A «Virile» France: The Shaving of Women’s Heads During the Liberation
Publisher
:
Payot
Parution date
:
2000
EAN
:
9782228893466
Description
«France will be virile or dead», read an article in an August 1944 newspaper. The myth says that because women slept with the enemy, they were violently punished by vengeful crowds of résistants for a short period of time. After seven years of research, Fabrice Virgili offers evidence to suggest that things happened a bit differently. Contrary to common belief, only 50% of the women who had their heads shaved had sexual relations with Germans. The phenomenon occurred throughout France, in cities and in the countryside, and lasted from 1943 to 1946. Although other European countries (Denmark, Belgium, Italy and Norway) shared in this practice, the situation was most extreme in France, where some 20,000 people—men as well as women—had their heads shaved. La France virile demonstrates how head-shaving carries a sexual meaning, since it was mostly performed on women and hair was considered to be a symbol of femininity. Virgili questions the importance given to sexuality in the denunciation of collaboration, the refusal to see head-shaving as violence, and the transfer of the enemy figure onto women. For the author, head-shaving represented a structural element of a national and male identity largely shaken by war.
Author
Fabrice Virgili : Fabrice Virgili is a historian and is head of research at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique. He is the author of La France “virile”: Des femmes tondues à la Libération (Éditions Payot & Rivages, 2000), published in English as Shorn Women: Gender and Punishment in Liberation France (Berg Publishers, 2002; paperback by New York University Press, 2003).
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