When the iconic and lovable antihero Phoebe Waller-Bridge (aka Fleabag) proclaimed, “Hair is everything!”, the quote resonated with millions of sympathetic viewers around the world. However, Fleabag had no idea how right she really was – in an intersectional society where shaving your scalp is seen as a form of social protest to an offshoot of systemic discrimination, hair is also inherently political.
The body as a place of power
A conversation about the politics of the body cannot truly begin without an honorable mention of Michel Foucault. As a basis for his argument, Foucault examines the body as a target of power: a submissive body must be subdued, transformed, exploited and improved, which implies a new scale of control. This new modality of control revolves around never-ending, continuous coercion exercised in view of a codification that separates time and space. In Foucault’s theories, modern power is a web of non-centralized forces, an interplay of dominance and subordination, and is maintained not through physical restraint and coercion, but through individualized self-surveillance and self-correction to reinforce norms. As Foucault writes,
“There is no need for weapons, physical violence or material coercion.” Just a look. A scrutinizing gaze, a gaze that each individual under his burden will internalize to the point where he becomes his own overseer, each individual exercising this oversight against himself.
This theoretical framework becomes tangible when applied to hair politics—particularly women’s hair. Andrea Dworkin expresses this reality with unwavering clarity, declaring, “In our culture, no part of a woman’s body remains untouched and unchanged.” No feature or limb is spared from the art or pain of improvement. From head to toe, every facial feature of a woman, every part of her body is subject to change and change. This change is an ongoing, repeating process. It is crucial to the economy, the main component of differentiation between men and women, and the most immediate physical and psychological reality of being a woman. From the age of 11 or 12 until her death, a woman will devote much of her time, money, and energy to tying, plucking, painting, and deodorizing. It is commonly and incorrectly said that male transvestites, through the use of makeup and costumes, caricature the women they would become, but any real knowledge of the Romantic ethos makes it clear that these men have penetrated to the core of the experience of womanhood, a romanticized construct.”
The illusion of choice
This reflects the postmodern beauty standard of hairlessness, which systematically suppresses bodily autonomy and freedom and presents this oppression as an individual choice. Influential companies with deep financial resources have invested significantly in reframing hair removal for women as female empowerment, strengthening the cause aesthetic norm and denormalization of the body’s natural characteristics. As Susan Bordo writes ‘Foucault, feminism and the politics of the body‘“Of course, normalization in our culture is constantly mystified and erased by the rhetoric of “choice” and “self-determination” that plays such an important role in commercial representations of diet, exercise, hair and eye color, etc..”
FII
Regardless of a woman’s self-determined hair choice—whether to veil, reveal, shave, wax, color, or cover—society dictates that it be monitored, monitored, and enforced. Hair becomes not just a personal aesthetic choice, but a battlefield where patriarchal, religious and commercial forces come together to exert control over women’s bodies.
Hair as a religious and political weapon
Hair has historically been a deeply political site and a symbol of modesty, sexuality and femininity. Bengali Hindu widows were forced to shave their heads as a symbol of permanent humiliation and were branded as desexualized, dehumanized widows for the rest of their lives.
Hair has historically been a deeply political site and a symbol of modesty, sexuality and femininity. Bengali Hindu widows were forced to shave their heads as a symbol of permanent humiliation and were branded as desexualized, dehumanized widows for the rest of their lives.
India itself is experiencing rampant polarization and religious discrimination, with the state of Karnataka experiencing an outcry in 2022 when one of its colleges banned several Muslim women from attending its classes because they wore a hijab. This mandatory exposure is also a feature of a Hindutva-led tyrannical state where pure contempt and antipathy towards minority religions manifests itself in violent acts of religious disrespect. After Nitish Kumar, the current chief minister of Bihar, pulled down Nusrat Parveen’s hijab during a government function, Aakar Patel, chief executive of Amnesty International India, said, said, “Such actions increase fear, normalize discrimination and undermine the foundations of equality and religious freedom.” This violation requires unequivocal condemnation and accountability. Urgent action must be taken to ensure that no woman is subjected to such degrading treatment.” No matter what a woman’s self-determined hair choice looks like, society dictates that it be monitored, policed, and enforced.
This phenomenon of hair politics extends even across caste and class lines as 250 Dalits living in Banaskantha district of Gujarat were strictly denied hair salon services, forcing them to hide their caste and travel to other villages for care.
These acts are not committed in isolation, but rather reflect a broader trend within a fascist nation to inflict physical humiliation to marginalize minorities and strengthen hegemonic power.
Hair as resistance
But hair can also become a powerful tool of resistance, a symbolic weapon with which the oppressed demand visibility and justice. Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), who have historically struggled with inadequate pay and poor working conditions despite their crucial role in providing basic services to hundreds of Indians, protested against the prevailing pay structures outside the Government Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Fifty days after this agitation, on March 31, 2025, they gave their struggle greater visibility by cutting their hair, shouting their slogans and waving their newly cut hair as an expression of their disappointment and contempt for the state’s lack of responsiveness to their struggles. The act of self-inflicted hair removal reverses the typical cycle of oppression by allowing women to regain control over their own appearance and free themselves from traditional control mechanisms.
Hair as a form of social protest can be exemplified in the movement of thousands of Iranians against the mullahs’ regime. In 2022, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in the custody of the moral police while in custody for violating mandatory hijab laws – for improperly concealing a strand of hair in the scarf. Iranian women began cutting off their locks as a show of solidarity with their sister lost to the state’s hegemonic fascism and as a sign of their grief and mourning. According to Iranian sociologist Chahla Chafiq, the demonstrators’ gesture of mutilated hair is an expression of collective grief.
In a paradigm of rampant commodification of the female form, commercial manipulation, patriarchal surveillance, caste discrimination and ethno-religious domination, hair remains a contested terrain where power, identity and resistance collide. Hair is political – whether it is a site of oppression or a dramatic gesture of resistance.
Reference:
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/kerala-asha-workers-make-emotional-statement-cut-hair-in-protest-against-Government-apathy/article69395776.ece
https://www.theswaddle.com/the-shame-and-scandal-of-indian-womens-hair-follicles
http://ieas-szeged.hu/downtherabbithole/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Bordo.-Foucault-Feminism.pdf
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/12/india-chief-ministers-removal-of-womans-hijab-demands-unequivocal-condemnation/
https://thelogicalindian.com/after-80-years-250-dalits-in-gujarat-village-finally-access-local-barber-services-ending-caste-discrimination/#:~:text=Historical cut in Gujarat’s Banaskantha, of exclusion and emerging change
https://www.dailyo.in/news/why-are-women-in-iran-take-off-hijabs-cutting-their-hair-37357
https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/views/news/hair-humiliation-and-madness-policing-bodies-4000266
Insha Hamid works in film and television and has a strong interest in intersectional feminism, public policy, and how progress can be achieved at the intersection of economic development and social justice. When she’s not immersed in a philosophy book or writing a political article, you can find her headbanging at a death metal gig, shredding a rock song on the drums, or filming a horror movie with her Canon 6D Mark II.