By Sébastien Vincent
During the Second War world every day, especially around the releases, rationing is a major concern of the French and their habits are changing accordingly. Women, among others, can no longer afford to give the same attention to their appearance and lack of money to afford a shampoo or a hair cut encourages more of them to wear a turban. Practical and stylish, the turban also allows these women to hide the effects of poor nutrition on their hair. The time of release (summer 1944-spring 1945) will however end the turban as a fashion accessory.
Nearly 20,000 women are perceived as "horizontal collaboration" by their communities, are mow hair at events integrated into the joint moments of liberation of France. Clippings occur in the continuity of the extra-judicial treatment of bunting flags, the enthusiastic reception of the allied troops and the removal of signs installed by the German army.
Women mowed rather then use the turban to hide their bare skulls, became the symbol of an act of treason. Their friends their sometimes give a lock of hair so that they simulate a lot of hair, wrapped in a turban. These women are humiliated shaved at the event, but also during the coming months, pending the regrowth of their hair erase traces of cleansing.
In this time of mowing, we retain some photographs and several short stories which can not match that surprising. In their own way and without special supervision, each community contains the same elements, giving the appearance of a mowing ritual.
More than two thirds of the trial of Julie Desmarais provide a solid overview of the work of French researchers who are interested in the phenomenon finally clippings in the 1990s. The author relies heavily on the pioneering work of Alain Brossat ( The mowed. A carnival ugly , 1992), the major study Fabrice Virgili ( La France "virile." Women in the mowed release, 2000) and that of Philippe Burrin ( France in the German time , 1995). The two chapters devoted to the actors, the staging and the reasons justifying this humiliating ritual want clear, but bring new elements to the knowledge of the subject.
The last chapter is by far the most interesting part of the test whose style reminds us that there was first a master's thesis. This chapter analyzes the image of women mowed through fifty literary works (memoirs, novels) and science (the work of historians, sociologists, philosophers) published between 1942 and 2005. This chapter clearly shows the net difference between the event and its representations, a vague notion that the author does not specify, as is often the case in the humanities. Julie Desmarais trace mowed three portraits of women: the guilty, the loving and the deceased. It is clear from his analysis that the evolution of French mentality is such that the image of Shorn is now at the opposite than it was immediately after the war.
The Liberation was a time of joy and celebration, but also overflows. This short book reminds us.
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