Hair and Femininity

This essay discusses the role of body hair removal processes in feminine identity practice through the impact of their media representations. Drawing on historical and current examples from advertising and social media, I find that body hair removal processes are treated as inherent, enforced through visibility and self-regulation, and present a false dichotomy of choice. I argue that as a result, feminine identity often unavoidably engages with body hair processes, either as conformity or resistance.

A foundational look at hair reveals certain properties that make it suitable for the purpose of identity practices. In The Body Social, Anthony Synnott dedicates a chapter to hair, and writes that “hair not only symbolizes the self but…it is the self,” referring to the fact that hair is essentially dead cells emerging from the body (Synnott, 1993: 122). While being so personal, it is at the same time visible and public, enabling it as a site that one can deposit meaning onto. Hair is also “malleable” (Synnott, 1993: 103). This malleability, coupled with its continuous growth, allows one to alter it into different forms. At the same time, the constant growth means that these alterations have to be done constantly if a particular form is to be preserved, thereby making the treatment of hair a continuous process. As such, “the metonymical relationship between hair, bodies and identities means that hair makes a good substitute for the whole person” (Cheang, 2008: 36).

These general traits apply to body hair, but body hair historically and presently has been the receiver of different attitudes as compared to head hair, and these attitudes intersect with gender. Synnott elaborates on the contrast between men and women in their approaches to head versus body hair; as per the general trend, at least in the time of writing in 1993, men “minimize their head hair” and “maximize their body hair”, whereas “women maximize their head hair” and “minimize their body hair” (Synnott, 1993: 113). A change in this order, he believes, is usually considered deviant from norms:

The belief that ‘a girl isn’t a girl without her hair’ may seem, and may even be, extreme; but surely it couldn't be said for men. Their gender identity is usually not that tangled up with head hair, but it may be strongly dependent on facial hair (beards and moustaches) and chest hair as symbols of masculinity. Thus head hair and body hair are opposite for men, and they are the opposite of norms for women—for whom facial hair and chest hair are usually ‘unwanted’, while head hair, as we have seen, is part of the cultural definition of femininity.

(Synnott, 1993: 105)

The removal of body hair has thus been traditionally considered the normal standard for women. One study finds that out of a sample of around two hundred women, “the majority (around 80%) remove their leg and/or underarm hair at least occasionally. Two types of reasons for shaving emerged: feminine/attractiveness reasons and social/normative reasons. Most women start shaving for the latter reasons but continue to shave for the former reasons” (Basow, 1991). Even though most women start shaving body hair in order to be more feminine or attractive, that is not the lasting reason. It is difficult to find anything inherent in the practice of hair removal that ties it to women, nor is it in the essence of women to have no body hair. But from the desire to avoid the “symbols of masculinity” and thereby identify as not a man, hair removal starts to be tied with femininity.

Synnott does not specifically consider transgender women, for whom the removal of body hair, and especially facial hair, is considered not just unfeminine but necessary in order to be accepted as women. Examining public attitudes towards the body hair of transgender women sheds a new light on how the social norm of hair removal is understood by society. Writing from experience, Juno Roche says that “hair removal for trans women isn’t just about vanity of feeling gender-stigmatized, it’s an issue of personal safety” (Roche, 2017). She refers to numerous instances of transgender women being targets for “abuse and violence,” for which the evidence is widespread: one study, for instance, finds that transgender people experience high rates of physical and sexual violence, as well as that these individuals “consistently reported that the violence they had experienced was primarily attributable to their gender identity or expression” (Roche, 2017; Testa et. al., 2012).

What Roche reveals is that the meaning of the process of hair removal, which originates as a social standard, has been extended in the view of some people who subscribe to the standard. The evidence of the absence of the process, in this extreme case, causes third parties to feel anger at the nonconformity. It is now tied to the meaning of being a woman; recalling that hairlessness is not inherent to femininity, the tie is artificial, yet treated in a way that is real and violent.

A similar example can be seen in an interview of Alok Vaid-Menon, a gender non-conforming artist and influencer, who expresses that others take issue with the fact that Vaid-Menon has hair on their body and think that “if you want to look convincing as a woman, then you should remove your body hair.” At the same time, Vaid-Menon acknowledges experiences like Roche’s, where people think removing body hair will allow them to be accepted as feminine without question and therefore feel safe (Lubitz, 2018). This only further points to the idea that body hair removal is treated as inherent to femininity in all genders.

The transition between the two reasons Basow names, namely from attractiveness to social, initially seems opaque. For a given individual who participates in this process, what is the reasoning they might follow that causes the change in motivation? Both historical evidence and theory might be useful here, pointing to the idea of visibility as a factor that makes the social standard more unavoidable. For starters, although body hair removal has been practiced since ancient times, how widespread and discussed the practice is now is a relatively recent phenomenon. Studies suggest that “few US women, prior to 1915, removed their leg or underarm hair. This may have been because so little of women's bodies was on public display in the US at the time” based on dressing customs (Toerien and Wilkinson, 2003). With the evolution of fashion over time, more skin was regularly displayed. Basow finds a correlation between sleeveless and sheer sleeve dresses being fashionable and advertisements targeting women’s armpit hair, as well as shorter skirts being fashionable and advertisements targeting women’s leg hair (Basow, 1991). This correlation suggests two things. Firstly, the practice of hair removal corresponded with what parts of the body were typically exposed. Secondly, it opens the possibility that advertisements had some discourse-creating power, that they both propagated and introduced new ideas into society.

Interestingly, Basow finds that following the widespread custom of leg-baring dresses and sheer stockings, women removed their leg and armpit hair without question or external influence; “ads no longer had to convince women to remove body hair. Instead, they concentrated on proving that one product was superior to all others” (Basow, 1991). There was already an assumption that greater visibility of skin meant ensuring that that skin was hairless, so advertisements did not need to emphasize the process of hair removal. Rather, to differentiate themselves from others, they focused on the product, thereby detailing and comparing the tools of the process instead of the process itself.

The social message that hair removal processes are necessary for femininity was now unsaid and implied, and consequently, made more acute through the implication that it goes without saying. This phenomenon fits in with Foucault’s theory of decentralized power and discipline enforced through self-regulation. In Questions on Geography, he says that there is not a single, centralized “unique instrument” of power.

In reality, power in its exercise goes much further, passes through much finer channels, and is much more ambiguous, since each individual has at hits disposal a certain power, and for that very reason can also act as the vehicle for transmitting a wider power. The reproduction of the relations of production is not the only function served by power.

(Foucault 1977: 72)

Likewise, as he says in The Eye of Power, to maintain and exercise power,

There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interioris¬ing to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance over, and against, himself.

(Foucault 1977; 155)

Advertising, through its implicit messaging, plays the role of the gaze, whereas any actual controlling is done by individuals themselves. They transmit the standard simply by being in society with a processed body. In the modern day, the reach of social media and image-based online spaces means that visibility is greater than ever before. We see more bodies, and more skin, than we normally would. This means that we are surrounded by more “finer channels” and are exposed to a greater influence. Thus, we are much more susceptible to being receivers of social messages.

In a society where bodies are so visible and the image of a particular processed body is widespread, one feels overwhelmed to make a choice regarding it. The discussion so far already hints at how the standard of hairlessness is actually enforced, through the idea that if one’s femininity is unacceptable if not accompanied by body hair removal. Vaid-Menon illustrates this pointedly while recalling their experience in a trans support group, when the attitudes of others in the group would vary based on the clothes Vaid-Menon wore. When they went to the session “wearing stereotypically "male" clothes, people would be confused, they'd talk to [them] as if [they were] a man.” On the other hand, “when [they] wore a dress, they treated [them] like a woman” yet complained that they should remove their body hair if they wanted to be “taken seriously” (Vaid-Menon, 2019). This suggests that the presence of body hair is in conflict with all the other elements of femininity; when dressed in stereotypically male clothing, Vaid-Menon’s body hair would be an indication that they are masculine, and their own identity is not taken into account. When wearing a dress, the dress would somehow compensate for their body hair, but still be insufficient to justify their identity due to the presence of body hair.

There is thus a false dichotomy presented, wherein one must choose to either be feminine or not remove body hair.

I now analyze a pair of modern advertisements to provide more substantial material to discuss the content and impact of advertising. The first one, a hair removal cream jingle from Veet, is the epitome of the enforcement of the social standard through targeting feminine identity, implicit messaging, and false dichotomy.

The advertisement starts with a woman – the Veet girl – noticing another’s struggles with shaving her leg hair, and the Veet girl starts singing: “You’re not a boy, and that’s not a toy; so why the razor? Why?” She then expresses disappointment in the woman’s hair: “You see your stubble; it just killed that bubble! Because your hair is so poky, so poky, poky,” as she hands the other woman a cactus. The chorus then kicks it, singing “Don’t shave it, just Veet it.”

The focus of the advertisement is clearly that using a razor is unfeminine; having hair or stubble makes one similar to a boy. It is never mentioned that body hair itself is unfeminine, but heavily implied: the alternative to shaving is not not shaving, but rather, using Veet’s product. By focusing on the product and not the process of hair removal, the advertisement conveys the necessity of the process. With this, the advertisement suggests that one must be not hairy and not poky in order to be feminine.

This example also introduces a new concept that is useful in seeing how traditional representations of body hair removal signify control, and that is through the metaphor of smoothness.

Traditional media, even though it implies a body hair process, do not actually display the process. For instance, shaving cream and razor ads targeted towards women show already hairless bodies being shaven, including the Veet advertisement (it shows a bubble being pricked by a hairless leg). In contrast, men’s advertisements clearly show hair which is then taken off. This carries the expectation that to be feminine, one must not only attain hairlessness, but persistently possess hairlessness. They must take part in the process without evidence of the process. These media also rely on and convey the metaphor of smoothness, as seen with Veet’s cactus imagery. In effect, the message is that hairless is smooth and smooth is feminine, therefore hairless is feminine. Basow links the connection between smoothness and femininity to the idea that smoothness is neutral and taming and minimizes natural sexuality. She uses pubic hair as a case in point:

…the removal of body hair may have served to maintain a certain distinction between the genders. It also may have served to de-emphasize women’s adult status, since increased body hair and the development of underarm hair are secondary sex characteristics that develop after puberty. Since hair has long had sexual associations for men and for women, its removal also may have conveyed two closely associated sexual messages- that a woman’s mature sexuality is controlled at the same time as her “tamed” sensuality is on display (Brownmiller, 1984; Freedman, 1986). The current taboo against showing pubic hair reflects this process. Women’s bathing suits increasingly reveal the pubic area; women now are encouraged to remove or bleach those hairs that show. Visible hair, not the pubic area itself, is too risque to reveal.

(Basow, 1991)

Synnott also writes that “women shave or pluck their pubic areas, so as to seem even more sexless and infantile”: if hair is a symbol for sexuality, removal of pubic hair is ridding of sexuality, and keeping it under constant process is controlling sexuality (Synnott 1993. The hairless body is thus a controlled body, and because it is expected to always be in that state, it is also a controllable body.

Foucault believes that where there is control, there rises resistance. Accordingly, where following hair removal processes is being controlled, we might see resistance taking the form of not following these processes. Taking Synnott’s discussion of head hair as a parallel example, he gives examples subcultures and rock group adopting and creating distinct hair styles, often extreme, to emphasize their deviation and aversion to control. For body, armpit, and pubic hair, practices like dyeing can certainly occasionally be seen, but the act of not removing body hair is the basic form of resistance. At this point, I would like to bring in another brand in comparison, whose advertising has quite a different messaging.

Billie is a razor brand who pride themselves on “[putting] body hair on the big screen” for women and “[making] the internet a little fuzzier” (Billie). Their advertising content contains models with all levels of body hair, whether the model is shaving or simply there. In particular, the first video on Billie’s “Project Body Hair” page features models in this manner. At the end, the wording appears: “So, however, whenever, if ever, you want to shave, we’ll be here,” with two models raising their arms with their hands held, one of them with shaved armpits and the other without.

While they ultimately advertise a product to remove hair, the message in the video is opposite to that of Veet. Most importantly the emphasize on choice seems to subvert the false dichotomy presented by Veet and other media. It does not highlight its own product based on how close it gets the user to smoothness. Finally, with the final image of the women, it does not suggest that body hair makes one more or less feminine than the other.

With that being said, Billie appeals to the audience in a significantly different way. Firstly, the brand makes itself stand out by clearly contrasting itself with brands like Veet, displaying its social motivations, and giving the message that it is willing to address what other brands are not. As such, their means of claiming their product is superior is not based on its proximity to smoothness, but rather through moral signaling. Secondly, it is worth noticing that their website and videos are all aesthetically pleasing, with minimalist design, warm red and orange tones, soft lighting, and fade filters. Evidently, the marketing is artistic.

The styling embraces an indie aesthetic that appeal to a certain group of people. Likewise, representations of hair positivity on social media advocate for accepting the so-called natural body; drawings and photographs of body hair are often shown in an artistic way. For instance, figures such as Vaid-Menon have a majority of their posts showing them modelling, wearing makeup and characteristic clothing, and posing. The message is that hair is beautiful, which still casts the body in a moral light. These features suggests that the appeal to the audience is an aesthetic and moral one, implying that this is the way to oneself as different and immune to social control.

While these trends swap the hairless figures in the media with hairy figures, the meta-purpose and style of the media images doesn’t change. The body is still presented as a site for discourse although the message has changed from, hairless is feminine to hairy is also feminine. As a result, someone who constantly sees this messaging has to inevitably choose the manner in which they would express femininity, either by conforming to the historical standard or by resisting it. Either manner has a greater political and social meaning that is in opposition to the other. Not shaving, for instance, might now be done as a way of identifying oneself against the standard of people who shave and with the standard of people who do not, and as a means of resistance.

Hair removal, which started as a purely social standard, evolved to be considered inherent to femininity, a view which is enforced and propagated through visibility and portrayal of a dichotomous choice between hairiness and femininity. As a result, in a society where the process of removing body hair is normal and pervasive, growing body hair also becomes a process.

As a means of conclusion, we can consider the implications hair and femininity have on the meaning of the natural body. There is a tendency to think of the natural body as the unmodified one. But perhaps the natural body could instead be a body uninfluenced by discourse, that is immune to fluctuations in what the media represents. It is, however, still an ideal.

God Himself Can't Part Us Now

This essay is concerend with a passage occurring in the second half of The Plague by Albert Camus, when Rieux and Father Paneloux have just witnessed the gruesome death of the child, Jacques Othon. In this dialogue, their opposing stances regarding the plague and Jacques’ death are revealed through their attempt to find common ground. I discuss how this dialogue relates to Camus’ greater theme that God is insufficient to make sense of the plague, and more generally, of the absurd world. I start by briefly describing the philosophy of Camus and specifically his view of Søren Kierkegaard’s take on religion. Then, I show how Paneloux’s adoption of the Kierkegaardian leap of faith, the response of the townspeople, and specifically the response of Rieux illustrate Camus’ disapproval of the leap of faith.

Camus’ major tenet is that life is absurd, which is caused by the two conflicting facts that humans have a natural desire to seek meaning and rational explanations, but the world is irrational and does not offer such an explanation or meaning. The plague in the novel is an example of this: it begins suddenly, disease and death occur seemingly without reason, and although the inhabitants of Oran try to find explanations of various kinds, they are unable to understand it. The death of Jacque, showing the senseless suffering of an innocent child, is an even more acute example. Camus insists that the ideal response to this is to acknowledge both these horns and live in the face of them without appealing to some higher meaning or chance of reconciliation, focus on maximizing the present, and take responsibility for one’s actions. He calls such a person the absurd man. When one of the conflicting horns is embraced to the exclusion of the other, Camus calls this philosophical suicide. Meanwhile, Kierkegaard’s philosophy on religion involves three spheres of choices that can be taken in the face of life, namely the aesthetic, ethical, and religious. The first two spheres are unable to encapsulate all the qualms of life, but the religious sphere is. It provides a means to deal with absurd situations that require suspension of ethical norms, but in ways that are irrational and inexplicable. The caveat is that there is no natural or logical step to get to the religious sphere from the previous two. Rather, it requires a leap of faith and embracing of the irrational. For Camus, this means embracing the horn that the world is irrational and giving up the desire for rational explanation; it would be philosophical suicide, and not the right response to the absurd.

In The Plague, we witness Paneloux adopt the values of Kierkegaard. The dialogue in this passage marks a key transition in his attitude towards the plague. Previously, he has tried to defend the plague by the saying that it is a punishment for sin, particularly for not being devoted to God enough. In his first sermon, he tells the audience that God “grew weary of waiting…and now He has turned His face away from us.” He criticizes the townspeople for thinking it was enough to only go to church once a week and follow the practices mindlessly, and, addressing them as “you” to enforce his separation from them, he says that “now [they] are learning [their] lesson,” and that the pestilence would force them to see life with a new perspective. However, witnessing the painful death of Jacques forces him to reconsider his views. This is hinted at in the fact that he follows Rieux out of the hospital room and attempts to talk to him in the first place, when he says “in a low voice” that he understands why Rieux had an outburst. This suggests some reticence in him, in contrast to how sure he was of himself before. Moreover, it is “obvious” that he is “deeply moved.” The exact nature of this shift is elucidated when he says that the death was “revolting because it passes our human understanding. But perhaps we should love what we cannot understand.” This statement clearly demonstrates Paneloux on the edge of the leap of faith. He now struggles to defend the plague as punishment upon observing the suffering of a small child and is now contemplating if he should give up his defense and instead deem the entire situation as something that cannot be understood by humans. He still wants to keep faith in God, so that would require that he accept the situation, accept that it is beyond our control, and love God and His irrational ways.

He solidifies and conveys his thoughts in the second sermon. Firstly, he speaks more gently than the first sermon, and “a yet more noteworthy change was that instead of saying ‘you’ he now said ‘we.’” Instead of his former accusatory tone, he acknowledges that their experience is an evil one that they must go through together. He admits that the awful sickness, suffering, and death of a child is evil and cannot be justified, not even by believing that the child would find “an eternity of bliss awaiting him” to compensate. Rather, Paneloux now believes that they have to “learn” from the plague, and “face honestly the terrible problem of a child’s agony.” At the end, he offers the listeners an ultimatum, to “believe everything or deny everything.” Thus, Paneloux’s approach now is to accept the entire situation along with its evil wholly and continue believing in God’s plan without seeking rational explanation. In this way, he adopts the leap of faith.

With that being said, Camus’ own disapproval of the leap of faith ideology is revealed with Rieux’s response to Paneloux. Rieux can be considered as an example of the absurd man. He declines to simply love what he cannot understand and ignore his desire for explanation, as Paneloux suggests he do: Rieux says he “shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.” This shows he is unwilling to ignore his desire for explanation. The response also raises the problem of evil, which is that if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good, then why does evil exist in the world? Paneloux, as explained above, previously thought that the evil was justified because it was what we deserve. However, having now witnessed the extent and unfairness of it, he longer tries to justify it, but he cannot answer the problem other than saying that we cannot understand it and must accept it, and calls it “grace”. At least, Paneloux now admits that death and disease are bad, and here he sees common ground with Rieux as they would both like to reduce evil. However, he mistakes it as “working for man’s salvation” when all Rieux wants is just to work for better health. Thus, differences remain between Rieux and Paneloux. At the end, Rieux “[refrains] from meeting the priest’s eyes”: their conversation does not end with resolution. Paneloux still thinks he needs to convince Rieux that it is all grace, and Rieux has not been able to convince Paneloux that he does not need to be convinced, and that they are “fighting [death and disease] together” regardless. While Rieux is more concerned with the task at hand, Paneloux – although he still fulfills his duties on the task force – is preoccupied with figuring out his stance on God, which seems irrelevant to Rieux. With the resistance of Rieux to Paneloux’s argument and Paneloux’s inability to understand that the task at hand remains the same, Camus displays his disapproval of irrational belief in God.

Furthermore, Camus highlights that the leap of faith is insufficient in enabling us to keep living in the face of an absurd calamity like the plague, which is one of the causes of his disapproval. This can be seen through the narrative placement of the sermon, juxtaposition between Paneloux and Tarrou, and Rieux’s final statement to Paneloux.

Paneloux takes their conversation here very seriously and insists that Rieux attend his next sermon right after this passage. However, instead of directly describing the sermon, the narration first talks about the various superstitions and fallacies that have become popular in Oran, such as “predictions…based on far-fetched arithmetical calculations,” comparisons to former plagues, and “apocalyptic jargon.” In this way, “superstition had usurped the place of religion,” because people just wanted explanations that were novel and reassuring. During the sermon itself, Rieux loses his attention and then is unable to follow Paneloux’s words properly, despite Paneloux’s insistence that the topic would be of interest to him. Both of these facts diminish the importance of the sermon from the perspective of the townspeople, including Rieux, and indicate that religion is not helpful for them in living dealing with the plague.

To illustrate the same point, a parallel can be drawn between Paneloux and Tarrou. Tarrou is very irreligious, but he is still trying to be a saint, particularly “a saint without God,” by fighting the plague. Paneloux and Tarrou end up on the same task force, even though Paneloux is “working for man’s salvation” as he claims in this passage. Paneloux and Tarrou, religious and irreligious, both end up essentially doing the same actions despite their different approaches. This discloses how Paneloux, despite his claiming to accept the irrational, is dissatisfied with merely accepting whatever is given in the world and is spurred to action. With this, Camus suggests that action is more fulfilling than the belief in God, and faith cannot provide the answers or relief that one naturally seeks. This suggestion is made more precise by comparing them both to Rieux, who works unassumingly and relentlessly. Tarrou tells him it is “less ambitious” to pursue being a saint or hero than to work out of duty, out of interest in “being a man,” like Rieux does. Rieux is shown to be the absurd man, who does what he must do simply out of human duty, without appeal to a higher purpose, may that be salvation, sainthood, or some other motive. He simply does his job, both as a doctor and out of duty to other humans. Therefore, Camus proposes that in the face of the absurd, God is not only insufficient to help one live, but unnecessary for one to continue working as one must. Rieux’s last words in this passage sum up this idea: “God himself can’t part us now.” Rieux, an extension of Camus’ own beliefs, wants to tell Paneloux that regardless of faith, their position in the absurd world remains the same. They are both thrown into this plague together without explanation and all they can do is put in their best efforts to ease the suffering. This is what “unites” them; Paneloux’s faith in God does not change this situation and will not provide some hidden explanation for the world that is only accessible through faith. The only way to live is by “being a man.”

This passage therefore juxtaposes Paneloux’s adoption of the Kierkegaardian leap of faith with Rieux who represents Camus’ ideal of the absurd man. Camus first highlights the contrast between the leaper and the absurd man by the unresolved conflict between Paneloux and Rieux. Then, the half-hearted response of the townspeople to Paneloux’s new attitude illustrates how his sermon is not useful in helping them live in face of the plague. Finally, the parallel between Paneloux, Tarrou, and Rieux shows how they end up doing the same action despite their different goals, and Rieux’s way of living is the most fulfilling. In this manner, Camus expresses his criticism of the Kierkegaardian leap of faith as an insufficient response to the absurdity of our world, and instead urges us to embrace our situation through responsibility and finding solace in the shared human experience.

Beyond Her Measure: Epictetian Values (or the Lack Thereof) in Medea

In Euripedes’ Medea, the titular character is driven to murder as a result of betrayal by her husband, Jason. In many ways, it seems like Medea allows her emotions to get the better of her, although the driving factor behind it may be strong. This essay attempts to shed light on Medea through a Stoic lens by considering the ways in which she shuns the advice contained in the Handbook of Epictetus. Analyzing her expectations of Jason, her oscillation between love and revenge in her speeches, and the ambiguity of the extent of her control shows that her noncompliance with key points in the Handbook cause her tragedy to be of much greater extent than it could have been. This is not to pass an overall moral judgement on the permissibility of her actions, but only to consider how the Stoic advice may have provided a means of restraint on them.

To begin, from the Stoic perspective, Medea’s misconceived expectations of Jason is at the root of her problems. The Handbook states that “what is insulting is not the person who abuses you or hits you, but the judgement about them that they are insulting…what irritates you is your own belief.” Medea’s feeling of betrayal of love could accordingly be seen as conflating her judgement of Jason with Jason himself. Her disappointment arises as a result of expecting him to stay loyal to her and keep the pledge of marriage in terms of not taking another woman. Wishing death upon him, though, is a cancellation of the person, targeting the object of judgement and not the judgement itself. Additionally, Epictetus stresses the neutrality of relationships. For instance, one must uphold duties to one’s father even if he may be abusive, because nature does not “determine that you have a good father…only that you have a father.” He believes that “you will be harmed at just that time at which you take yourself to be harmed.” According to this advice, it is Medea’s choice to be injured by Jason.

At this point, it is important to consider Jason’s perspective to avoid the problem of blaming the victim. Perhaps in his view, he was acting in a manner that he considered appropriate for the relation between himself and Medea, not actually inflicting harm. Epictetus might say that there is no basis on which Medea should expect otherwise from him, because nature does not determine she has a husband who gives up everything for love, but just a husband. In that case, as a neutral husband, Jason’s perspective would influence what his duties should be. Indeed, we see that Jason considers marriage as a pledge for social and financial responsibility. His objective in marrying the princess is not because he “despised [Medea’s] bed”, is “mad with longing for a new bride,” or wants more children. Rather, he wants that the family “live well and not be poor” and that his sons are raised in a manner fitting to his royal background so as to secure their future, instead of living like outcasts (570-581). In fact, Jason is acting in according to another of Epictetus’ teachings, which states that being “given a wife and a child” you may follow your duties to them, but “if the captain calls, let all those go and run to the boat without turning back.” This suggests that familial duties are secondary to a higher duty, whatever that may be to – God, the universe, or society. We might say that Jason treats this advice as permission to give up personal and emotional obligation to his wife and children in favor of financial and social obligation. Effectively, he has made a tradeoff, and Medea happens to favor the former more. She is unable to come to terms with this because perhaps she has not “[discovered] the appropriate actions to expect” from Jason.

Moreover, she accuses him of not only doing wrong, but of defending his wrong by clever speaking. In doing so, she goes against the Stoic value of assuming good faith. This is detailed in the advice that “when someone acts badly towards you or speaks badly of you, remember that he does or says it in the belief that it is appropriate for him to do so.” In other words, one must assume that the other party acts in a way that matches their understanding of the situation and tell oneself that “that’s how it seemed to him.” If their understanding is wrong, then they are harmed by their own misunderstanding. The truth of the situation is unchanged, and thus there is no need to grieve. As a result, Medea cannot see what Jason sees, which is that he is “looking out for [her] best interests” so that she could have money in her exile. He says that even in his new marriage he has “acted wisely and with restraint, and with the greatest love” towards Medea and their children (465-471). Even though Medea’s anger toward Jason may be justified, it blinds her from seeing a perspective other than her own, and this leads her to more extremity than she would have otherwise gone to.

One could argue here that this advice induces complacency and attempts to convince someone in an abusive relationship to stay in it. However, in the case of Medea, we need to examine what exactly is the cause of her anger. As we have seen, Jason claims that his actions were in the best intentions for Medea and their sons, and there is no damage actually done to her practical situation. The other possibility is that she suffers emotionally. Even then, it is not so clear whether she is really acting out of heartbreak or betrayal, or actually following a logical argument with the ulterior motive for revenge. This can be studied in two of her speeches, firstly regarding Jason, and secondly when addressing her children.

Medea’s speech to the Chorus and to Jason does not focus on love and heartbreak as much as on claiming ownership and revenge. In the beginning, her words invoke pity as she says she has nothing to “gain by being alive,” and has no fatherland, no home, no place to turn from troubles” (819-821). Then, her speech accelerates into aggression. She wishes death upon Jason, and also upon the new bridge whom she calls an “evil woman” who “must die an evil death. Here, she starts adopting the tone of a male warrior, proclaiming the importance of having a “glorious reputation” (827-833). Her desire to inflict punishment and for glory reveal an obsession with others, which fits Epictetus’ description of someone who has misunderstood what is in their control. He believes that “if you think that…things not your own are your own, you will be thwarted, miserable, and upset, and will blame both gods and men.” When Medea is making the most passionate of her speeches, she focuses on wanting control and revenge, but only in front of other characters, she turns to victim discourse. For instance, when talking to Jason directly she says “I’m female, that’s all. Tears are in my nature” (953). The dramatic irony present contrasts her male warrior-like speech moments earlier, and clearly, she puts on an act to manipulate Jason. This is more concisely visible when she comments on the lives of women in general, saying that “we have to buy a husband: spend vast amounts of money, just to get a master for our body” (233-245). She invokes a master-slave relationship with this terminology, but an inverted one, in which the master is bought. Then, even as she highlights the suffering of women by saying a woman stands to “lose her reputation,” “has to be a prophet,” and if she is not admired “it’s best to die,” she stirs in diction that implies control by saying that husbands have to “bear the yoke” (242-246). A yoke is a collar fastened over the neck of animals for pulling a plough or cart. The phrase thus compares a husband to a plough-pulling animal whereas the woman is hinted to be the master. So, even when trying to evoke pity for herself, she evokes the image of herself in control at the same time, or perhaps, more prominently. In relation to the Handbook, thinking she owns things that she does not, such as the actions and lives of Jason and the princess, is a misconception that leads her to greater suffering and misery, feeding into her desire for revenge even more and leading her to more dramatic actions.

After all, if she is so moved by love one might think she should not have been driven to kill her children, since they are the only symbol of her supposed love. It seems that her desire for revenge and control is stronger, and in following it, she breaks another one of Epictetus’ guidelines, that of attempting to control people other than oneself. The Handbook states that “you are foolish if you want your children and your wife and your friends to live forever, since you are wanting things to be up to you that are not up to you, and things to be yours that are not yours.” Here, Medea does not want her children to live forever – very much the opposite – but she still claims the lives of her sons as something that she owns. She thinks that killing her children herself is better than the possibility that her enemies might kill them, so she refuses to leave them at the mercy of [her] enemies’ outrage” (1085). She'd rather kill them once and for all then have it be out of her control, even despite the possibility that they might still live. In this way, her wanting to be in charge of things that are not up to her leads to the unnecessary death of her children at her own hands.

When she actually looks at her children, though, she gets a soft heart as she doubts if she should go ahead with her plan. She questions why she should let herself “feel twice the pain” she wants to cause Jason by harming them, and then says “farewell to [her] plans” (1069-1070). However, she shortly catches herself and chides herself for being “a weakling, to let a soothing word enter” her mind (1075). Again, she briefly asks her own spirit to spare them, saying that they will bring her joy, before again deciding not to be weak. This entire occurrence illustrates how she goes back and forth between affection for her children and her desire to punish Jason. While this seems like an understandable dilemma, it is made even more pressing when considering her manipulation of her children. She directly lies to her own children when she tells them that they “have a city and home, in which [they will] live forever parted from [their] mother,” as she is separated from them in exile (1042-1044). However, at this point she has mostly made up her mind to kill them. This manner of speech is thus largely metaphorical to indicate the separation between them. In reality, they are not actually going to have a city and home; in fact, they will not even be alive. She expresses sadness at being separated from them as though she is not the cause of the separation. Moreover, her way of speaking resembles her false upset act that she put on in front of Jason. But while the purpose of falsity made sense for Jason in order to convince him about her intentions, she does not have any purpose to do so in front of her children, since they are helpless. Rather, it seems like a final betrayal to them before she kills them. This suggests that she is not merely in a dilemma about choosing what to do, but in actively in a dissonant state that leaves her confused about where lying is necessary and when not. In such a manner, Medea overstepping the boundaries of her control leads to her losing control of her own cognition. The irony in this situation brings back the latter half of the same Stoic advice regarding wanting things to be up to you that are not up to you, which is that “whoever wants to be free” should “not want or avoid anything that is up to others. Otherwise he will necessarily be a slave.” Medea’s apparent lack of grip on her own awareness, caused by her excessive focus on having power over others, could thus be seen her becoming a slave to her own desire.

With that being said, there is still some doubt as to whether she is really a slave in this regard, or if she still has some jurisdiction over herself. Right after she sends her children away, she laments that her “spirit is stronger than [her] mind’s deliberations: this is the source of mortals’ deepest grief” (1102-1104). She still seems to have some awareness of her rational side. However, the word that is translated as “stronger” originally could mean either simply “stronger,” or “controlling.” In the first case, her spirit would indeed be overwhelming her mind’s rational thought, which is something she is unable to help any longer. Then, it is more reasonable to call her a slave to her desires. However, in the second case of the word, it implies much more cognition about both her spirit and her mind’s deliberations, and an allowance on Medea’s part in letting one aspect be in charge of the other. As seen both here and in other parts of the play, this ambiguity remains. However, it is reminiscent of an advice in the Handbook that describes how each thing has its measure that must be preserved, for otherwise if you step beyond the measure “you will in the end be carried as if over a cliff.” Medea steps beyond her measure in her desire to win over things that are external to her. Because “there is no limit to a thing once it is beyond its measure,” she finds herself in a predicament where the boundary is no longer clear, and she loses sight of rational action.

Medea is clearly impacted by Jason’s actions, but she allows them to take her beyond the capacities of her rational thinking and ability to understand different perspectives. This drives her towards drastic action that ends up in the death of children, which might have been avoided if the Stoic principles were followed. She conflates her expectations of Jason with his facticity, preventing her from understanding the other side. Then, looking into her swaying back and forth between victimhood and desire for power reveals that the latter is more dominant, and her attempt to master things traps her in a cycle of suffering and vengeance. Finally, her communication with her children and ambiguity of how much agency she has reveals that her desire for control has made her step out of the boundaries of her reason. In these ways, Medea eschews several guidelines from the Handbook of Epictetus, and it culminates in her plight being a much more violent and tragic one. Whether her actions are morally justified remains a separate debate, but Medea, or at least her victims, may have certainly benefitted from Stoic restraint.

De Beauvoir’s Nihilist and Other Classes of Man

Examination of Douglas Kahn’s Analysis of John Cage and Silence

John Cage was, amongst many things, an artist primarily known for his music composition and philosophy. After being exposed to music from a young age, starting and then dropping out of a college degree in writing, and an experiential trip to Europe, Cage returned to the U.S. in 1931 at the age of 38, after which the majority of his notable works were produced. Before this time, he had been exposed to architecture, painting, poetry, music, and notable theater, the last of which fascinated him in its ability to produce pleasure from "the multiplicity of simultaneous visual and audible events” all happening together (Cage). While, or perhaps given that, he is considered one of the leading figures of the post-World War II avant-garde, many of his works generated controversy. An example of this can be seen in Douglas Kahn’s commentary in his 1997 essay titled “John Cage: Silence and Silencing.” While Kahn does an excellent job in exploring Cage’s history, influences, and intents, the conclusions he arrives at are dismissive of the intricacies that lead Cage to his philosophical and musical works. This paper will attempt to argue that Kahn, in his critique of Cage – particularly of his magnum opus, 4’33”, and generally of his political message –, employs a judgement that is too rigid and unable to accept the growth in Cage’s philosophy and the open-endedness of his work.

One issue that Kahn brings up with Cage is with particular respect to 4’33”. The score of this piece instructs the composer(s) not to play the instruments for the duration of the piece which is four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Its first performance was in 1952 by David Tudor. In a podcast for NPR, journalist Will Hermes describes, “after 30 seconds of silence, Tudor resets the stopwatch and times another two minutes, 23 seconds of silence, then another one minute, 40 seconds of silence.” Then he asks, “But is it silence?” The intention of Cage, as assumed by most, is for the audience to eventually shift their attention from what is onstage to the sounds of themselves and their environment. Kahn claims that the piece imposes silence onto the audience in an unnatural way. For example, he states that in all of the performances of the piece that he has attended, at some point members of the audience, probably confused, start talking and making sounds, becoming “ironically noisy,” such as clearing their throats, coughing, or muttering (Kahn 560). He says that the nature of the work makes it seem to the individual audience member that it is acceptable to be noisy in this manner, but the piece’s own silence, acting as a contrast to the sound of the audience, then immediately manufactures the realization that it is in fact unacceptable to be disrupting the piece by being noisy.

However, all of this can be regarded as an intended consequence of the piece. The response of the collective audience is out of the control of anyone, even the audience members themselves individually, thus becoming an element that is left to chance. Interaction with the environment, as well as other humans, is bound to be different from person to person, which reinforces the personal experience that the piece is meant to create for each listener. Julian Dodd creates more concrete definitions of two ways that 4’33” can be read. The first way is that it is a work that is “sonically replete,” meaning that “the work is a type whose tokens include within themselves the very sounds that they frame” (Dodd 633). He presents the analogy that an artist creating this type of situation is like a painter showing an empty frame, and saying that their artwork is whatever can be seen through the frame. The second way, which Dodd calls simply “the silent work” and is what he agrees with, is that the sounds that the audience hears are “framed by that performance” but are not part of it, and are instead just occurring at the same time (633). Unlike the first interpretation, which implies that extraneous sounds would become distractions from the work, this second approach considers the performance more open-endedly. In fact, he argues, considering it to be sonically replete takes the right of performance away from the performer, and it becomes an “aggregation of sounds that unfold” (636). This does not hold for 4’33”, because the very intentional, instructed action of the performer to not play the instrument is what compels the audience to eventually focus their attention on their environmental sounds after the realization that there is no reward from trying to scrutinize the silence of the performer (635). Considering the piece as a silent work as defined by Dodd, it becomes more palatable that the response of the audience, even though it may go against the imposed silence of the performance, is a part of the desired effect, not unnatural or a distraction.

Another aspect of Cage’s notion of sound that Kahn brings up is Cage’s apparent dismissal of the deeper origins from which sounds stem. He calls this the “silencing of the social”, or the simplification of social events and sounds by reducing their original purposes, which may have been political or artistic, to “conform to [Cage’s] idea of selfhood” (Kahn 580). He says that by insisting that all sounds were music, music was just sound as interpreted by individuals, and the removed manner in which Cage insisted so, “the politics of music dissipated among the dispositions of individual personalities” (569). By this, he argues that Cage did not acknowledge the idea that there is a commonality or unifying purpose that music serves.

To address this, a closer look can be taken at Cage’s own politics. He called himself an anarchist and that he did not like institutions, “even good” ones (Montague). Even if we were to assume this self-identification as naive, we can also analyze the perception others had of him. Stephen Kurczy writes that Carolyn Brown, for instance, recounts that “he was open, frank, ready to reveal all of his most optimistic utopian schemes and dreams.” In the same article, Kurczy asserts that “the pure optimist” could be an anarchist, because he “doesn’t make a contingency plan, which is really the definition of government.” Another article discusses Cage’s view on “art as a form of constructive anarchy” (Popova). Here, an anecdote is referred to, a story in which Cage was in a taxi with a driver who was complaining and “accusing absolutely everyone of being wrong,” clearly irritated with the world. Cage did not say anything, and soon, through the process of talking his own thoughts out, the driver started saying positive things by the end of the ride. Popova draws a parallel with this anecdote to 4’33” itself, in that both use silence to the ends of inspiring self-reflection. Therefore, one could argue against Kahn two ways: first, that Cage strove to evade promoting a political message in his work at all because as an optimist he did not think institutions were necessary, or second, that his intention is in fact to spur his audience to think about their own politics themselves.

Finally, Kahn points out that there is a lack of clarity in the influences that gave rise to 4’33”. Even though it is widely held that Cage’s interactions with the abstractionist painter Robert Rauschenberg inspired 4’33”, Kahn looks deeper and claims that they only gave him the courage to continue and put the piece up, not actually inspire its original concept. Rauschenberg’s white paintings are most commonly referred to in these discussions. These were paintings of uniform white, and the lack of elements in the painting emphasize the light, shadows, and dust particles that are present on its canvas – the resemblance to 4’33” is clear. But Kahn is certainly right in this assessment; Cage encountered these paintings in late 1951, which was too soon before his piece was produced. Instead, the piece might have been conceptualized during Cage’s time working in a hospital in 1948, where he had to give directions without making noise (Kahn 561). Kahn calls for a “reappraisal” of Cage and goes into the depths of the development of his ideas, calling him out for constantly taking only the parts of the philosophies he encountered that mattered to him out of their context and putting it into his own.

This, however misses out the fact that Cage’s perspective was evolving all throughout the time when he first thought of the concept, up to its actual composition. In 1948, Cage proposed a piece called Silent prayer which had the same motif of silence but a very different purpose than 4’33”. Back when Cage first started experiencing disillusionment with the music he was previously making, he had a growing interest in Zen buddhism as well as South Asian philosophy. Through his exchanges with his Indian student, Sarabhai, he learned and accepted the goal of music to “to sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences.” Silent prayer was thus about spiritual experimentation and an exploration into the philosophy of sound and music. Cage also had an encounter in an anechoic chamber in that significantly affected his perspective on what silence is (Pritchett). While before this experience he believed it as simply the absence of sound, or “the opposite, and therefore, the necessary partner of sound,” a few years after he began defining it as sounds that are unintended (Pritchett). Clearly, the notion of sound that Cage had when he first started the conceptualization of what would eventually become 4’33” was different than when he was not only finished with the piece, but also reflecting on it in hindsight. Equally significantly, the idea of chance as a tool for composition became prominent also around 1951, when Cage found a copy of the I Ching, a Chinese classic text used for divination that instructs how to create order from chance events. It was only after this that Cage began liberally using the I Ching for his compositions, his works thereby becoming known for being based on chance. With the culmination of all these factors, and obviously more that would have had influences on him within these three or so years, 4’33” was born out of the simple idea of the lack of sound and how this deficiency could be applied for a spiritual purpose, but grew over time to become colored with a more bodied definition of silence, more mature motivations, and an objective for the audience.

Kahn thus jumps to conclusions in his appraisal of Cage in these three areas: that the silent quality of his piece is intruding, that he ignores the politics of music, and that his influences are misattributed.

Boredom in a Capitalist World