Assignments: Batch One: Assignment 5

Illustrate and critically discuss the symbolic significance attributed to hairiness and hairlessness of the human body.

Guidance

For general guidance about what is expected in your essays for this module, see the general criteria.

What Key Features Do I Look For?

  • Familiarity with relevant texts
  • Evidence - the stronger the better
  • Argument - coherent and balanced
  • Theoretical discussion - relation to relevant theories
  • Understanding of relevant concepts
  • Reflexivity - reflections on methodology
  • Examples - insightfully analysed
  • Style - readability and effective presentation

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

Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!


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