Academia Hair History

They Call it “Queering” History

August 8, 2023 by David 81 Comments

When you browse the website of Portsmouth’s Mary Rose Museum, looking for information on artefacts from Tudor England… and this is what you get:

Octagonal mirror.

A circular, reflective surface would have sat within this beech frame. This mirror would have been considered a luxury item on the Mary Rose. Looking at your own reflection in a mirror can bring up lots of emotions for both straight and LGBTQ+ people. For Queer people, we may experience a strong feeling of gender dysphoria when we look into a mirror, a feeling of distress caused by our reflection conflicting with our own gender identities. On the other hand, we may experience gender euphoria when looking in a mirror, when how we feel on the inside matches our reflection. 

Because when you look at a sixteenth-century mirror salvaged from a warship belonging to Henry VIII, the first thing you want to know is how it might induce psychological crises in the sexually dysmorphic.

And,

Nit combs.

The most common personal objects that we found on the Mary Rose were nit combs. There were 82 in total. These nit combs would have been mainly used by the men to remove nits from their hair, rather than using the comb to style their hair (which would have usually been covered up by a hat). However, for many Queer people today, how we wear our hair is a central pillar of our identity. Today, hairstyles are often heavily gendered, following the gender norm that men have short hair, and women have long hair. By ‘subverting’ and playing with gender norms, Queer people can find hairstyles that they feel comfortable wearing.

It’s quality stuff. Just like being there, in the mists of history. And not at all inept, or jarring, or comically incongruous.

As we have seen, many objects can be viewed through a Queer lens and can indirectly tell LGBTQ+ stories. 

The word indirectly is, I fear, doing an awful lot of work. And thanks to peering through this “Queer lens,” readers will doubtless find that their understanding of Tudor history has been enriched no end.

We’re told – indeed, assured  – by Hannah McCann, of the museum’s collections and curatorial staff,

From the Tate Britain and the Wellcome Collection, to the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, museums are reinterpreting and Queering their objects.

A comfort, I know.

Exactly why such “queering” is underway – what its relevance might be – is not, however, made clear. An explanation for this bolting-on of irrelevant, flimsy tat – in the name of “queer theory” – was not, it seems, deemed necessary. Nor is it entirely obvious how such “queering” of museum contents benefits those who wish to know more about Henry VIII’s favourite warship.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the mysterious purpose of all this “queering” of sixteenth-century objects, Rafi adds, drily:

It justifies the employment of lecturers in ‘Queer Theory.’

Indeed. That does seem to be the primary objective. That, and the modish tactic of identifying a thing that people find interesting and then inserting one’s own rather narrow and tedious politics, and by extension oneself. Looking through the catalogue notes, no other obvious benefit, for visitors, springs to mind. Unless we include the exercising of eyebrows by moving them up and down.

And the effect, the incongruity – the sheer cack-handedness of it – is quite bizarre. It reminded me of the ‘adverts’ in The Truman Show, in which Truman’s wife and neighbours suddenly, rather desperately, and often mid-sentence, draw attention to some cleaning product or chicken dinner.

Welcome to the world of queered history. It’s like actual history, but less so.

Update 2:

In the comments, John highlights a few lines from the Telegraph’s coverage of the story:

One Twitter user wrote: “With up to 700 male-only crew at any one time, I expect there is far more interesting ‘queer’ history to learn about the Mary Rose than the nit combs.”

Well, you’d think that might be a more obvious line of historical enquiry, albeit more difficult to verify.

And it occurs to me that the contrived witterings quoted above – and the museum’s urge to share them as if they were scholarly and profound – says rather more about the state of our cultural institutions than it does about anything else.

Via ripx4nutmeg.




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