It's not self-hate

Long-haired Sango woman, Democratic Republic of the Congo (Friedrich 1913, Fig. 174)

A competitive mate market will reward individuals whose secondary sexual characteristics seem abnormally bigger or flashier. A "supernormal stimulus" has a stronger visual impact than a normal one, and the behavioral response is correspondingly stronger. This effect has been studied in many animal species. When, for instance, a female butterfly passes by a male, the latter is attracted to the flashing wing pattern. The same pattern on a rotating drum exercises the same power of attraction, which increases as the speed of rotation increases—up to almost ten times the speed of a normal wing-beat (Manning 1972, pp. 47-49).  

A human example? Head hair. It has become much longer than hair elsewhere on the body, apparently because it holds some power of attraction. This lengthening has been brought about by several evolutionary changes: faster rate of growth, longer growing phase, higher density, and greater resistance to physical damage (Khumalo 2005; Loussouarn 2001; Loussouarn et al. 2005). These changes have gone farther in some populations than in others. Darwin noted "the extraordinary difference in the length of the hair in the different races; in the negro the hair forms a mere curly mat; with us it is of great length, and with the American natives it not rarely reaches to the ground" (Darwin 1936[1888], p. 906).

Long hair is the "derived" form. It evolved in those modern humans who left Africa for northern Eurasia, including some who later back-migrated to the tropics, such as the Austronesians of Southeast Asia and Oceania and the Amerindians of the tropical New World.

Short, frizzy hair is the ancestral form. Today, it is seen in sub-Saharan Africans and in some remnant groups that remained in the tropical regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Oceania. These groups are the Andamanese of India, the Semang of Malaysia, the Aeta of the Philippines, and the natives of Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Melanesia.

Long head hair, a component of the Kindchenschema

The ancestral hair form is straight and silky in a newborn child: "[...] the majority of African babies are not born with springy tight curls, the African child at birth is either bald or has silky loose curls similar to the Jheri curls" (Ajose 2012). This physical difference was cited by Zambian students when asked to describe how Africans look. Some of the girls "noted that African babies were born with white skin and long hair" (Powdermaker 1956).

Although adults normally have loose, silky hair in most of the world, this was not so in ancestral humans. Such hair was specific to infants and thus formed part of what Konrad Lorenz dubbed the Kindchenschema—a set of visual, auditory, and tactile cues that identifies a human infant to adults, who then feel less aggressive and more willing to provide care and nurturance (Lorenz 1971, pp. 154-164). The infant seems "cute."

This has been no less true in sub-Saharan Africa, and a desire to be similarly cute has led African women to make their own hair longer, looser, and silkier. Some of their techniques predate the colonial era:

Africa as the cradle of mankind is likely to have had hair care since the beginning of human existence. Partly because of the oral tradition of passing down history, it is difficult to corroborate evidence of hair care. But probably the earliest form of hair straightening was the molding of hair into shapes using various clays and mud (e.g., indicating the station of a married woman among the Zulu's). [...] Hair was also lengthened with fibers and grasses, much as is done for braids with synthetic extensions nowadays. Although small decorative comb-like structures have been discovered with archeological finds, it is not clear whether original Africans combed their hair or if these implements were purely decorative. Although not written down, fascinating stories of more recent hair care (and hair disasters) are often told by older women about straightening hair using hot stones even before hot combs became available. (Khumalo 2008: see also Sieber and Herreman 2000)

In 1721, John Atkins provided an early description of women braiding and dressing their hair in Sierra Leone:

[The women] work hard at Tillage, make Palm-Oil or spin Cotton, and when they are free from such work, the idle Husbands put them upon braiding, and fettishing out their woolly hair, (in which Sort of Ornament they are prodigious proud and curious) keeping them every Day, for many Hours together at it. (Sieber and Herreman 2000, p. 67)

West African women still lavish much time on their hair:

"Big hair," "plenty of hair," "much hair"—West African communities, including Mende, admire a fine head of long, thick hair on a woman. Both these elements are crucial: thickness and length. Thickness equals increase in the number of individual strands, and the length is proof of strength. Growing such luxuriant hair requires a Mende woman's patience and care. Because a man's hair is kept shaved or cut close to the scalp, people say that "men don't have hair." Beautiful hair thus is a distinctly female trait; the more of it, the more feminine the woman. (Boone 1986, p. 184)

This hairdressing tradition is ancient enough to have spawned myths, such as this one among the Mende:

It is known among Mende that all the "water people," angels, have marvelous hair. The mermaid Tingoi is known by her long, wavy hair and her glamorous habit of dressing it with a golden comb while seated on a rock. A little girl with especially long hair is feared to be in danger of drowning because she will be very attractive to the "water people," who may think she is one of them and wish her to join them. (Boone 1986, p. 192)

Long-haired women appear in the folklore of other African peoples. Among the Yoruba, a folk-tale explains "why women have long hair." A woman fell into a pit and was pulled out by her hair, which thereby became as long as a man's arm. She initially felt ashamed of her new appearance and hid herself.

But after a while she realized that her long hair was beautiful, and then she felt very proud and scorned all the short-haired women, jeering at them. When they saw this, they were consumed with jealousy, and began to be ashamed of their short hair. "We have men's hair," they said to one another. "How beautiful it would be to have long hair!"

So one by one they jumped into the pit, and their friends pulled them out by the hair.

And in this way they, and all women after them, had long hair. (Ogumefu 1929, chap V)

Another Yoruba folk-tale recounts how a king had a beautiful daughter with hair "so long that it touched the ground when she walked." But she lost her hair and regained it only after a man found a tree that bore human hair. She then became his wife. (Abrahams 1983, pp. 59-63)

Lengthening of women’s hair seems to have been most common in West Africa, but it was also practiced in central and southern Africa during early colonial times. Women of the Manyema (Tanzania) were described as having “an abundance of hair” that would “flow down to the waist in masses of ringlets” (Bettany 1892, p. 661). Among the Sango (DRC), girls old enough for marriage would plait long strands of string into their hair to create long manes (Friedrich 1913, pp. 190-191). Young women of the Mbalantu (Namibia) achieved the same effect by braiding sinew extensions (Sieber and Herreman 2000, p. 65). Nonetheless, such practices seem to have been uncommon in southern Africa. When a black South African woman traveled to the United States in the 1930s, she was struck by the number of African American women who straightened and extended their hair. “What really made me feel strange [was] nearly every girl and woman has long hair and I among them looked like a boy dressed in girl’s clothes” (Thomas 2006, p. 487).

It appears that African American women were already braiding and threading their hair at an early date. Men, however, often shaved their heads—an indication that both sexes viewed long head hair as a female ornament (White and White 1995).

In sum, hair lengthening is an African tradition that precedes colonial contact with Europeans. From the beginning, the aim was to look feminine, and not "white." The motive was not self-hatred but sexual fantasy—a desire for the supernormal, a wish to become a woman with a long mane of hair. This may be an example of humans creating in one part of the world through artificial means what has been created elsewhere through biological evolution. The same desire has been satisfied in different ways.

Evolution of long head hair in Homo sapiens

African hair can revert to the loose, silky form of infancy as a result of some illnesses: AIDS, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, pulmonary tuberculosis with cachexia, and Behçet's disease (Ajose 2012). These illnesses somehow disrupt normal hair growth, and it is plausible that a similar disruption of genetic origin, i.e., a loss-of-function allele, was the first stage in the evolution of long head hair.

Head hair began to lengthen as ancestral humans spread out of Africa and into the temperate and arctic zones. These environments shifted the pressure of sexual selection from men to women. On the one hand, male mortality increased in relation to female mortality because men had to hunt over larger expanses of land. On the other hand, the polygyny rate decreased because it became costlier to provide for a mother and her offspring, particularly during winter. Men were scarcer on the mate market, being fewer in number and less polygynous. (Frost 2006; Frost 2014; Frost 2015).

Women were now in excess supply, and the spotlight of sexual selection was on them. Their physical characteristics became flashier, bigger, or somehow exaggerated. In the case of head hair, the existing practices of artificial lengthening helped show the way for future evolution. The cultural became biological. Over succeeding generations, the infant hair form persisted more and more into adulthood while becoming ever longer and straighter, eventually reaching down to the waist if left uncut. Hair seems to have lengthened within the whole of northern Eurasia, rather than within the smaller zone of steppe-tundra where skin became white and where hair and eyes became brightly and diversely colored. Hair lengthening was thus triggered by a lower intensity of sexual selection.

This selection pressure acted primarily on women and then secondarily spilled over onto men, perhaps because most of the genes in question are weakly sex-linked, as are most genes. Nonetheless, there is some sex linkage. Scalp hairs have a greater mean diameter and hence more volume in women, even in the shorter-haired New Guineans (Walsh and Chapman 1966). Hair growth rate and final length are also somewhat greater in women than in men (Sigler 2011, p. 13). Men furthermore tend to lose their head hair, often as early as their twenties. In general, growth of head hair is under stronger hormonal inhibition in men than in women (Kondo et al. 1990).

Conclusion

Before ancestral humans began to spread out of Africa, women were already pushing the phenotypic envelope by artificially making their hair straighter, longer, and silkier. Later, outside Africa, evolution brought this fantasy to life. As Charles Darwin concluded, such hair serves an ornamental purpose in our species: "for we know that long tresses are now and were formerly much admired, as may be observed in the works of almost every poet; St. Paul says, "if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her." (Darwin 1936[1888], p. 906).

References

Abrahams, R.D. (1983). African Folktales. Traditional Stories of the Black World. New York: Pantheon Books.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=JqJVU4XYvLYC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Ajose, F.O.A. (2012). Diseases that turn African hair silky. International Journal of Dermatology 51 (supp. S1): 12-16.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-4632.2012.05556.x

Bettany, G.T. (1892). The World’s Inhabitants or Mankind, Animals, and Plants. London: Ward, Lock, Bowden and Co. 

https://books.google.ca/books?id=mkBOAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Boone, S.A. (1986). Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art. New Haven and London.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=anjOC0zZ6kgC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Darwin, C. (1936 [1888]). The Descent of Man and Selection in relation to Sex. reprint of 2nd ed., The Modern Library, New York: Random House.

Friedrich, A. (1913). From the Congo to the Niger and the Nile. An account of the German Central African Expedition of 1910-1911 by Adolf Friedrich Duke of Mecklenburg, vol. 1. London: Duckworth and Co.

https://archive.org/stream/fromcongotonige01adol/fromcongotonige01adol#page/n5/mode/1up

Frost, P. (2006). European hair and eye color - A case of frequency-dependent sexual selection? Evolution and Human Behavior 27(2): 85-103.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.07.002 

Frost, P. (2014). The puzzle of European hair, eye, and skin color. Advances in Anthropology 4(2): 78-88. 

https://doi.org/10.4236/aa.2014.42011

Frost, P. (2015). Evolution of long head hair in humans. Advances in Anthropology 5(4): 78-88.

https://doi.org/10.4236/aa.2015.54021

Khumalo, N.P. (2005). African hair morphology: macrostructure to ultrastructure. International Journal of Dermatology 44(Suppl. 1): 10-12.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-4632.2005.02805.x

Khumalo, N.P. (2008). On the history of African hair care: more treasures await discovery. Letter to the Editor. Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology 7(3): 231.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-2165.2008.00396.x

Kondo, S., Y. Hozumi, and K. Aso. (1990). Organ culture of human scalp hair follicles: effect of testosterone and oestrogen on hair growth. Archives of Dermatological Research 282(7): 442-445.

https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00402619

Lorenz, K. (1971). Studies in Animal and Human Behaviour, vol. 2. London: Methuen & Co.

Loussouarn, G. (2001). African hair growth parameters. British Journal of Dermatology 145(2): 294-297.

https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2133.2001.04350.x

Loussouarn, G., C.E. Rawadi, and Genain, G. (2005). Diversity of hair growth profiles. International Journal of Dermatology 44(Suppl. 1): 6-9.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-4632.2005.02800.x 

Manning, A. (1972). An Introduction to Animal Behaviour. 2nd edition. London: Edward Arnold.

Ogumefu, M.I. (1929). Yoruba Legends. London: The Sheldon Press. 

https://books.google.ca/books?id=x3gLbKFhNswC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false 

Powdermaker, H. (1956). Social change through imagery and values of teen-age Africans in Northern Rhodesia. American Anthropologist 58(5): 783-813.

https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1956.58.5.02a00030 

Sieber, R. and F. Herreman. (2000). Hair in African Art and Culture. African Arts 33(3): 54-96.

http://homework.sdmesa.edu/drogers/Art%20115/sieber%20hair%20in%20african%20art.pdf

Thomas, L.M. (2006). The modern girl and racial respectability in 1930s South Africa. Journal of African History 47(3): 461-490

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853706002131

Walsh, R.J., and R.E. Chapman. (1966). A study of the quantitative measurement of human head hair fibres. Man, new series. 1(2): 226-232.

White, S. and G. White. (1995). Slave Hair and African American Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. The Journal of Southern History 61(1): 45-76.

Evolution of long head hair

 

Swan princess, John Bauer (1882-1918). Human head hair is of relatively recent origin, reaching incredible lengths in some groups but not in others.

 

I've published an article on the evolution of long head hair in humans. The following is the abstract:

In many humans, head hair can grow to a much greater length than hair elsewhere on the body. This is a "derived" form that evolved outside Africa and probably in northern Eurasia. The ancestral form, which is frizzier and much shorter, survives in sub-Saharan Africans and in other groups whose ancestors never left the tropics. This original hair form is nonetheless relatively straight and silky during infancy. Head hair thus seems to have lengthened in two stages: 1) retention of the infant hair form at older ages; and 2) further lengthening to mid-back and even waist lengths. These changes seem to have gone farther in women, whose head hair is thicker and somewhat longer. The most popular evolutionary explanations are: 1) relaxation of selection for short hair; and 2) sexual selection for women with long hair. Neither hypothesis is satisfactory. The first one cannot explain why head hair lengthened so dramatically over so little time. The second hypothesis suffers from the assumption that some populations have remained naturally short-haired because they consider long-haired women undesirable. Almost the opposite is true in traditional African cultures, which have a long history of lengthening and straightening women's hair. It is argued here that sexual selection produced different outcomes in different populations not because standards of beauty differed but because the intensity of sexual selection differed. In the tropical zone, sexual selection acted more on men than on women and was thus too weak to enhance desirable female characteristics. This situation reversed as ancestral humans spread northward into environments that tended to limit polygyny while increasing male mortality. Because fewer men were available for mating, women faced a more competitive mate market and were selected more severely.

Reference

Frost, P. (2015). Evolution of long head hair in humans, Advances in Anthropology, 5, 274-281.

http://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=60916

 

Great hair ... and how it evolved

Crystal Gayle, American country music singer (source). In humans of Eurasian origin, head hair can grow down to the mid-back and even farther. Long silky hair must have evolved relatively late, certainly no earlier than the last 50,000 years.

 

All of us are born pale, and this infant pallor is striking in otherwise dark-skinned families. Lighter skin also characterizes women, who in this and other ways seem to mimic certain visual, tactile, and auditory aspects of infants (paedomorphic face, soft hairless skin, higher pitch of voice, etc.). Skin tone is, in fact, a key input for sex recognition, particularly the luminous contrast between facial skin and the eyes or lips. This visual cue becomes critical to the mating success of women wherever the supply of mateable men is limited, the result being sexual selection for lighter-skinned women and, thus, a gradual lightening of mean skin color not only for women but for the entire population as well.

Head hair, silkier and longer …

Head hair may have followed a similar evolutionary trajectory. In sub-Saharan Africa:

[…] the majority of African babies are not born with springy tight curls, the African child at birth is either bald or has silky loose curls similar to the Jheri curls. The springy tight curls develop within the first year of life but a few negroid Africans retain their silky hair type for life. (Ajose, 2012)

As ancestral humans spread north and out of Africa, loose silky hair began to persist beyond early childhood and became lifelong. Several changes were involved: faster rate of growth, longer growing phase, increased density, and greater resistance to physical damage (Khumalo, 2005; Loussouarn et al., 2005).

This process seems to have gone further in women, their scalp hairs having higher mean diameter and hence more volume, even in the naturally shorthaired New Guineans (Walsh and Chapman, 1966). Men also tend to lose their head hair, often as early as their 20s. In his review of the literature, Sigler (2011, p. 13) concludes that hair growth rate and final length are somewhat greater in women than in men. It looks as if this hair lengthening was driven by a selection pressure that acted primarily on women.

… but not in all humans

Long silky hair isn’t universal in our species. It exists only in those humans who are native to temperate and arctic regions or in those whose ancestors have back-migrated to the tropics, i.e., tropical Amerindians and Austronesians. Darwin noted "the extraordinary difference in the length of the hair in the different races; in the negro the hair forms a mere curly mat; with us it is of great length, and with the American natives it not rarely reaches to the ground" (Darwin, 1936 [1888], p. 906).

If long silky hair evolved outside the tropics, it must have appeared after ancestral humans had begun to spread out of Africa, some 50 thousand years ago. This point is lost on many paleoanthropologists who attribute this evolutionary change to much earlier events, like the discovery of fire or even a hypothetical aquatic phase of our hominid past.

Whatever the initial cause, there is a consensus, going back to Charles Darwin, that long silky hair is primarily ornamental and due to sexual selection: “we know that long tresses are now and were formerly much admired, as may be observed in the works of almost every poet; St. Paul says, "if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her” (Darwin, 1936 [1888], p. 906). This view was part of his more general one that “the differences between the races of man, as in colour, hairiness, form of features, &c., are of a kind which might have been expected to come under the influence of sexual selection” (Darwin, 1936 [1888], p. 556).

Darwin believed that sexual selection produced physical differences among human populations through differing notions of beauty. He even raised the possibility that “each race would possess its own innate ideal standard of beauty” (Darwin, 1936 [1888], p. 890). An alternate view, which I favor, is that innate notions of beauty are similar in all humans. To the extent that physical differences among human populations are due to sexual selection, the reason is that this selection pressure has been stronger in some populations than in others (Frost, 2008). 

Why, then, did head hear grow longer as humans left the tropics?

As ancestral humans spread out of the tropics, women found it harder to gather food during the cold season and had to rely more on men to get food for themselves and their children. Polygyny accordingly became costlier for men, with the result that only the ablest hunters could take additional wives. At the same time, men had to roam over larger hunting territories because the density of wildlife was lower. Hunting-related mortality thus rose among young men.

For these two reasons—less polygyny and higher male mortality—the non-tropical zone tended to have a lower ratio of men to women on the mate market. More women had to compete for fewer available men, thus shifting the pressure of sexual selection from the latter to the former. The situation was not unlike that of actresses lining up for a part in a Hollywood movie. When all of the candidates seem perfect for the job, even little details can make a big difference.

One of those details was head hair. Men do notice long silky hair, if only as a visual input for recognition of women or infants, and such noticeability may be a dealmaker in a mate market where women are in excess supply. In such ancestral environments, head hair would have grown longer and longer with each generation.

Was there gene-culture co-evolution?

This lengthening may have been helped by gene-culture co-evolution. In other words, there was a transitional period when women used artificial means to lengthen their head hair. The resulting cultural expectation for longer hair may have favored the mating success of naturally long-haired women.

This hypothesis has support in the apparently ancient time depth of hair lengthening in Africa. As Khumalo (2008) notes:

Africa as the cradle of mankind is likely to have had hair care since the beginning of human existence. Partly because of the oral tradition of passing down history, it is difficult to corroborate evidence of hair care. But probably the earliest form of hair straightening was the molding of hair into shapes using various clays and mud (e.g., indicating the station of a married woman among the Zulu’s). […] Hair was also lengthened with fibers and grasses, much as is done for braids with synthetic extensions nowadays. Although small decorative comb-like structures have been discovered with archeological finds, it is not clear whether original Africans combed their hair or if these implements were purely decorative. Although not written down, fascinating stories of more recent hair care (and hair disasters) are often told by older women about straightening hair using hot stones even before hot combs became available.

West African women invest much time and effort in lengthening their head hair. This isn’t just an obsession of African American women, as some may think: 

“Big hair,” “plenty of hair,” “much hair”—West African communities, including Mende, admire a fine head of long, thick hair on a woman. Both these elements are crucial: thickness and length. Thickness equals increase in the number of individual strands, and the length is proof of strength. Growing such luxuriant hair requires a Mende woman’s patience and care. Because a man’s hair is kept shaved or cut close to the scalp, people say that “men don’t have hair.” Beautiful hair thus is a distinctly female trait; the more of it, the more feminine the woman (Boone,1986, p. 184).

This hairdressing tradition is ancient enough to have spawned myths:

It is known among Mende that all the “water people,” angels, have marvelous hair. The mermaid Tingoi is known by her long, wavy hair and her glamorous habit of dressing it with a golden comb while seated on a rock. A little girl with especially long hair is feared to be in danger of drowning because she will be very attractive to the “water people,” who may think she is one of them and wish her to join them. (Boone, 1986, p. 192)

Among African Americans, women braided and threaded their hair from an early date, whereas men often shaved their heads—an indication that head hair was deemed to be a female characteristic (White and White, 1995).

In sum, hair lengthening seems to be an indigenous tradition whose origins precede not only enslavement in the Americas but also the first contacts with Europeans in Africa. Its purpose has always been to look more feminine … and not “white.”

From artificial to natural

In sub-Saharan Africa, sexual selection was never strong enough to favor women with naturally long hair. This selection pressure would have steadily increased, however, as ancestral humans spread farther north into environments that tended to limit polygyny and boost male mortality.

Head hair may have lengthened during the initial phase of this increasingly intense sexual selection. Eventually, peak intensity was reached as humans spread into the habitable steppe-tundra of northern and eastern Europe—where women had few opportunities for food gathering and where men had to hunt migratory herds of game animals over long distances. It was this later phase that likely produced the diverse palette of hair and eye colors in present-day Europeans, as well as their strange, albino-like skin.

References 

Ajose, F.O.A. (2012). Diseases that turn African hair silky, International Journal of Dermatology, 51 (supp. S1), 12-16

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-4632.2012.05556.x/full 

Boone, S.A. (1986). Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art, New Haven and London

http://books.google.fr/books?id=anjOC0zZ6kgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Radiance+from+the+Waters:+Ideals+of+Feminine+Beauty+in+Mende+Art&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=kTIBUoHfJYfu8ATZ9YGQBw&ved=0CDsQuwUwAA#v=onepage&q=Radiance%20from%20the%20Waters%3A%20Ideals%20of%20Feminine%20Beauty%20in%20Mende%20Art&f=false

Darwin, C. (1936) [1888]. The Descent of Man and Selection in relation to Sex, reprint of 2nd ed., The Modern Library, New York: Random House.

Frost (2008). Sexual selection and human geographic variation, Special Issue: Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 2(4),169-191. http://137.140.1.71/jsec/articles/volume2/issue4/NEEPSfrost.pdf 

Khumalo, N.P. (2008). On the history of African hair care: more treasures await discovery, Letter to the Editor, Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, 7, 231.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1473-2165.2008.00396.x/abstract 

Khumalo, N.P. (2005). African hair morphology: macrostructure to ultrastructure, International Journal of Dermatology, 44(Suppl. 1), 10-12.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-4632.2005.02805.x/abstract 

Loussouarn, G., El Rawadi, C., and Genain, G. (2005). Diversity of hair growth profiles. International Journal of Dermatology, 44(Suppl. 1), 6-9.

Sigler, R. (2011). Our Long Hairitage, Bloomington (Indiana): WestBow Press.

http://books.google.fr/books?id=gUEct0Dxt2IC&printsec=frontcover&dq=our+long+hairitage&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=9SsBUvP0OIaQ9gS-xoDQBg&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=our%20long%20hairitage&f=false 

Walsh, R.J., and Chapman, R.E. (1966). A study of the quantitative measurement of human head hair fibres, Man, new series, 1, 226-232.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2796348?uid=3737720&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102539793897 

White, S. and G. White. (1995). Slave Hair and African American Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, The Journal of Southern History, 61, 45-76.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2211360?uid=3737720&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102539793897

More on high-polygyny societies

Female and male bush spirits, Côte d’Ivoire

The polygyny rate varies considerably among human populations, being highest (20 to 40% of all sexual unions) in the agricultural societies of sub-Saharan Africa and Papua-New Guinea.

Such high rates have consequences. The average man will have to wait for a wife until well into adulthood. The average woman will end up sharing her man with another woman. How are these consequences managed in a high-polygyny society? Surely there must be jealousy and frustration?

Many anthropologists, especially armchair ones, will deny there is any. What seems intolerable to us is quite normal to such societies.

This is half-true. Yes, people eventually resign themselves to most situations, especially if they see no alternative. The intolerable can become normal. But it would be false to claim that widespread polygyny creates no more than its fair share of frictions. Indeed, such frictions are much talked about in oral African culture.

This may be seen in a recent compendium of West African folk tales, Contes de l’Afrique de l’Ouest. Many of the tales have polygyny-related themes.

One theme is a woman’s resistance to sharing her husband with another woman. As the editor explains:

These tales are about conflicts that pit wives against the children of co-wives or about conflicts between co-wives. In this tale, the conflict pits the husband against his first wife, who does not want a co-wife. The tale, in keeping with tradition, criticizes the attitude of the woman who wishes to remain her husband’s exclusive partner.

Another theme is the difficulty in finding a wife. There is a “series of tales whose theme is the father who imposes impossible ordeals on his daughter’s suitors.” One tale is The Marriage without Bride Price:

A man had a very beautiful daughter, as beautiful as a genie. She grew up and reached the age of being married off. Her father made his requirements known. Whoever wishes to marry her will pay no bride price. He will simply have to harvest a field of fonio, —the man’s field was a hundred kilometers long! He will also have to weave, —the man had yarn that formed a hill the size of our hill of Bagnon. He will furthermore have to gather the fruits of a baobab, —the baobab had been bearing fruits for a hundred years, and they had never fallen. It had so many that one could no longer see its branches! He will in addition have to drink a full cask of gruel. To end it all, he will have to strike one by one the pearls of his daughter’s belts. She wore them up to her armpits! Whoever would accomplish all this in one day, between sunrise and sunset, would have his daughter.

A bush spirit learns of these outrageous demands and turns itself into a handsome young man. It passes all of the tests and marries the girl. It then resumes its former appearance—a filthy body covered with ticks.

“You’re not the one I love!” says the daughter.
“If you repeat that, I will kill you. However pretty a woman may be, it’s still a man who will marry her. Your father had demanded work that no one can accomplish. He said there was no bride price. But it has always been by bride price that one gets a woman. He thought there was no other man than himself.”
(Meyer 2009, pp. 89-92)

Both types of folk tale reflect the male viewpoint. One type criticizes women who reject co-wives. The other criticizes fathers who want too much in exchange for their daughters. Yet these two criticisms are mutually inconsistent. Polygyny is what drives up the cost of brides on the marriage market. You can’t have one without the other.

High-polygyny society = Failed society?

In my last post, I noted that high-polygyny societies remain simple in large part because intense sexual competition keeps them from evolving into more complex entities. The surplus males stir up endless conflict, if only because war provides them with access to women, i.e., through rape and abduction. There can never be pacification and, therefore, the formation of larger, more advanced societies.

There is a second problem that blocks the evolution of high-polygyny societies. Although widespread polygyny is widely resented by men and women, this resentment cannot translate into efforts to limit the practice. Divided attitudes are part of the problem. On the one hand, younger men resent the wife shortage created by older polygynous men. On the other, they themselves hope to become polygynous as they too advance in years. Furthermore, power is generally vested in older men—the very ones most likely to have multiple wives.

Some women likewise gain from polygyny. This is particularly so with second wives who usurp resources built up by older co-wives. Other women accept polygyny as a lesser evil:

Undoubtedly one reason for the widespread acceptance of polygyny is the distaste for the alternative, which in this cultural context is most often not faithful monogamy but legal monogamy paralleled by a series of more or less open affairs. [… The reason is that] men spend less money on their wives than on their mistresses, and that the position of a wife is defined rather than fluid and uncontrollable.

It may seem remarkable that a mistress should impose a greater economic strain than an additional wife, but it should be remembered that Yoruba wives are traditionally largely self-supporting, their major economic claim upon their husbands being on behalf of their children, while a mistress in many cases only remains a mistress for as long as it is economically beneficial for her to do so.
(Ware 1979)

Widespread polygyny is thus an institution that cannot easily reform itself. Yes, it does create profound social frictions that pit men against men and women against women. These frictions, however, cannot coalesce into a movement to oppose polygyny. The potential opposition is too fragmented and too marginal.

Urban Africa and the new mating environment

This is not to say that a high-polygyny society cannot evolve into a low-polygyny one. It can, if the material conditions of life change. We see this happening as Africans move off the land and into cities and towns, where women can less easily feed themselves and their children without assistance (1). Urban African men are less likely to be polygynous because it costs them more to provide for a second wife.

This in turn has shifted the pressure of sexual competition from men to women. It is increasingly the woman who must compete to find a mate. Whereas before she only had to work hard at tending her plot of land, she must now invest in her physical appearance, notably by lengthening her hair and bleaching her skin.

This new mating environment is described by Fokuo (2009) with respect to Ghana. Traditionally, Ghanaian women were married off through family mediation and bride price. This situation has changed since World War II and especially since the 1980s. They now largely find mates on their own, and do so in an increasingly competitive market that pressures them to be as sexually attractive as possible. One result has been the spread of skin bleaching:

By the late 1980’s and 1990’s, skin bleaching was no longer practiced by prostitutes. The popular culture of the 1980s praised lighter skin tones. This praise encouraged the spread of skin bleaching across gender lines and throughout all socio-economic classes of women. (Fokuo 2009)

Interviews with Ghanaian women suggest that this practice is driven by a competitive marriage market:

Sometimes if you really want to marry a particular man, you have to bleach.
(Interview 14, 2006)

Lighter-skinned women tend to attract more men by virtue of their lightness. So if they are at marrying age they get more men coming to court them earlier and quicker than darker-skinned women. (Interview 16, 2006)

Darker-skinned women look at themselves and realize that they need to bleach to be beautiful. Just so men can call them beautiful. (Interview 17, 2006)
(Fokuo 2009)

This shift to ‘bodily commodification,’ together with the decline of matriarchy, is deplored in the literature. Yet the consequences are not entirely negative. Matriarchy meant that African women bore a very disproportionate share of labor in raising their families, especially physical labor. Today, there is a move toward a more equal balance of parental investment between African men and women. And bodily commodification is perhaps a necessary precondition for much of what we call ‘high culture,’ i.e., the pursuit of the aesthetic.

Note

1. The future of polygyny in sub-Saharan Africa is closely linked to female autonomy. This came out in a study of polygynous families in Ibadan, Nigeria:

Perhaps the ultimate women's issue is the extent to which women can lead autonomous existences without men. Trial interviews showed that it was possible to ask the question: "Apart from having children, do women need to have husbands?" without puzzling or antagonizing the respondents (only 2 percent of wives failed to respond to this question in the final survey). Remarkably, in a society where 99 percent of women marry by the age of 40, 47 percent of women answered that women do not need husbands. They explained that women are equal to men, that marriage has many disadvantages and that in many cases women are in a better position on their own. For those women who did consider husbands to play an important role apart from fatherhood, companionship (cited by 16 percent of all wives) was the most valuable function, followed by advice (11 percent) and the value of working together (10 percent). Only 7 percent of wives thought that women needed husbands for economic support, care or protection, the remainder cited sexual satisfaction (2 percent), prestige (2 percent) and nature (3 percent). Understandably, wives in polygynous unions were less likely to stress the companionship role of the husband, but even among women with two or more co-wives, 12 percent argued for this as compared with 21 percent of the monogamously married. Overall, what is most striking is just how dispassionately women view marriage. Childlessness is a terrible tragedy never to be assuaged, but every woman can find a husband of some sort, and hence they are not very highly valued. In discussing the need for a husband, nearly a fifth of the wives mentioned companionship, but no one mentioned love.
(Ware 1979)

References

Fokuo, J.K. (2009). The lighter side of marriage: Skin bleaching in post-colonial Ghana, Research Review NS, 25(1), 47-66.

Meyer, G. (2009). Contes de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, Paris: Éditions Karthala.

Ware, H. (1979). Polygyny: Women's Views in a Transitional Society, Nigeria 1975, Journal of Marriage and Family, 41, 185-195.