How the meaning of women’s hair has shifted over time

“There’s no intrinsic value to hair,” says Elizabeth L Block, the art historian and senior book editor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It’s a physical matter that does not stay on our heads forever.” Block’s new book is dedicated to exploring the meaning of hair in post-Civil War America because, while hair itself might have no intrinsic value, for centuries meaning has been assigned to it and it has played a vital role in our history.

Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing seeks to untangle this role and the impact of women’s hair on culture throughout history. The idea for the book spawned from Block’s work for the Met, when she realised that while much of the portraiture around her showcased popular hairstyles from different eras, almost no one had put time into researching what she terms “the material culture of women”. “I kept thinking, ‘why is no one focused on the hair and why is hair always last?’” she says.

Through her research, she discovered that actually, though many people view hair, and the time women put into styling it, as a frivolous endeavour, it speaks volumes about what was going on in contemporary society. For example, in the 19th-century, hairstyles were more conservative and contained due to the respectability politics prized by Victorian society, where the way you presented yourself expressed your morality and letting your hair down in public could lead to being ostracised. Hair also became a way for women, of all races, to gain financial autonomy, such as Madame CJ Walker who became the first Black female millionaire by selling products for texture hair. 

Here, Block speaks to Dazed about the complex meaning of our hair and how she went about researching the topic.

There has been a level of exuberance to hairstyles in the past. Has this had an impact on perceptions of it as frivolous?

Elizabeth L Block: The concept of frivolity being associated with hair comes from the zany hairstyles from the late 18th century, which have become cemented in our cultural mindset from some of the caricatures of huge curly powdered white wigs with sailboats on top. And those are exaggerated from the time period!

Are hairstyles in the 19th century significantly pared down in contrast to that of the 18th century?

Elizabeth L Block: In the 19th century, hairstyles are much more contained, they’re more conservative. There’s an aspect of respectability politics. If you were a woman of upper middle class standing or if you were of the upper echelon of the social world, the way you presented yourself meant it expressed your morality and in some ways your devotion to civic politics.

There were some pretty strict expectations and guidelines handed down to women in way of their style and hair.

Elizabeth L Block: Think about the power of the hairdresser, the power of having the right hairstyle. It could keep you from entering society. When you were a girl, you could wear your hair down and you see these marvellous pictures of young girls in story books and fairy tales with their hair splaying out behind them while they’re running free. Then after the teenage years, girls were expected to tie their hair up the way that older women would. In society, having their hair in an up-do would signify that they were of almost marriageable age or of marriageable age.

With rules comes the glorious ability to defy them though! Were there any particular rule-breaking styles?

Elizabeth L Block: I’m thinking of the late 1890s and around the turn of the century when a specific hairstyle called the Bouffant came into play and the Bouffant was really fun – it was puffy all around. If you didn’t have enough real hair to get the poof that you wanted, you could augment your own hair with accessories, for example hair extensions that you tied under your hair or you could wrap hair extensions over a device called a rat.

The Bouffant was really a political hairstyle because women were wearing it at a time when they were gaining more independence, they had more leisure time. Specifically women were riding bicycles in the late 1890s and becoming very comfortable in their freedom to do so. The Bouffant went perfectly with the image of the bicycle riding, independent woman because there was an aspect of air to it in the same way that there was in bicycle tires. 

What do you mean by hair extensions?

Elizabeth L Block: You could mail order extensions and, in order to get a match to your hair texture and colour, you would send a sample of your hair in an envelope to a company or to an individual practitioner. And you would say ‘I would like to order two braids of six inches each and these match my texture and my colour as closely as possible.’ Then a few months later you would get braided hair pieces made out of other women’s hair or even with some additives of animal hair depending on how much you could afford them!

That’s actually rather clever! 

Elizabeth L Block: There is a social conformity in women’s hairstyles for white women. Throughout the book, I talk about how the ideal for beauty at this time was of a white woman with long luxurious glossy, wavy or curly hair. All the etiquette books which are aimed toward white women, talk about how you can achieve this hair if you don’t have it naturally.

That sounds pretty familiar…

Elizabeth L Block: There’s so many through lines today. Every product at that time promises to restore the health of your hair. It’s almost assuming that you’ve lost the health of your hair, that something’s gone wrong. And all of the products also promise to reverse grey, which we also see today! Women were going to this great extent to achieve the ideal look. 

In the book you also highlight the stories of Black and enslaved women who, of course, had a vastly different experience to white women during this period. 

Elizabeth L Block: You can’t do hair studies without paying attention to the racism of how women’s hair and men’s hair was regarded, especially in the United States. There were laws in Louisiana in 1786 where women of colour needed to cover their hair and could not show their natural hair. What women would do at that time was create head garments. One of the great results of this awful law was the creativity and the vibrant colours that came out of these head coverings which have come down to us today.

Can you tell me about the daily hair care routine of enslaved women during the 19th century?

Elizabeth L Block: In most cases, enslaved women probably had a little bit of time on Sundays before going to church services and that’s when they would wash and style their hair, and when they were working during the other days of the week they most likely covered it to protect it. They would cover it with head coverings, probably not as vibrant as the ones from the late 18th century, but the goal was to keep the head clean and to protect from the sun. What I found was that, as usual, women were adapting and were creative in the way that they took care of their own hair in a time when they didn’t have a lot of time to focus on their own hair and dress. 

You mentioned in the book the Federal Writers Project Slave Narrative Project and that it isn’t 100 per cent reliable. Can you speak a little bit to that? 

Elizabeth L Block: These are notoriously difficult sources. These are sources that require a critical eye because these were interviews with formerly enslaved people but the interviewers were white government officials. We always have to read them through the lens of understanding what the goal was of the interviewers and in some cases reading between the lines with the privileged eye, the privileged questions that would have been coming from the interviewers.

So, you were able to discern a lot from these testimonies?

Elizabeth L Block: These testimonies from previously enslaved people are very useful in that we can learn what materials and what pieces of equipment people were using to take care of their hair. There’s really vibrant explanations of certain combs that were used and combs that were made using natural fibres and materials so that women and men could comb their hair properly.

What do you hope that the book will achieve – perhaps it will push for further research?

Elizabeth L Block: My wish is that Beyond Vanity becomes part of hair studies which is an area that should be, and I believe will be, a core tenant of women’s history as central to scholarship as politics and education.