Cassandra Casias (Duke University)
In De virginibus velandis, Tertullian asserts that girls beyond the age of twelve have undergone an irrevocable transformation that requires them to be covered in public: the “inner covering” of pubic hair (uelamen extrinsecus habenti tegumen intrinsecus [12.1]) also demands an outer covering of her “shame” (pudor ubique uestitur [11.8]). In Carthage, as elsewhere, consecrated virgins were expected to veil themselves when venturing outside. Some virgins, in order demonstrate their transcendence of societal restrictions through their holy lifestyles, removed their veils while in church. Tertullian’s treatise cited puberty to discourage them from doing so. The strategy of linking the veil to the appearance of pubic hair is unique to Tertullian. By referring to the “covering below” to justify the covering above, Tertullian limits women to their reproductive organs, recalling ancient medical texts that describe a woman’s body as enclosing a single tube from mouth to vagina, with one end influencing the other (King 1998, 27-33). Furthermore, by invoking pubic hair in a slave culture where slaves beyond the age of puberty were often depilated for their continued use as sexual objects, Tertullian implies the lowness and sexual impurity of a woman who would uncover the hair on her head (Bradley 1984, 115).
Tertullian’s argument is therefore not without precedent: building upon and anticipating anxieties about the gendered connotations of pubic hair, Tertullian applies a widely shared assumption that hair is saturated with significance. Augustine follows his example later, in this instance by arguing that the unruliness, untamed, and unmanly character of a monk’s long hair both transgresses gender boundaries and divides the Christian community (De opere monachorum 32.40; Doerfler 2014, 86, 101). The explicit link between pubic hair and the veil, while distinctive, therefore participated in a broader economy of hair and shame that depended upon and enforced a hierarchical understanding of female biology, sexuality, and status. The virgins’ inescapable female anatomy means that the refusal of the veil challenged not only their own subordination, but the subordination of all Christian women.