In pharaonic Egypt, hair was often shaved, especially among children, where long hairstyles would prove uncomfortable or parasites, such as head lice, were a problem. Wigs were the privilege of the ruling classes, a trend that recurred for the next 5000 years as evinced by the fashionable courts of Europe and the British judiciary.
Shaved heads may also indicate a religious sect or aspiration. Buddhist monks shave their heads as a renunciation of the world, and Muslim men may wear a single long lock of hair on their otherwise shaved heads to evince hair’s religious signifi cance. As a rite of passage, Hindu males shave their heads when they reach adolescence. The Manchu of China left only a braided queue residue as a mark of submission, which became a mark of dignity and manhood. As a tribal signal, pre-Columbian Native Americans in eastern North America were sometimes entirely shaven, save for a ridge, or comb, of hair along the crown. Plains Indians wore two long plaits.
The habit of shaving has persisted into the twenty-fi rst century. Shaving hair has similarly been imposed on residents of military and penal institutions and World War II female collaborators. This act implies diminution of status (the Samson effect).
