Tag: shaving

Hirsute Histories: A Notches Special Issue

By notcheseditor December 1, 2015 Notches Special Issue 0 comments

As Movember passes into Decembeard, Notches is showcasing some of our great publications that reflect upon the significance of sex, sexuality, and the bearded face. Taken together, these four posts illuminate the powerful meanings associated with facial hair, its employment in policing gender and sexuality, and how it fits into broader national and political questions that […]

The Erotics of Shaving in Victorian Britain

By Justin Bengry April 10, 2014 Medicine and Sexuality, United Kingdom 5 comments

Justin Bengry Beardedness, or alternatively clean-shavenness, has long been an important signifier of manliness, inscribing crucial gender and sexual meanings onto the male body. But fashions in shaving are notoriously unstable, even in the nineteenth century, that idyll for the hirsute among us. Beardedness in nineteenth-century Britain, in fact, only […]