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In his infamous treatise, “Medusa’s Head,” Sigmund Freud attempted to elucidate the terror induced by the mythological Medusa, a figure whose frightful appearance turned spectators to stone. In short, he concluded that Medusa’s head, which was artistically figured with a gaping mouth and wild hair, is a metonym for female genitalia. What was horrifying about this image-and what is horrifying about female genitalia, in general-was the absence of a phallus. Thus, Freud concluded, the sight of Medusa’s head elicits in the male spectator a fear of his own potential castration.2 Since the early 1920s, scholarship on the social significance of hair has tended to move beyond Freud’s narrow theory of castration anxiety, yet the scholarly literature is still dominated by studies that investigate how and why hair is interpreted as a sign of sexual desire or sexual activity.3
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