ASU Research E-Magazine: It's All About Hair

“The most important thing I have to say today is hair matters. Pay attention to your hair,” Hillary Rodham Clinton told the 2001 graduating class at Yale College. “Because everyone else will.”

Some might find it surprising that a successful politician would choose to mention—of all things—hair. Rose Weitz is not surprised in the least.

“Hillary was right,” says Weitz, a professor of women’s studies and sociology at Arizona State University. “Our hair is one of the first things others notice about us and one of the primary ways we declare our identity to them.”

Weitz explores this topic in-depth in her new book, Rapunzel’s Daughters: What Women’s Hair Tells Us about Women’s Lives. The book is based on historical research, observations at hair salons, interviews with 74 girls and women, and a variety of focus groups.

The ASU sociologist shows how hair is tangled up with all aspects of life, including sexuality, age, race, social class, health, power, and religion. The reasons for hair’s leading role can be attributed to three things, according to Weitz.

“It is personal, growing directly out of our bodies. It is public, on view for all to see. And it is malleable, allowing us to change it more or less at whim,” she says. “As a result, it’s not surprising that we use our hair to project our identity and that others see our hair as a reflection of our identity.”

During research for the book, Weitz looked at how women change their hairstyles to mark important life passages. She noted changing hair fashions that often reflect social values, such as the resurgence of the Afro in the late 1960s to show black pride.

She examined how women use their hair to attract men or show their independence from them. She also explored their relationships with hairdressers, and relates the effects of hair loss through alopecia and chemotherapy on women’s self-image.

Like all women, Weitz has her own personal “hairstory.” One of her earliest memories is watching a Shirley Temple movie and being entranced by the young actress, particularly her curly blonde locks. After the movie, the 5-year-old Weitz hid in a closet and chopped off her straight, waist-length black hair. Somehow she believed that it would magically grow back in golden ringlets.

The magic didn’t work for Weitz, but women often do work a certain transformative magic through their hair. Using dyes and perms, gels and sprays, wigs and razors, women can change the image they project quickly and easily. Hair can make a statement about one’s culture and ethnicity, political leanings, religious affiliation, and even professional status.

Weitz explains. “I know a local utility company where there is no woman over a certain level in the administrative hierarchy who has hair that even touches her shoulders. As Melanie Griffith said in the film Working Girl, ‘You wanna be taken seriously, you need serious hair.’”

Like an adaptable hairstyle, Weitz’s book is at once playful and serious. As Hillary Clinton obviously knows, the personal nature of hair is the political. Weitz wraps women’s personal hair stories into a broader social framework.

“My research is on women, health, and the body. I wanted to write about the everyday ways that ordinary women deal with the cultural expectations for female bodies. It’s a fun topic that everyone can relate to while talking about very important issues.”—Diane Boudreau