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Hair fetishism, also known as hair partialism and trichophilia, is a
partialism
Partialism is sexual fetish with an exclusive focus on a specific part of the body other than genitals. Partialism is categorized as a fetishistic disorder in the DSM-5 of the American Psychiatric Association only if it causes significant psyc ...
in which a person sees hair most commonly,
head hair
Hair is a protein filament that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Hair is one of the defining characteristics of mammals.
The human body, apart from areas of glabrous skin, is covered in follicles which produce thick terminal and fine ...
as particularly
erotic
Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, scul ...
and
sexually arousing.
Arousal may occur from seeing or touching hair, whether head hair,
armpit hair
Underarm hair, also known as axillary hair, is the hair in the underarm area (''axilla'').
Development
Underarm or axillary hair goes through four stages of development, driven by weak androgens produced by the adrenal in males and females du ...
,
chest hair
Chest hair is hair that grows on the chest in the region between the neck and the abdomen. Chest hair develops during and after puberty along with other types of androgenic hair.
Development and growth
Although vellus hair is already presen ...
or
fur
Fur is a thick growth of hair that covers the skin of mammals. It consists of a combination of oily guard hair on top and thick underfur beneath. The guard hair keeps moisture from reaching the skin; the underfur acts as an insulating blanket t ...
. Head-hair arousal may come from seeing or touching very
long
Long may refer to:
Measurement
* Long, characteristic of something of great duration
* Long, characteristic of something of great length
* Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate
* Longa (music), note value in early music mens ...
or short hair, wet hair, certain colors of hair or a particular hairstyle. Pubephilia is sexual arousal at the sight or feel of
pubic hair
Pubic hair is terminal body hair that is found in the genital area of adolescent and adult humans. The hair is located on and around the sex organs and sometimes at the top of the inside of the thighs. In the pubic region around the pubis bon ...
.
Haircut fetishism is a related
paraphilia
Paraphilia (previously known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. It has also been defined as sexual interest in anything ot ...
in which a person is aroused by having their head hair cut or shaved, by cutting the hair of another, by watching someone get a haircut, or by seeing someone with a shaved head or very short hair.
Etymology
The word trichophilia comes from the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
''"trica-"'' (τρίχα), which means hair, and the suffix ''"-philia"'' (φιλία), which means love.
Characteristics
Hair is one of the defining characteristics of
mammal
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...
s. In humans, hair can be
scalp hair, facial hair,
chest hair
Chest hair is hair that grows on the chest in the region between the neck and the abdomen. Chest hair develops during and after puberty along with other types of androgenic hair.
Development and growth
Although vellus hair is already presen ...
,
pubic hair
Pubic hair is terminal body hair that is found in the genital area of adolescent and adult humans. The hair is located on and around the sex organs and sometimes at the top of the inside of the thighs. In the pubic region around the pubis bon ...
,
axillary hair
Underarm hair, also known as axillary hair, is the hair in the underarm area (''axilla'').
Development
Underarm or axillary hair goes through four stages of development, driven by weak androgens produced by the adrenal in males and females du ...
, besides other places. Men tend to have hair in more places than women. Hair does not in itself have any intrinsic sexual value other than the attributes given to it by individuals in a cultural context. Some cultures are ambivalent in relation to body hair, with some being regarded as attractive while others being regarded as unaesthetic. Many cultures regard a woman's hair to be erotic. For example, many Muslim women cover their hair in public, and display it only to their family and close friends.
Similarly, many Jewish women cover their hair after marriage. During the Middle Ages, European women were expected to cover their hair after they married, and according to the New Testament, a Christian woman should cover her head while in a church or in prayer.
Even in cultures where women do not customarily cover their hair, the erotic significance of hair is recognised. Some hair styles are culturally associated with a particular gender, with short head hair styles and baldness being associated with men and longer hair styles with women and girls, even though there are many
exceptions such as
Gaelic Irish
The Gaels ( ; ga, Na Gaeil ; gd, Na Gàidheil ; gv, Ny Gaeil ) are an ethnolinguistic group native to Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man in the British Isles. They are associated with the Gaelic languages: a branch of the Celtic languag ...
men, and also depictions of men in art throughout history, the most notable example probably being that of
Jesus Christ
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
. In the case of women especially, head hair has been presented in art and literature as a feature of beauty, vanity and eroticism. Hair has a very important role in the canons of beauty in different regions of the world, and healthy combed hair has two important functions, beauty and fashion. In those cultures, considerable time and expense is put into the attractive presentation of hair and, in some cases, to the removal of culturally unwanted hair. In historical Indian tradition, women have been expected to maintain long hair — customarily tied out of the way, for the sake of practicality and the appearance of neatness — and have been strongly discouraged from cutting it.
Hair fetishism manifests itself in a variety of behaviors. A fetishist may enjoy seeing or touching hair, pulling on or cutting the hair of another person.
Besides enjoyment they may become sexually aroused from such activities. It may also be described as an obsession, as in the case of hair washing or dread of losing hair. Arousal by head hair may arise from seeing or touching very
long
Long may refer to:
Measurement
* Long, characteristic of something of great duration
* Long, characteristic of something of great length
* Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate
* Longa (music), note value in early music mens ...
or short hair, wet hair, a certain color of hair or a particular hairstyle. Others may find the attraction of literally "having sex with somebody's hair" as a fantasy or fetish.
The fetish affects both men and women.
Some people feel pleasure when their hair is being cut or groomed. This is because they produce
endorphins
Endorphins (contracted from endogenous morphine) are chemical signals in the brain that block the perception of pain and increase feelings of wellbeing. They are produced and stored in an area of the brain known as the pituitary gland.
Hist ...
giving them a feeling which is similar to that of a head
massage
Massage is the manipulation of the body's soft tissues. Massage techniques are commonly applied with hands, fingers, elbows, knees, forearms, feet or a device. The purpose of massage is generally for the treatment of body stress or pain. In Eu ...
, laughter, or caress.
On the other hand, many people feel some level of anxiety when their head hair is being cut.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
stated that cutting woman's long hair by men may represent a fear and/or concept of
castration
Castration is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which an individual loses use of the testicles: the male gonad. Surgical castration is bilateral orchiectomy (excision of both testicles), while chemical castration uses pharmaceut ...
, meaning that a woman's long hair represents a figurative
penis
A penis (plural ''penises'' or ''penes'' () is the primary sexual organ that male animals use to inseminate females (or hermaphrodites) during copulation. Such organs occur in many animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate, but males do n ...
and that by cutting off her hair a man may feel dominance
as castrator, not the castrated one (while paradoxically also being reassured by the fact that the hair will grow again).
Trichophilia may present with different excitation sources, the most common, but not the only one, being human head hair. Trichophilia may also involve facial hair, chest hair, pubic hair, armpit hair and animal fur. The excitation can arise from the texture, color, hairstyle and hair length. Among the most common variants of this paraphilia are excitation by long hair and short hair, the excitement of blonde hair (blonde fetishism) and red hair (redhead fetishism) and the excitement of the different textures of hair (straight, curly, wavy, etc.). Trichophilia can relate to the excitement that is caused by plucking or pulling hair or body hair.
Trichophilia is considered a paraphilia which is usually inoffensive.
Prevalence
![Sif by Dollman](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Sif_by_Dollman.jpg)
In order to determine the relative prevalence of different fetishes, scientists obtained a sample of at least 5000 individuals worldwide, in 2007, from 381 Internet discussion groups. The relative prevalences were estimated based on (a) the number of groups devoted to a particular fetish, (b) the number of individuals participating in the groups and (c) the number of messages exchanged. Of the sampled population, 7 percent were sexually aroused by hair (as opposed to 12 for underwear, but only 4 for genitals, 3 for breasts, 2 for buttocks, and less than one for body hair).
See also
*
Fur fetishism
Clothing fetishism or garment fetishism is a sexual fetish that revolves around a fixation upon a particular article or type of clothing, a particular fashion or uniform, or a person dressed in such a style.
The clinical definition of a sexual ...
*
Hair theft
Hair theft has been a recurrent problem in various parts of the world where human hair is in demand, either for commercial products such as wigs and hairpieces, or for sexual fetishes. As hair has a high commercial value – in the mid-19th centu ...
*
Hairstyle
A hairstyle, hairdo, haircut or coiffure refers to the styling of hair, usually on the human scalp. Sometimes, this could also mean an editing of facial or body hair. The fashioning of hair can be considered an aspect of personal groomin ...
*
Paraphilia
Paraphilia (previously known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. It has also been defined as sexual interest in anything ot ...
*
Pubic hair fetishism
In vertebrates, the pubic region ( la, pubis) is the most forward-facing (ventral and anterior) of the three main regions making up the coxal bone. The left and right pubic regions are each made up of three sections, a superior ramus, inferior r ...
*
Bear (gay culture)
In gay culture, a bear is a larger and often hairier man who projects an image of rugged masculinity.
The bear concept can function as an identity or an affiliation, and there is ongoing debate in bear communities about what constitutes a bear ...
*
Armpit fetishism
References
{{Paraphilia
Paraphilias
Sexual fetishism
Human hair
pt:Parafilia#Algumas parafilias