Cirrus@Austlit

'When he wanted to send a secret message, the ancient Greek tyrant Histiaeus shaved the head of a slave, tattooed the message on his scalp and, once the hair had grown back, sent him on his way. In this story, Ellis Gunn finds a key metaphor for how patriarchal society imprints and then hides its stories of violence and abuse on the bodies of women: “All the messages tattooed on our scalps. All the hair we’ve grown over them.”' (Introduction)