Statement of Research Project
Why do some people use hair as a basis to judge one another? Are
these concepts taught to us culturally, or more deeply integrated
into us at an almost evolutionary level? Do the standards change
from one culture to another? I had some of my own ideas about this
through experience growing up and also working in salons as a
hairstylist. It was very clear to me that humans are communicating
aspects of themselves with their hair, but not everyone interprets
these messages as intended. Why? The results of my research both
validated and surprised me. I had considered myself to be educated
about hair before now having spend considerable money and time on the
education required to take a licensing exam to become a hair stylist.
I am now convinced that the education I received was not
comprehensive because of how much I learned this semester.
Background
I began my research with a basic search inquiry on the computer to
find books about hair. My first search yielded three good results
that began to shape the direction of my research. Encyclopedia of
Hair: a cultural history, by Victoria Sherrow, was a treasure
trove of every aspect of every culture and how hair weaves its way
into our story as humans. This book was important because it taught
me about the roles hair styles have played in most major cultures,
the expectations each culture has regarding hair, what is and has
been fashionable to each culture. Hair: A Human Story,
by Kurt Stenn, was extremely influential in the direction my research
took. He speaks in chapter 5 about hair being used in communication
among humans. He says on page 55, “the messages humans send by
means of hair are not always easy to determine, and objective
research is rarely undertaken to characterize them.” This is the
approach I wanted to take.
While reading Sherrow’s
Enclopedia, she
referenced Big Hair: A Journey Into the Transformation of
Self, by Grant McCracken. Here
was a cultural anthropologist’s examination of hair as a
transformative part of women’s lives. This book was, in many ways, very
dated (much has changed in the 25 years since it was written) and I
also felt McCracken put too many personal opinions into his analysis
(he also made a huge error referencing Star Trek movies, but that is
irrelevant). Overall, I enjoyed reading about the roots surrounding
hair color stereotypes in America and his breakdown of various
popular hairstyles during the time in which the book was written. In
these two aspects, not much has changed since 1995.
It
was becoming clear to me that I would need to interview many people
for this project but there simply was not enough time. More searches
turned up new books. Me,
My Hair, and I,
Twenty-seven Women Untangle an Obsession, edited
by Elizabeth Benedict, was a great find. Here is a collection of
stories from 27 women of various ethnic and economic backgrounds,
each telling their own personal story about their hair. They are
wonderful stories, each unique, and yet they share common threads.
Another great find was Rapunzel’s
Daughters, What Women’s Hair Tells Us About Women’s Lives,
by Rose Weitz. On the dust jacket sleeve, it says “Hair . . . is
one of the primary ways we declare our identity to others.” I could
not have said it better. This book contains quotes and observations
from interviews Weitz did while researching her book. In a way,
Weitz was researching very much the same topic as I was. The last
book I added was, Hair:
Styling, Culture, and Fashion,
edited by Geraldine Biddle-Perry and Sarah Cheang. This was a
collection of academic papers by 16 other authors on a wide variety
of hair related topics. Some of these topics had little to do with
my project, and others like “Hair, Gender and Looking” were very
useful.
Methodology
I
conducted my research first online searching through Google and also
Amazon for books. Most of my research was good old-fashioned reading
books and highlighting passages (which is why I preferred buying the
books to checking them out at the library). I also conducted an
interview with a hairstylist, Kami, from Hair Architects in Tucson,
AZ. As I would discuss this project with several of my peers, who
all seemed surprised that I found a correlation between hair and
communication, their first reactions were that I ought to spend time
in a salon
and at a cosmetology
school conducting interviews for this project. I had already worked
for a number of years as a hairstylist and attended cosmetology
school too,
so I knew first hand that salons
and stylists were not going to be the right place to concentrate my
research. However, interviewing a stylist was still useful to this
project. The rest of my observations and research were conducted at
home because of the COVID-19 lockdown. This was of some benefit to
me because I was hard pressed to find an event to conduct participant
observations and my research was not focused on a specific community.
Presentation of Data
“Across
cultures, hair is one of the most powerful symbols of our individual
and collective identities” (Biddle-Perry 97). As far back as we
can reach in human evolution, we have sought to take control and gain
mastery of our hair. Even apes can be observed in the wild engaged
in grooming one another. When exactly we shifted from simple
grooming to tying hair back, cutting it, and even developing braids
is unknown. The Ice Age Venus sculptures which date back to 30,000
BCE show “evidence of deliberate hairstyling” (Sherrow, location
149). Over the course of history, as human culture developed, we
have used our hair to attract or repel the opposite sex, to mourn a
loved one, as a sign of status or religious affiliation within a
community, to punish or control each other, to frighten enemies, to
ward off evil and bring luck to oneself, to signal gender and
sexuality, to gain respect, to rebel against society, to transform
our appearance or act as a disguise, to experiment with our identity
and self discovery, or simply to feel control and autonomy over our
bodies. Leaders and celebrities have contributed to community
ideals with their own hair and created hair styles that are iconic
and quickly recognizable for their place in time or their identity
(see Appendix I). Each time we use our hair to do any of this, we are
communicating to others around us.
In
our culture, women, more than men, express themselves through their
hair. “A woman’s hair is often seen as an indicator of her
morality, her social position, and her allure” (Mahawatte, 193).
When preparing his book Big
Hair,
Grant McCracken observed that men cared very little for hair, “They
have declared hair a trivial matter” (McCracken 6). (This is not
always the case and McCracken likely refers specifically to straight
cis-gendered men when he speaks about them, but as said earlier, his
book is a bit out of date and at any rate this paper focuses on
women). Among women, two aspects of hair are most important: length,
and color.
First
let’s talk about length. What does length communicate? “ . . .
abundant hair is perceived as the essential visual marker of
idealized femininity” (Biddle-Perry 99). A thing most cultures and
many of the largest religious groups on the planet agree on is that
women should have long hair, young women especially. McCracken calls
this “voluptuous hair” in his book and says it is a look many
women wear while they are young, but that by age thirty “the clock
is ticking” (McCracken 134). Long hair is associated both
with sexuality and innocence (McCracken 134, 136). Indeed, what
better time to look “sexy” with long hair than
when a woman is young and seeking a mate for the first time? When I
asked Kami, a hairstylist, which hair style she thought was the most
timeless and always “in-style,” she responded, “I would say
longer hair with long layers is more of a classic timeless thing.”
In reference to long hair style that he calls “voluptuous,”
McCracken said, “No one has yet attempted to rehabilitate this
look” (McCracken 143).
In
contrast to long hair is short hair on a woman, often
adopted by older women, either
because it is expected of them or because they desire to be taken
seriously and shown respect at a job. Weitz refers to the “power
cut” in Chapter 5 (Weitz 113) of Rapunzel’s
Daughter’s; McCracken
calls it “Imperial Hair” (McCracken 144). Either way, the look is
essentially the same. Think Hilary Clinton, Queen Elizabeth II,
Barbra Bush, and Margaret Thatcher; all are
mature
women with leadership roles in their communities. Other women such as
those in Madagascar and India are traditionally expected to shave
their hair when they become widows, both to show mourning and to
signal that they do not wish to remarry (Sherrow, locations 444,
4511). Shaving off a woman’s hair in modern Western cultures is
associated with rebellion, punishment, and even illness all of which
are regarded as shocking by mainstream society and nearly always
elicit such a reaction from the rest of the community. (Recall the reaction to Jo March cutting off her hair in Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women.)
For
a woman raised in a Hasidic Jewish community, like Deborah Feldman,
shaved hair was first a ritual and a sign of commitment to her
husband and to her God, but later she began to see it as a method of
control. Long after she left her community she wore her hair long
and down. A friend, not from her childhood community, remarked to her
that she was hiding behind her hair. But for Feldman, her long loose
hair was a symbol of her freedom from a
controlling
community she
left behind
(Feldman 153,154). Feldman’s is an example of how part of the
message we send with our hair can only be understood by those who
understand our cultural background. The message Feldman was sending
was not the one her friend had received when she looked at her. In
contrast, when a woman is expected by either a marriage partner, a
religious group, or her family to keep her hair long, she will often
cut off her hair to announce her freedom and independence if she
leaves or comes of age (Weitz 108).
While
a woman’s hair length is associated with
age, marital status, and religion, hair color looks even deeper into
a woman’s identity and is associated with her mindset or psyche.
Prior to the 1950s, if a mature woman colored her hair, she was
“considered foolishly vain” (Weitz 191). While the social
acceptability of hair coloring has changed, and many women now color
their hair to look younger, they often reach an age where they stop
and are content to look their age and accept their role in the
community as an elder woman.
Each
natural (and unnatural) hair color is associated with a distinct set
of sometimes conflicting personality traits. McCracken outlines 6
types of blondes in his book Big
Hair,
“Bombshell, Dangerous, Sunny, Brassy, Society, and Cool”
(McCracken 63-90). Each of these types seems to be in direct
opposition and contradiction to the other. A blonde can either be
thought of as cheap looking, or high maintenance. She can be bubbly
and friendly, or cool and calculating.
It is all in what shades of blonde she uses and how she carries her
self. “Blondness and beauty are synonymous in Western myth and
fairytale” (Gibson 141). Many
of the
Celts were naturally blonde, but those who were not would lighten
their hair color to achieve it. (Sherrow, location 1366). And yet, in
Ancient Rome, it was required by law for a prostitutes to wear yellow
or blonde hair wigs to signify their occupation and no respectable
Roman woman would want to be a blonde (Gibson 142).
Brunettes
also have an array of stereotypes that in some ways oppose each
other. A brunette can be thought of as mousy or boring, or earthy and
exotic (McCracken 93). Regardless of how it is perceived, brown hair
is typically the natural color for most people and is a color that is
taken seriously. No one suspects you dye your hair if it’s brown.
Where many women will use chemical means to become blonde or redhead,
brunettes look natural, and therefore more down to earth, attainable,
and dependable. “. . . blondes are the ones men like to date,
brunettes are the ones men marry” (McCracken 96).
And
what of the redhead? Naturally red hair is the rarest
color, and redheads have been the target of superstitions since
ancient times. They were thought to be witches, to become vampires
after death, and even that Judas Iscariot may have been a redhead.
And yet it was a popular color in Italy and Greece, and in England
after Elizabeth I became Queen (Sherrow, location 2509). Today
redheads are regarded as
stubborn, hyperactive, hyper sexual, hot tempered, and unpredictable.
“We believe that redheads have special powers of character or,
alternatively, no real powers of character at all.” (McCracken
101). More
contradictions!
Many of our attitudes are passed on, generation to generation.
“Because girls and women are judged by appearance, mothers want
their daughters to look as attractive as possible” (Tannen 113).
Women are taught that their value is attached to their appearance.
Our mothers were taught by their mothers, and them by theirs, going
back generations. Each mother fusses over her daughter’s
appearance because it can be a reflection on her own parenting, on
her own beauty, and because she wants to see her child succeed in
life and be well liked and received by the community (Wetiz 80).
But
not everyone wants to be received by their community. In some cases,
as mentioned with hair cutting, we want to rebel and seek our
identities, and we can do so with hair color, too. For much of our
childhood, our parents make choices about hair for us. Slowly over
time, a parent gives their child bodily autonomy. A parent’s
decision to hand this autonomy over to their child often comes in
waves, and it has become a sort of rite-of-passage for girls in
America. One girl interviewed by Weitz “sculpted her appearance .
. . to let other know how she felt about the world around her.”
(Weitz 83). When we make dramatic changes to our appearance, for
whatever reason, we are testing our community and also challenging
them. We are telling them “maybe I am not who you think I am.”
When
my own blonde hair began to grow darker in my mid-teens, my mother
allowed me to start using hair color to maintain my “natural”
blonde
color,
but as it grew back darker still (untouched by summer after summer in
the sun) I began to wonder if it should be dyed brown instead. When I
mentioned to my mother’s friend that I wanted to color my hair
darker, she said “Oh you don’t want to do that, that’s
something girls who have a reputation
do, you’re not like that.” I did not understand her meaning. I
did not know at the time that hair color in the United States was,
until the 1960s, associated with women who were of low social class
and loose morals and it has taken decades for it to become socially
acceptable (McCracken 121). A natural blonde since I was a baby,
coloring my hair darker meant, to them, the good girl was going bad
and giving in to dangerous teenage angst. What it meant to me was
accepting that I no longer had the blonde hair of my youth and I
wanted to accept that I was growing up. Part of that meant testing
out a new identity as a brunette. So two years later when my parents
announced we were moving out of town, to a place where no one knew
me, I seized the opportunity to go brown, getting up at the crack of
dawn on moving day to color my hair to ensure that the first
impressions of me in a new city were made as a brunette and not as a
blonde.
Conclusion
Clearly
when it comes to our hair, the interpretation is based on the
background of the individual. You cannot be an exotic beauty with
brown hair to someone who sees brunettes as "plain Janes". The choices
each individual makes about their hair are also based on their
background and their personal experiences. Where long loose hair for
one woman is a symbol of her freedom, it is something she uses to
hide under to another. It would be safe to say that when we make
assumptions based on hair, we are judging a book by its cover without
taking the time to even read the summary on the dust jacket. We
wouldn’t attempt to assume what someone says in a language we don’t
understand, we would seek an accurate translation. It is the same
with hair. Each individual has their own unique language they are
using when they communicate identity with their hair and we cannot
know the meaning without a translation.
Appendix I
Images
1-6: Beyonce, Bob Marley, Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Oprah
Winfrey, Charles Darwin. (Christoforou
52, 53, 72, 73, 64, 61)
Images
7-10: European woman c. 1680s, European woman c. 1770s, woman c.
1895, woman c. 1840s.
(Gorsline
92, 121, 172, 146)
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