-98
- Hildebrant, S. (2003)
'The Last Frontier: Body Norms and Hair Removal Practices in Contemporary American Culture'.
In Heinz Tschachler, Maureen Devine & Michael Draxlbauer (Eds) (2003)
The EmBodyment of American Culture [sic]. Berlin: Lit Verlag, pp. 59-72. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction
- Hiltebeitel, Alf (1998)
'Introduction: Hair Tropes'. In Alf Hiltebeitel & Barbara D. Miller (Eds) (1998)
Hair: Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures. New York: State University of New York Press, pp. 1-9; [WWW document] URL
http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/53845.pdf
- Hooven III, F. Valentine (2002)
Beefcake: The Muscle Magazines of America 1950-1970. Köln: Taschen
- Hope, C. (1982)
'Caucasian Female Body Hair and American Culture', Journal of American Culture 5: 93-9
- Horrocks, Roger (1995)
Male Myths and Icons: Masculinity in Popular Culture.
London: Macmillan
- Immergut, Matthew (2008)
'Manscaping: The Tangle of Male Body Hair, Nature and Culture'. New York: State University of New York;
[WWW document] URL
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/3/9/4/8/pages239482/p239482-1.php
- Jeffords, Susan (1993)
Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinities in the Reagan Era. New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press
- Jolly, Penny Howell (2012) 'Pubics and Privates: Body Hair in Late Medieval Art'. In Sherry C. M. Lindquist (Ed) (2012)
The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 183-206.
- Juan-Carlos, Ricardo (1983)
Photographing the Male. London: New Burlington
- Kaufman, J. & R. L. Timmers (1985/6) 'Searching for the Hairy Man', Women and Therapy 4(4): 45-57
- Kervin, Denise (1987) 'Gender Coding in Magazine Advertisements',
Journal of Visual/Verbal Languaging 7:1: 52-9
- Kessler, Suzanne J. & Wendy McKenna (1978)
'Toward a Theory of Gender', Chapter 6 from
Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 142-69;
[WWW document] URL
http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/tbettch/Kessler_Toward%20a%20Theory%20of%20Gender.pdf
- Kühnst, Peter (2004)
Physique: Classic Photographs of Naked Athletes. London: Thames & Hudson
- Lambiase, Jacqueline & Tom Reichert (2003)
'Promises, Promises: Exploring Erotic Rhetoric in Sexually Oriented Advertising'.
In Linda Scott and Rajeev Batra (Eds.)
Persuasive Imagery: A Consumer Perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 247-66
- Leach, Edmund (1958)
'Magical Hair', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 88(2): 147-64;
[WWW document] URL
http://books.google.co.uk/
- Leach, Edmund (1976)
Culture and Communication: The Logic by which Symbols are Connected. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- Leddick, David (1997)
Naked Men: Pioneering Male Nudes 1935-1955. New York?: Universe Books
- Leddick, David (2000)
George Platt Lynes, 1907-1955. Köln: Taschen
- Leddick, David (2001)
Male Nudes. Cologne: Taschen
- Lehman, Peter (1995)
Running Scared: Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press
- Lehman, Peter (Ed) (2001)
Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture. New York: Routledge
- Lesnik-Oberstein, Karin (2011)
The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair. Manchester: Manchester University Press
- Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1969)
The Raw and the Cooked (trans. John and Doreen Weightman). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Lewis, J. (1987)
'Caucasian Body Hair Management: A Key to Gender and Species Identification in U.S. Culture?',
Journal of American Culture 10: 7-14
- Leymore, Varda Langholz (1975)
Hidden Myth: Structure and Symbolism in Advertising. New York: Basic Books
- Luciano, L. (2001)
Looking Good: Male Body Image in Modern America. New York: Hill and Wang
- Lucie-Smith, Edward (1991)
The Bear Cult. Swaffam: GMP
- Lucie-Smith, Edward (1991)
Sexuality in Western Art. London: Thames & Hudson
- Lucie-Smith, Edward (1998)
Adam: The Male Figure in Art. London: Weidenfeld Nicolson
- Lucie-Smith, Edward (2004)
Ars Erotica. London: Weidenfeld Nicolson
- Mackinnon, Kenneth (1997)
Uneasy Pleasures: The Male as an Erotic Object. London: Cygnus
- Masquelier, Asdeline (Ed) (2005)
Dirt, Undress, and Difference: Critical Perspectives on the Body’s Surface. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
- Morris, Desmond (1971)
Intimate Behaviour. London: Triad/Granada
- Morris, Desmond (1985)
Bodywatching: A Field Guide to the Human Species. London: Jonathan Cape
- Morris, Desmond (2002)
People Watching: The Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language. London: Vintage [formerly, Manwatching]
- Morris, Desmond (2005)
The Naked Woman. New York: Vintage
- Morris, Desmond (2009)
The Naked Man. New York: Vintage
- Mosse, George L. (1996)
The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Niditch, Susan (2008)
'My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man': Hair and Identity in Ancient Israel. New York: Oxford University Press
- Ofek, Galia (2009)
Representations of Hair in Victorian Literature and Culture. London: Ashgate
- Peterkin, Allen (2002)
One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press
- Pitts-Taylor, Victoria (Ed) (2008)
Cultural Encyclopedia of the Body (2 Vols). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press
- Polhemus, Ted (Ed) (1978)
The Body Reader: Social Aspects of the Human Body. New York: Pantheon, pp. 134-146
- Pronger, Brian (1990)
The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex. New York: St Martin’s Press
- Pultz, John (1995)
Photography and the Body. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolso
- Reichert, Tom (2005)
Sex in Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content of Media and Marketing. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
- Reichert, Tom & Jacqueline Lambiase (Eds) (2003)
Sex in Advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
- Riedel, Brian (1996)
'Reading the Gay Male Body' [WWW document] URL
http://www.ibiblio.org/grendel/malebody/abstract.html
- Rigakos, Bessie (2010)
'University Students' Attitudes Towards Body Hair and Hair Removal'. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University; [WWW document] URL
http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1111&context=oa_dissertations
- Robinson, Julian (1988)
Body Packaging: A Guide to Human Sexual Display. Sydney: Watermark Press
- Rohlinger, Deana A. (2002)
'Eroticising men: Cultural influences on advertising and male objectification'
Sex Roles, 463/4: 61-74;
[WWW document] URL
http://www.public.asu.edu/~kleong/eroticizing%20men%20in%20advertising.pdf
- Russett, Cynthia E. (1989)
Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
- Saunders, Dave (1996)
Best Ads: Sex in Advertising. London: Batsford
- Schehr, Lawrence R (1997)
Parts of an Andrology: On Representations of Men's Bodies.
Stanford: Stanford University Press
- Sherrow, Victoria (2006)
Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press
- Solomon-Godeau, Abigail (1997)
Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation. London: Thames & Hudson
- Suleiman, Susan Rubin (Ed) (1986)
The Female Body in Western Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
- Synott, Anthony (1987) 'Shame and Glory: A Sociology of Hair', British Journal of Sociology 38(3): 381-413
- Synnott, Anthony (1993)
The Body Social. London: Routledge
- Thomas, Calvin (1998)
Male Matters: Masculinity, Anxiety, and the Male Body on the Line.
Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press
- Threadgold, Terry & Anne Cranny-Francis (Eds) (1990)
Feminine, Masculine and Representation.
Sydney: Allen & Unwin
- Tiggerman, M. & S. J. Kenyon (1998) 'The Hairless Norm: The Removal of Body Hair in Women', Sex Roles 39(11/12): 873-85
- Toerien, Merran & Sue Wilkinson (2003)
'Gender and Body Hair: Constructing the Feminine Woman',
Women's Studies International Forum 26(4): 333-344;
[WWW document] URL
http://www.ensany.ir/storage/Files/20100609133127-28.pdf
- Tondeur, Louis (2009) 'Body Hair'. In Jodi O'Brien (Ed) (2009)
Encyclopedia of Gender and Society. Vol. 1, pp. 79-81.
- Valentine, Virginia (2001) 'The "Notness" Principle - A Semiotic Model of Meanings'
[WWW document] URL
RESTRICTED
- Walters, Margaret (1978)
The Nude Male: A New Perspective. New York: Paddington Press
- Wernick, Andrew (1987)
'From Voyeur to Narcissist: Imaging Men in Contemporary
Advertising'. In Michael Kaufman (Ed)
Beyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure, Power and Change. Toronto: Oxford University Press, pp. 277-97
- White, Philip G. & James Gillett (1994)
'Reading the Muscular Body: A Critical Decoding of
Advertisements in Flex magazine', Sociology of Sport Journal 11(1)
- Wright, Les K. (Ed) (1997)
The Bear Book: Readings in the History and Evolution of a Gay Male Subculture. New York: Harrington Park Press
Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!