Historian untangles how women’s hair modified American history

A girl’s hair is greater than something that merely covers her head.

Little girls learn this early. No less than I did. I watched my mother color her gray roots over the toilet sink, pomade her short crop, hide her frizz under a hat. I suffered as she combed out my knotted tresses and sat still as she wove my mane right into a French braid.

It seemed that hair held some form of secret power — that it did greater than just make another attractive or beautiful.

Art historian Elizabeth L. Block noticed this, too. Her fascinating recent book, “Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing” (MIT Press, out Tuesday), untangles the importance of hair in women’s lives — emotionally, economically, socially and politically. 

Block is a senior editor of the publications and editorial department on the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has spent the past 15 years studying portraits of girls from the nineteenth century by American painters like John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt.

But while historians have long analyzed the clothing depicted in these paintings, they’ve largely ignored the coiffures.

“Hair all the time comes last,” Block told The Post. “And I just couldn’t understand why, because women spend a lot time on it!” 

“Beyond Vanity” focuses on hair practices in the US from about 1865 to 1900, a time of rapid growth, industrialization, the constructing of railroads and increasing freedoms — which brought enormous changes for ladies and their manes.

“I read a variety of women’s journals and letters [from the era], and sure, they’re talking about clothes, they’re talking about child-rearing, but they’re talking quite a bit about hair,” Block said.

“Beyond Vanity” shows that hair had enormous consequences. Letting your hair down in public could get you ostracized from society, but a great head of hair could land you a husband or job. Black women were routinely punished for his or her hair; former slave Louisa Picquet had her lustrous locks sheared once they provoked the jealousy of the master’s white daughter.

“Women definitely knew the worth of their hair,” Block said. 

So ladies singed their split ends with candles and smeared egg yolks on their tresses. They spent hours air-drying their hair within the sun (as was really helpful).

Women and girls of all classes and races — including in slaves’ quarters — braided and brushed each other’s manes. Some enslaved women donned brightly coloured headwraps, to claim their very own identity and dignity within the face of such dehumanization.

After the Civil War, several changes supercharged the hair industry, said Block: the constructing of railroads (which made the world “a bit of bit smaller”), the unprecedented wealth industrialization brought (which led the nouveau riche to throw fancy balls), the invention of the bicycle (which gave women unprecedented freedom and mobility), and the explosion of color print production. 

Photos of actresses reminiscent of the flame-haired Sandra Bernhardt sparked hair trends.

Gilded Age partygoers spent hours fussing over their outlandish hairdos for galas, which were like stages and breathtakingly covered by the press. (Block mentioned a taxidermied kitten headdress that one socialite, the eccentric Kate Fearing Strong, wore to a Vanderbilt ball.) Promoting flourished, and “hair rooms,” hairdressers, and hair products proliferated the market. 

Hair gave women economic and social mobility. Some opened their very own salons or worked as independent dressers. One black entrepreneur, Christina Carteaux Bannister, hosted community events and abolitionist gatherings at her hair shops in Boston and Windfall, RI, and made enough money to bankroll her husband’s landscape painting profession.

Madame C,J. Walker became the primary black millionairess together with her products made specifically for textured African-American hair. 

And hair styles also helped blur class and racial lines. The black journalist Ida B Wells sported the identical Gibson Girl updo as her white peers. Shopgirls and socialites donned an identical styles. The “Latest Woman” unexpectedly pinned her hair right into a loose bouffant, no matter status. These recent coiffures made working and playing easier — whether scrubbing scalps, riding a bicycle, or swimming on the beach.

“Women were entering public life more, and entering the workplace,” Block said. “So their hairstyles and clothing needed to reflect the necessity for increased movement.”

Attitudes toward hair have largely relaxed prior to now 125 years. Yet hair still has the facility to beguile, to frustrate, to impress, to claim one’s individuality and place on the earth.

The worldwide hair care industry is valued at $91.2 billion. Nevertheless it goes deeper too. In 2022, women in Iran cut their hair in public to protest the death of the young woman Mahsa Amini, after she was arrested by the morality police on account of her slipping headscarf.

Within the US, Block noted, 24 states have passed the Crown Act, which prohibits schools and workplaces from discriminating against individuals based on the best way they wear their hair.

“Hair is a component of all of our lives,” Block said. “It’s a typical material, but with unusual abilities and powers resonant inside it.”

“In a variety of ways, this book is about women’s history,” she added. “It’s about women’s lives, and it’s a love letter to hairdressers.”

A girl’s hair is greater than something that merely covers her head.

Little girls learn this early. No less than I did. I watched my mother color her gray roots over the toilet sink, pomade her short crop, hide her frizz under a hat. I suffered as she combed out my knotted tresses and sat still as she wove my mane right into a French braid.

It seemed that hair held some form of secret power — that it did greater than just make another attractive or beautiful.

Art historian Elizabeth L. Block noticed this, too. Her fascinating recent book, “Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing” (MIT Press, out Tuesday), untangles the importance of hair in women’s lives — emotionally, economically, socially and politically. 

Block is a senior editor of the publications and editorial department on the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has spent the past 15 years studying portraits of girls from the nineteenth century by American painters like John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt.

But while historians have long analyzed the clothing depicted in these paintings, they’ve largely ignored the coiffures.

“Hair all the time comes last,” Block told The Post. “And I just couldn’t understand why, because women spend a lot time on it!” 

“Beyond Vanity” focuses on hair practices in the US from about 1865 to 1900, a time of rapid growth, industrialization, the constructing of railroads and increasing freedoms — which brought enormous changes for ladies and their manes.

“I read a variety of women’s journals and letters [from the era], and sure, they’re talking about clothes, they’re talking about child-rearing, but they’re talking quite a bit about hair,” Block said.

“Beyond Vanity” shows that hair had enormous consequences. Letting your hair down in public could get you ostracized from society, but a great head of hair could land you a husband or job. Black women were routinely punished for his or her hair; former slave Louisa Picquet had her lustrous locks sheared once they provoked the jealousy of the master’s white daughter.

“Women definitely knew the worth of their hair,” Block said. 

So ladies singed their split ends with candles and smeared egg yolks on their tresses. They spent hours air-drying their hair within the sun (as was really helpful).

Women and girls of all classes and races — including in slaves’ quarters — braided and brushed each other’s manes. Some enslaved women donned brightly coloured headwraps, to claim their very own identity and dignity within the face of such dehumanization.

After the Civil War, several changes supercharged the hair industry, said Block: the constructing of railroads (which made the world “a bit of bit smaller”), the unprecedented wealth industrialization brought (which led the nouveau riche to throw fancy balls), the invention of the bicycle (which gave women unprecedented freedom and mobility), and the explosion of color print production. 

Photos of actresses reminiscent of the flame-haired Sandra Bernhardt sparked hair trends.

Gilded Age partygoers spent hours fussing over their outlandish hairdos for galas, which were like stages and breathtakingly covered by the press. (Block mentioned a taxidermied kitten headdress that one socialite, the eccentric Kate Fearing Strong, wore to a Vanderbilt ball.) Promoting flourished, and “hair rooms,” hairdressers, and hair products proliferated the market. 

Hair gave women economic and social mobility. Some opened their very own salons or worked as independent dressers. One black entrepreneur, Christina Carteaux Bannister, hosted community events and abolitionist gatherings at her hair shops in Boston and Windfall, RI, and made enough money to bankroll her husband’s landscape painting profession.

Madame C,J. Walker became the primary black millionairess together with her products made specifically for textured African-American hair. 

And hair styles also helped blur class and racial lines. The black journalist Ida B Wells sported the identical Gibson Girl updo as her white peers. Shopgirls and socialites donned an identical styles. The “Latest Woman” unexpectedly pinned her hair right into a loose bouffant, no matter status. These recent coiffures made working and playing easier — whether scrubbing scalps, riding a bicycle, or swimming on the beach.

“Women were entering public life more, and entering the workplace,” Block said. “So their hairstyles and clothing needed to reflect the necessity for increased movement.”

Attitudes toward hair have largely relaxed prior to now 125 years. Yet hair still has the facility to beguile, to frustrate, to impress, to claim one’s individuality and place on the earth.

The worldwide hair care industry is valued at $91.2 billion. Nevertheless it goes deeper too. In 2022, women in Iran cut their hair in public to protest the death of the young woman Mahsa Amini, after she was arrested by the morality police on account of her slipping headscarf.

Within the US, Block noted, 24 states have passed the Crown Act, which prohibits schools and workplaces from discriminating against individuals based on the best way they wear their hair.

“Hair is a component of all of our lives,” Block said. “It’s a typical material, but with unusual abilities and powers resonant inside it.”

“In a variety of ways, this book is about women’s history,” she added. “It’s about women’s lives, and it’s a love letter to hairdressers.”