The Construction of Hirsutism and Its Controlling and Disabling Manifestations

TY - CHAP

T1 - The Construction of Hirsutism and Its Controlling and Disabling Manifestations

AU - Tondeur, Louise

PY - 2015/5

Y1 - 2015/5

N2 - Starting with the assumption that hair is a cultural text which can be read, a survey of the literature review demonstrates that there are several overlapping ways of reading hair: psychoanalytical readings stemming from Freud’s ‘The Medusa's Head’; anthropological studies of hair practice and symbolism; a sociological reading often characterised by the analysis of participants’ views about hair processing or hair removal; the use of assemblage of different voices in a range of modes of telling: poetry, prose, photography, cartoons, journalism and short essays; a cultural history of hair, which attempts to create a sense of cohesion or a linear narrative. Another way in which hair is read is through a medical or scientific discourse. This way of reading has particular cross-pollination with sociological studies, partly because sociologists who examine body hair removal and perceptions about so-called normative body hair tend to draw on experience with people who are already involved in some kind of medical interaction, via texts where participants’ responses are the focus of the work. This chapter looks at some of the contemporary literature on body hair, examining ways in which scientific or medical discourses produce a cultural thing called ‘hair’. Focusing on the ways in which hirsutism is constructed and manifests as a form of social control, I discuss the ways in which that social control could be read as disabling.

AB - Starting with the assumption that hair is a cultural text which can be read, a survey of the literature review demonstrates that there are several overlapping ways of reading hair: psychoanalytical readings stemming from Freud’s ‘The Medusa's Head’; anthropological studies of hair practice and symbolism; a sociological reading often characterised by the analysis of participants’ views about hair processing or hair removal; the use of assemblage of different voices in a range of modes of telling: poetry, prose, photography, cartoons, journalism and short essays; a cultural history of hair, which attempts to create a sense of cohesion or a linear narrative. Another way in which hair is read is through a medical or scientific discourse. This way of reading has particular cross-pollination with sociological studies, partly because sociologists who examine body hair removal and perceptions about so-called normative body hair tend to draw on experience with people who are already involved in some kind of medical interaction, via texts where participants’ responses are the focus of the work. This chapter looks at some of the contemporary literature on body hair, examining ways in which scientific or medical discourses produce a cultural thing called ‘hair’. Focusing on the ways in which hirsutism is constructed and manifests as a form of social control, I discuss the ways in which that social control could be read as disabling.

KW - Cultural text, hair, body hair, hirsutism, social control

U2 - 10.1057/9781137456977_4

DO - 10.1057/9781137456977_4

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9781349687688

BT - Rethinking Disability Theory and Practice

A2 - Lesnik-Oberstein, Karin

PB - Palgrave Macmillan

ER -