Fantasy, Character Creators and the Hair Covering
A while ago I saw a video of someone who really enjoyed BG3, and yet where pissed about one thing: with all the things you can do in that game at character creation, covering your hair is not one of them.
The creator was a Muslim woman, and as such she spoke that she felt like she could not actually play herself in this game. Because she could not cover her hair. Something she did with great pride in the real world.
And let's be fully honest: this holds true for pretty much all CRPGs. They all give you character creators, at times with hundreds of hairstyles. But you often are not able to cover your hair, unless you wear specific helmets. And that is kinda fucking shitty, and especially in pseudo-historical settings it is very much ahistorical. So let me vent about hair anthropology.
History and the Hair Problem
Let me start with one observation: having long hair and no access to shampoo sucks. You might thing "I am sure you can wash hair without shampoo". And sure, you can. But before shampoo this was hard, often kinda painful, and if you were not careful might harm your hair. All while religions often mandated to keep the hair long or even entirely uncut, with the removal of hair at times being associated with only specific rituals, mourning or the like.
Mind you, nothing about hair can be generalized. A lot of different cultures had a lot of different ideas about hair. And how and why hair was kept the way it was is one of those topics that anthropologists will get into shouting matches over. But the fact of the matter is: a lot of cultures did have rules about keeping the hair long, unless it was for special ritual reasons - like Buddhist monks shaving their head, or in some religions widows shaving during the mourning period for husbands or in some cases children.
A lot of historical hair care did involve washing it with water or specific oils, or applying some sort of powder or some other stuff onto the hair to try and keep it clean. And of course a lot of cultures had a lot of specific ideas about combing hair.
But still, hair hygiene was generally a lot harder before shampoo, and especially in Europe, Asia and parts of Africa that had adopted sedentary lifestyles, this became an issue when humans lived close with a lot of animals, meaning a lot of hair-living parasites like fleas and lice would often jump over to humans. And given that those little were likely the main responsible factor for carrying zoonotic diseases from animals to humans, this was one of many problems.
Also, as you might know, even without cleanliness and fleas accounted for: hair can be very vulnerable to the elements, if you are actually outside.
So, all in all: it made a lot of sense to protect the hair. And how do you protect the hair? Well, you cover it.
So, Medieval Princesses Did Not Have Flowing Hair
If you were to believe your average fantasy novel, movie, game, or whatever, the men are though gruff looking dudes with long hair, and a bear (unless they are elves, who tend to no have much facial hair), while the average woman is some dainty slim girl with long flowing locks and a fancy dress. Neither of them wears anything to cover their hair. The man might wear a helmet - without anything between the metal and the hair, of course. The woman has her luxurious locks flow freely over her shoulders as she gives a soft sigh and runs of to frolic in the meadows or something.
Meanwhile, the peasants populating the background are some dudes with relatively short hair, and some old ladies who wear their grey hair in a knot.
This generally also reflects on your typical fantasy RPGs and such. Look at Baldur's Gate - everyone is wearing their hair free. Or Dragon Age, where Leliana is the one central character who sometimes covers her hair. Or even the Witcher games. Or, heck, Kingdom Come Deliverance, which keeps harping on how historically realistic they are, and yet, most of their important female characters - and male characters for that matter - most of the time do not wear any head covering.
And, well... I kinda feel like the most obvious one is the guy wearing his helmet on his long hair. A helmet, as you might know if you look at it, usually is not one solid chunk of metal. It has some places that move. Now, what do you think an Aragorn might experience if he puts on a helmet that is not one chunk of metal without having some sort of fabric between hair and metal? Yeah. Some hair will likely get tangled in some parts of that helmet, and extracting the head from the helmet is gonna be an unpleasant experience. Sure, better than having your head smashed in. But if you can afford, you might wanna cover your head with just a bit of fabric or leather underneath the metal. Other than with the hair, this also would make the helmet sit on your head better.
And that is for the fancy knight. The typical peasant? Well, covering the hair while doing work outside was just sensible a lot of times. It prevents the hair from getting damaged or tangled up or otherwise unpleasant. This is true for men and for women.
Historically women often wore their hair quite long and braided, with the hair length for men being a lot more variable depending on time and place. Though neither the "modern short cut" we often see on knights in games and movies is realistic most of the times (it would have been a headache to maintain without electric clippers), nor is the "romantic knight" archetype, that orginated mostly with 19th century historic romances to which we generally owe a lot of images around knights.
Of course there were some cultures that did not do that. Those, usually, often wore some sort of protective hairstyle. Braids, locks, or in some cases styles that included some variation of pigment, clay or anything along those lines covering the actual hair. It should also be noted: there were protective hairstyles in Europe and Asia - though sadly we do in many places know very little on them with the sources we have often being not very specific.
Let Me Cover My Character's Hair
And that brings me to the hair coverings and how much it annoys me that pretty much no fantasy game ever has them. I hate this so much. I hate it. I HATE IT. It is one thing that the games let us wear the hair uncovered. Sure, whatever. It is fantasy in most cases. And it is meant to appeal to the player.
No, what I hate is that in most games covering your hair is just not a viable option in the character creator. BG3 does not allow it. Dragon Age does not allow it. You can wear helmets, eventually. But many of those do not well cover the hair. And many look stupid either way. There is no hair cloth, very few hats. Nothing.
And in any other form of fantasy or historical media the women also run around with their hair all out - and so do the men. Nobody ever covers their hair. No matter how much a piece of media claims to be "historically accurate".
In our times, we mostly associate female hair covering with Islam. If I show you historical European hair cloths the first thing you will think is hijab. And yes, I will show you in a moment.
It is kinda because of this that it annoys me. As I said above: I had a conversation with someone about BG3 who was a devout Muslim woman, and she just wanted to play a character in this game who covered their hair. And the closest thing to appropriate hair cover the game has is one druid helmet. Which is not great. And this is such a problem. Because so many games will be like: "Oh, we have such a wide variation for character creation." And yet none of them allows you to wear a fucking cloth over your hair in a somewhat covering appropriate manner. It isn't that fucking hard to do. Just add it as one fucking hair style: having it covered.
Again, I am not saying: games need to do this all super realistically. Whatever. I don't care. But allow players who want to do it to do it.
This is especially dire, because... well, as you might well know, the entire hijab thing has become such a faux discussion on women's rights, with countries forbidding women to wear a hijab and calling it "women's liberation" to legislate what a woman can and cannot wear. (I am looking at you, France.) Ignoring all research that says that it does not help the women who are indeed forced to veil themselves or their hair, while also controlling the women who just want to do it.
Non-Muslim Historical Hair Covering (Because I Can)
So, let's go through a couple of historical hair coverings that we do know off. This is by no means an exhaustive list and mostly exists because, well... again, I am just so annoyed how this part of history is constantly getting erased, wile also using this idea of how hair covering is somehow inherently misogynous is also used as a tool to validate anti-muslim sentiment. So, let's just... go through some.
Let's start with probably the most famous head-covering for women in historical Europe: the wimple, which to this day is used by a variety of Christian nuns. The exact styles did vary over the course of history, but they have been around pretty much constantly since the 12th century. Usually they cover the entire hair, and the neck. Historically - outside of religion - they often were associated with married women and older women, though details vary.
The chaperon meanwhile was a headdress that became high fashion in the late medieval period. They started to become a thing towards the end of the 12th century, but their main popularity was from around 1400 onwards. This started originally as a functional head covering for men, but as it became popular it became a thing of fashion with a lot of variations in details.
Then we have the coif. The true universal historical headgear, that was functional first and foremost, but was worn in some variation by everyone - no matter the gender, age, or class. It was usually some variation of white cap that at times got worn on its own, or underneath other headgear, partially just to keep the hair out of the way and controlled.
Then we have probably the most iconic female headgear from historical Europe: the hennin. Which usually was somewhat cone shaped and had a veil attached to it, that might or might not cover the face. Despite it being kinda the quintessential headpiece we imagine a medieval princess to wear, they technically only started appearing at the tailend of the middle ages, though they did stuck around for a while afterwards. Ironically they are one of those pieces where we actually are not fully sure if the word we use now was historically used, as the tracing of words describing this is iffy at best.
To go away from the medieval period, Ancient Greece for example also had a bunch of different headcoverings for women. Same with ancient Rome. In a lot of reliefs, mosaics and statues you will find a variation of textures for the people's heads, many of which actually are meant to depict a variation of often intricate headcoverings. Among others the Sakkos, Kredemnon, Mitra, and Polos.
Ancient Rome also had a variety of veils and hair covers, especially for women. Some of them were specifically work in the context of religion (like the Suffibulum of the Vestal Virgins) or ritual (such as weddings or mourning periods), but generally covering the hair for practical reasons was fairly common from all that we know.
So, next let's also note that there is a bunch of super regional headgears that are at times still around in Europe to this day, though usually only worn on special occasions or - let's be honest - for tourists. Just some examples I can name here: the "Bollenhaube" (Southern Germany), the Voledam Cap (Netherlands), and the Bigouden coiffe (Brittany, France).
Then I have to mention Eastern Europe, which - in my humble opinion - does have just the most stunning head scars and hats and all other sorts of headgear imaginable. Genuinely, it was hard to decide. I could do a whole post just about headdresses in Eastern Europe. As examples here: the Kokoshnik, Povoinik, and Kichka.
Admittedly, yes, we do have way more specific headdresses for women, as you might notice. So, to change things up, have a look at the Tagelmust. A scarfs that covers pretty much the entire head and is worn by the men of the Tuareg people. (Yes, if you might notice: this is where they got the visual inspiration for Dune.)
Another rather famous example of a haircover that is worn by men rather then women is of course the Dastar worn by Sikh men, and the Doppa that is worn by the men of the Uyghur and Uzbek peoples of Central Asia.
And then, as I reach the upper limits of images I can put in this post, there is also a variation of headdresses worn in East Asia, that you likely have seen a couple of times but have never thought about. Some of those were mandatory for specific occasions, or if you had a certain role/class, while others were worn for fashionable reasons.
So, as I am ending this post, let me just sum it up for you: I hate it when character creators do not allow me to say that my character covers their hair. I hate that CRPGs often only allow to cover the head/hair with often silly/ugly helmets. And I also hate that pretty much everyone doing fantasy just lets the characters run around with their hair flowing freely in the wind, never once thinking about the practicality of it.
I would not have that much of a problem with it, if we lived in a world in which anti-Muslim sentiment was not so common place. But right now so often the covering of hair done by often Muslim women is made to this big political point, as people act as if the religious covering of hair is a thing unique to Islam, and was not to this day commonly done in a lot of Christian religions as well.
And it is just very frustrating to me that hair and what to do with it does not even hit your average worldbuilder's mind.
Hair is important. It is influenced by technology, and practicality. Please think of hair.
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