Femininity (9 page)

Blonde hair has been associated with the goodness of sunshine, the preciousness of
spun gold, the purity of the Madonna, the excitement of paid-for love, and the innocent,
pastoral vision in literature, myth and art—quite an impressive, if contradictory,
set of values. Golden hair was definitely an attribute of feminine beauty in Imperial
Rome, where it became the fashion for prostitutes and wealthy matrons to wear blonde
wigs made of hair brought back from conquered Gaul. In fifteenth-century Florentine
art, reddish gold and flaxen were the colors of choice to grace the heads of Botticelli’s
pagans as well as his Madonnas, and for the Annunciations, Adorations and Virgins
with Child of Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi.

When the farmland of the American Midwest was settled by fair-haired Protestants from
Germany and Scandinavia while the Eastern industrial cities were filled with teeming
masses of dark-haired Catholics and Jews from middle Europe, the dark-light, urban-rural
dichotomy was given a firm geographical basis. The farmer’s daughter was a living
symbol of wheat and corn, of fresh milk and sweet creamery butter. When she ventured
outside her ethnic circle, she became a rare exotic flower. Her pale hair and skin
looked particularly feminine next to those of dark-haired, dark-skinned women: less
aggressive and dynamic, more pleasing and mellow in their muted tones. Her pastel
coloration seemed particularly effective in the city, where clamor, contrast and soot
were symbols of masculine progress. The Nordic blonde
might be tall and imposing, but her placid fairness served to neutralize the effect
of her height.

America’s cult of blondeness reached its zenith in the Forties and Fifties, ironically
at the moment in history when Nazi Germany and the cult of Aryan supremacy went down
to defeat. The differences between the two sets of values are important to examine.
Aryan supremacy had equated pale hair in both sexes with strength, intelligence and
superior racial stock, whereas blondeness American style is a glittering prize that
men seek in women but don’t give two hoots about for themselves, except for a small
group within the homosexual community who trade on blond hair as a way of appealing
to other men. In the American tradition, blondeness is not associated with strength
or intelligence. On the contrary, “dumb blonde” is practically one word on the lips
of some people, and her innocent vapidity and daffy humor is counterposed to the loud,
emotional intensity of know-it-all dark-haired women. (Even if the blonde is obviously
smart and knowledgeable, she is perceived as less threatening or overbearing, and
therefore more acceptably feminine, than her brunette sisters. There is no other way
to explain the disproportionate number of blondes who hold coveted jobs as correspondents
and newscasters on network television.)

Not surprisingly, America’s most slavish blonde-lovers come from those obstreperous
dark ethnic groupings that the Nazis despised, for on this the Aryan supremacist and
the American blonde-fancier agree: the blonde looks coolly unflawed by a grubby, compromised
past. In American democracy the son of an ethnic minority shows he is reaching high
by having a blonde on his arm, or the picture of a blonde taped to his locker—and
of course a woman can take practical steps to become one. Plausibility is only a minor
consideration next to instant transformation, for the “hot” blonde, ersatz and improbable,
who bleaches out her own ethnic roots can expect to be admired too. Clairol’s ingenious
question, “Is it true blondes have more fun?” was answered by Hollywood legend with
an unfortunate twist. America’s most tragic blondes, Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe,
were patently false and celebrated as such—good-time girls (as long as they lasted)
of no identifiable background, no parentage
and no pedigree except for American blondeness and the egalitarian dream.

The irony was not lost on black women when Bo Derek, the blonde and perfect “Ten,”
was widely copied for her beaded braids—a style she had copied in turn from Cicely
Tyson and some sophisticated black models who found the initial inspiration in African
motifs. In jazz, rock music and hairdos it has been the fate of American blacks to
see their originality exploited by the dominant white culture, but Bo Derek’s braids
caused a special black feminine anguish, for black women have suffered over their
hair more than anyone else.

“Good” hair and “bad” hair are subjective judgments that are based on esthetic preference.
“Good” hair does not do a superior job of protecting the scalp or allowing it to breathe.
“Good” hair is silken and soft to the touch, it is full, pliant and yielding, the
feminine ideal in matters of anatomy as well as in character and personality. And
“bad” hair—do we need to define that? “Bad” hair is split and broken ends, hair that
is limp and stringy, hair that is wiry and unmanageable or too thin to hold a set,
hair that is coarse to the touch of the fingers, hair that is naturally wild and kinky.

“Mama” [moans Hagar], “why don’t he like my hair?”

“Milkman does too like your hair,” said Reba.

“No. He don’t. But I can’t figure out why. He never liked my hair.”

“Of course he likes it. How can he not like it?” asked Pilate.

“He likes silky hair … Curly, wavy, silky hair. He don’t like mine.”

Pilate puts her hand on Hagar’s head and trails her fingers through her granddaughter’s
soft damp wool. “How can he not love your hair? It’s the same hair that grows out
of his own armpits. The same hair that grow up out of his crotch on up his stomach.
All over his chest. The very same. It grows out of his nose, over his lips, and if
he ever lost his razor it would grow all over his face. It’s all over his head, Hagar.
It’s his hair too. He got to love it.”

“He don’t love it at all. He hates it.”

“No he don’t. He don’t know what he loves, but he’ll come around, honey, one of these
days. How can he love himself and hate your hair?”

“He’s never going to like my hair.”

“Hush, girl, hush.”

Toni Morrison placed this scene between a young black woman, her mother and grandmother
near the end of her novel
Song of Solomon,
named after the Biblical verses of sensual love. Its mournful resolution—“He’s never
going to like my hair”—has the finality of historic pain, for “He,” whoever he is
and whatever his color, lives in white America where the standards of feminine beauty
arose from a gene pool that was exclusively Caucasian and from cultural traditions
brought over from Christian Europe.

Wild, springy hair was grandly positive in the African male tradition, a testament
to virility and strength. By contrast the prototypical feminine head was tightly cornrowed,
covered or shaved. Forcibly exposed to the esthetic and moral values of their white
Christian masters, it was inevitable that American blacks would accept the judgment
that this evidence of genetic heritage was difficult, shameful or bad. The celebration
of Black Is Beautiful in the 1960s made pride in natural hair an easier matter for
black men than for black women. Free of hot combs and straighteners, the Afro looked
properly militant as a symbol of Black Power, but militance and femininity do not
coexist with ease. The feminine Afro often had to be painstakingly teased to frame
the face softly with a symmetrical halo.

Silky, long hair automatically inspires a cluster of preoccupied gestures that are
considered sublimely feminine because they are sensuously self-involved: an absent-minded
twisting of a stray curl, the freeing of loose ends that get caught under a coat collar,
a dramatic toss of the entire mane, a brushing aside of the tendrils that fall so
fetchingly across the forehead and into the eyes. A mass of long, soft hair is something
to play with, a reassuring source of tactile sensation and a demanding presence that
insists on the wearer’s attention. Ntozake Shange sharply reminds us of these narcissistic
feminine traits and how they
exclude black women in her dramatic poem “today i’ma be a white girl,” in which a
black maid sarcastically reveals that “the first thing a white girl does in the morning
is fling her hair,” and that she falls back on flinging or swinging her hair whenever
she is at a loss for something to do.

Everything is relative, of course, and white women know that the kind of hair that
can be swung or flung gracefully is in limited supply. An equal amount belongs by
genetic heritage to men, and most of it in the world’s population belongs to Asians,
but it wasn’t until rock musicians and other youths of the white counterculture let
their hair grow to shoulder length in the Sixties, chiefly in defiance of militaristic
values during the Vietnam war, that the “intrinsic” feminine gestures associated with
loose, flowing hair began to show their true, genderless nature.

It was too much to expect that the majority of middle-class men in the United States
would risk growing their hair long in empathic response to changing sex roles or as
an expression of their sensitive nature. The militarism of the army brush cut and
the corporate efficiency of the short barbered trim were too thoroughly identified
with masculine power. By the late 1970s longhaired men were out of fashion (and punk
rockers of the Eighties wore their hair short, tough and ugly). In addition to wanting
a hard-edged, masculine look for the competitive Eighties, I suppose the former longhairs
got tired of the endless bother.

Women, of course, are not yet entitled to be free of the bother. The hairdresser’s
appointment is as permanent a fixture on the calendar of the female executive as the
lunchtime squash date on the calendar of her male counterpart. A television anchorman
ducks in and out of the makeup room before he faces the camera; his female co-host
must allot time as well for the curling iron and the fluff-out before she is deemed
fit to be seen by the judgmental public. An evening out on the town is ritualistically
preceded by an afternoon at the beauty parlor for millions of American women, an event
that would be of anthropological significance if it occurred in a distant, exotic
culture. In fact, anything a woman might do that is at all public, from singing in
a nightclub to attending a funeral, or simply
“going to the city,” may be preceded by an allotment of time to do her hair or have
it “done.”
*

Neighborhood beauty parlors are such an entrenched part of city life that it is hard
to believe they did not exist before the twentieth century. Upper-class Roman matrons
pursued the art of hair arrangement as a consuming passion, but they had their coiffures
slaved over, quite literally, at home, while their husbands went daily to the public
barber, whose establishment was a sociable place for conducting business that rivaled
the public baths. As slaves became servants and servants became maids, women continued
to have their hair done, or contrived to do their own hair, in the privacy and isolation
of the home. Dressing the hair at home with the help of a lady’s maid, a female relative,
or a visiting artiste who arrived by appointment was standard procedure up to the
1920s, when the rebellious flapper had no choice but to go to a man’s barber or ask
a good friend to do the honors.

The entrepreneur who opened a small neighborhood shop was responding directly and
shrewdly to the mass appeal of short hair, for once a woman was free of the coil at
the nape of her neck, it became her urgent mission to seek out new ways to feminize
her head. To soften the look of a practical cut, she gave herself over to professional
treatment: spit curls and bangs dipped in gluey setting lotions, stiff marcel waves
that were curled by hot irons, a permanent wave by electric machine, a monthly styling,
a weekly set and comb-out, a shampoo and blow-dry, and as technology advanced, chemical
straighteners and chemical frizzes, bleaches, lighteners, touch-ups, frostings, streakings,
highlights and other permutations of color.

Fashions in hair styles are now subject to change as rapidly as fashions in clothes,
and the restless tinkering that women do is as much a product of the competitive desire
not to fall behind the times as it is a reflection of female insecurity and the belief
that
the raw materials of the face and body are not good enough in their natural state.
An artful shaping can play down a forehead that is too strong, a jaw that is too square,
a neck that is too short or ears that are too large for an idealized standard of beauty.
The psychological uplift that can be obtained from this feminine improvement cannot
be ignored. Nothing alters the familiar face in the mirror quite so easily as going
from long to short, from straight to curly, from brunette to auburn, from gray to
ash blonde. A woman will often choose to “do something different” with her hair after
a difficult crisis, for a new way of wearing the hair gives the impression of a new
lease on life. A fashionable hair style can elevate the mood more successfully than
any drug (although the effect may be equally temporary), a fresh look can sever the
emotional ties with a person who preferred it the old way, it can offer visible proof
that this spunky lady is taking charge of her personal survival, is pulling herself
out of a dismal morass.

In the Sixties and Seventies the hair stylist at the top of his profession won recognition
on the society page for being a friend and confidant of his rich and social clients.
He went to the best parties, often as an escort, and he gave some publicized parties
of his own. He was a trend setter and an acknowledged practitioner of the perfectible
lifestyle. He was the subject of a popular movie,
Shampoo,
and one of his number had a well-publicized love affair with a Hollywood star and
went on to produce movies himself. The bond between the elite hair stylist and his
elite clientele, however, was poorly understood by most men, who continued to view
the relationship as a stock cliché of effeminacy, for in a sense the hairdresser was
cursed with the deep strain of triviality that curses all women. Hair indeed may be
trivial, but it is central to the feminine definition. A hairdresser’s skills and
artistic talent are devoted in a practical way to feminine illusion, and as Edith
Wharton observed in 1900, “Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how
to do her hair.”