Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

In Elizabeth's lecture on Tuesday afternoon of this week she mentioned the part of the one-gender concept that a couple hundred years ago, boys wore skirts until the age of 7 when they recieved their first pair of short pants. I just learned that in the Jewish tradition there is a custom called upsherin. There is a Jewish law that states that a boy's hair should not be cut until his third birthday. There's a neat story about this here:

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3068/jewish/Upsherin.htm

In a sense this is meant to mark the end of his babyhood, and the beginning of his growth into adulthood. After a boy's upsherin he will begin his education (learning Hebrew and learning the prayers and stuff) it also marks the point where he will be identified decidedly as a boy. In families where men wear yamukas and tzitzit, this is when the boy will start to wear these things (While it is becoming more common for Jewish women to wear these things, it is still rare). Before a Boy's upsherin when he has long hair, it will likely be common for him to be mistaken for a girl, so this ceremony is not only for age marking, it is also for gender marking.