There is a scene in Abbas Kiarostami’s film Ten when a woman sitting in a car in Tehran traffic gingerly removes her hijab to reveal a shaved head. When I first saw that film in New York City in 2003 I started to cry. feministgiant.substack.com/p/essay-the-ki…
The thought of shaving my hair off tantalized me. It promised an answer to that “or else what?” but only if I stopped running away from ugliness.
I rewatched the film soon after I shaved off my hair and that scene still seized me.
I rewatched the film soon after I shaved off my hair and that scene still seized me.
What does the revolution have to do with hair?During the Irish Revolution, both sides would forcibly shave/cut women’s hair as punishment & to control women’s bodies.The clerics who co-opted the Iranian Revolution claimed enforcing hijab on entire nation’s women as an achievement
Who owns my hair, let alone my body, when a revolution in which women fought alongside men, soon after declaring victory, enforced hijab?
When you shave the hair under that enforced hijab, are you then the revolution of one, defying, disobeying, and disrupting?
When you shave the hair under that enforced hijab, are you then the revolution of one, defying, disobeying, and disrupting?
How is it possible that California became only the first state in the United States as late as 2019 to ban employers and school officials from discriminating against people based on their natural hair? How did it take so long?
The CROWN Act has made it illegal to enforce dress code or grooming policies against hairstyles such as afros, braids, twists, and locks.
When white supremacist patriarchy could punish you for being a Black woman who had an Afro how brave is your home or free your land?
When white supremacist patriarchy could punish you for being a Black woman who had an Afro how brave is your home or free your land?
I learned from an article about intimate partner abuse in the US that while training hair stylists to be on lookout for such abuse, activists advised stylists to be on lookout for men who would accompany women to the salon and dictate what wife/girlfriend could do to her own hair
When you can’t cut your own hair the way you want to without assuring the stylist that your husband approves, how quickly does public Patriarchy become private patriarchy?
How do I signal FUCK YOU, I OWN MY BODY in a way that both Patriarchy and patriarchy understand? And why must I give a fuck? feministgiant.substack.com/p/essay-the-ki…
To disobey I had to collide headlong into the systems and structures of patriarchy that ensure girls obey: religion, law, teachers, norms, beauty standards that sit atop the three-legged stool of capitalism and racism and misogyny.
In the name of the tentacles of patriarchy, women, girls, and femmes are to be contained and controlled; suffocated by the tentacles of the octopus called patriarchy into obedience.
Contained, controlled, suffocated, or else.
Or else what?
Contained, controlled, suffocated, or else.
Or else what?
Patriarchy as an octopus: I explain, with a freshly shaved head
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