Bad grooming in November: it's not just for the fellas anymore! It's been over a decade since the birth of Movember, the famed mustache-growing event that benefits men's health charities. Now there's No-Shave November, in which of both sexes can show solidarity with cancer patients by skipping the razor or waxing appointment, and donating their usual hair expenses to cancer research. Ken Jennings of Jeopardy! fame will be with us all month, untangling all manner of hairy misconceptions and follicular falsehoods.
The Debunker: Did Delilah Cut Samson's Hair?
You don't have to be a Sunday school regular to know the story of Samson and Delilah, or at least the broad strokes. Samson is a big strong muscleman who falls for the beautiful Delilah. She's bad news and betrays him. It's a tale as old as time. It's a pretty misogynistic tale as old as time, I guess, but today there are feminist readings of the story as well, if that's what you're into.
If there's just one detail that non-Bible scholars remember about Samson and Delilah, it's the hair thing. Quick summary: Samson owes his prodigious strength to his hair, which he has never cut, in line with a vow he's made to God. The Philistines are tired of Samson kicking their collective ass, so they pay Delilah 1,100 pieces of silver to find out his secret. (For some reason, they assume he has a secret weakness, like Kryptonite.) Samson tells her a series of goofy lies, like "I'll lose my strength if you tie me up with new ropes," and doesn't seem too fazed when he repeatedly wakes up to find her trying the thing that he just told her was his big secret weakness. Hey, maybe homeboy just likes to be tied up.
Finally, she gets the truth out of him: it's his hair. While Samson sleeps, Delilah cuts his hair, and delivers her weakened, shaven man to the Philistines. It's the iconic moment in the story, Delilah looming over the sleeping Samson with a pair of scissors, and it was depicted in art by Mantegna and Rembrandt and Cranach and Durer. It's in the old movie with Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr. It is not, however, in the Bible. In Judges 16:19, when Samson falls asleep in her lap, "she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head." Delilah called a barber! A few Dutch painters, like Rubens, Van Dyck, and Jan Steen, actually get this right in their paintings, but I have to admit that the tableau is a lot less dramatic and erotic with a barber in there. Pretty much any scene in life is less erotic with a barber in there, come to think of it.
Quick Quiz: What Illinois pop band had their only #1 hit in 2007 with "Hey There Delilah"?