英文摘要 |
In the period between the late sixties and mid-seventies, the government of Taiwan undertook broad-scale action to police young men who were thought to have grown their hair too long. Situating such regulation of the masculine body in the context of Cold War gender politics, social transformation, and the history of Taiwan's particular hair rules, this paper examines the ways in which long-haired men were understood as a sign of the country's crisis articulated in terms of Western and communist corrupting influences. I argue that this history is gendered at various levels, including the appropriation and reinvention of the term 'bu nan bu nu' (neither man nor woman) to describe such a supposed foreign corruption of 'authentic' Chinese culture, and which implied that men were not supposed to distinguish themselves by adopting an unconventional hair style. Even though 'long-haired' men did not intend to adopt women's hair style, they did resist the rigidly imposed regulations of body appearance. It was through this resistance and the claiming of the freedom to one's own body expression that men worked against the limitations that were imposed upon them. The case of long-haired men was not merely an example of how the martial law system restricted freedom of expression; it was also a case in which the regulations of gendered body appearance intertwined with both the state and cultural politics. |