Thursday, September 27, 2012

The Bearded Woman

Someone posted a picture of a woman with facial hair on the internet a few days ago and has sparked up quite a conversation. Although bearded women are nothing new, I think that this brings up a good point about masculinity. Facial hair is usually associated with masculinity or the characteristics of a man. But here you have a woman who lets the hair grow which is unusual to most cultures. But her choice to have a beard is based on her religious beliefs. This shows that characteristics of what is manly is not some universal standard. This is an example that even within cultures, in this case American, there are sub-cultures, in this case religious, that have differing views of what it means to be a man or a woman.












To read the original article on CNN blogs, click here.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The bearded woman does break down some of the stereo-types regarding men and masculinity. We forget that facial hair and other characteristics and feautures do not always represent masculinity in relation to men. Does her beard make her a man because society says it represents masculinity?

Whitney Scott

Lela said...

The woman featured in this photo responded to the original post of her photo on Reddit and her response is powerful, as is the apology of the original poster. PLEASE READ this follow-up!

http://www.upworthy.com/dude-passive-agressively-makes-fun-of-sikh-woman-on-the-internet-and-ends-up-eat?c=upw1