Take the Pledge: Love Your Body Day

Happy Love Your Body Day! Today marks the 15th anniversary of the NOW Foundation’s yearly event promoting positive body images and boy, could we all use a day to celebrate this message.

Every day it seems like we are bombarded with tens hundreds thousands millions of messages that our bodies aren’t acceptable or that they need improvement. And it doesn’t help that those with seemingly “perfect” bodies are picked apart by the media for everyone to see.

You know what I’m talking about. Christina Agueliera is a fat chick now, right? And so is Lady Gaga? And Christina Hendricks is full-figured which is apparently a code word for fat? And it’s so great that Mindy Kaling can have a show and not be thin? And on, and on, and on, ad infinitum until I vom everywhere.

But you know it’s not enough to just be thin, right? Our bodies are the subject of so much media scrutiny that even the most minute details of our appearance are analyzed.

(Incidentally, whenever I’m in a dressing room I recreate this scene.)

What happens as a result of all of this intense media scrutiny of every area of our bodies? We’re raising a nation of girls and women trained to believe that their bodies aren’t good enough. 80% of women in the US are dissatisfied with their bodies. 51% of 9 and 10 year old girls report to feel better about themselves if they are on a diet. Approximately 7 million women and girls struggle with eating disorders.

Listen, I know that it’s going to take some major societal changes to stop all of this body hating but maybe today we take some baby steps. This is my 3-Step Love Your Body pledge, will you take it with me?

1.) Let’s stop blanketly hating our bodies. You know what I mean – stop saying “ugh, I hate my body” when you really mean “I am unhappy with the way my butt looks in this particular pair of pants.”

2.) Let’s stop idolizing unrealistic images of beauty. That cover photo of Kim Kardashian was airbrushed. Sure, the girl has a stunning figure but she also has lumps and bumps just like the rest of us. Unless someone is going to photoshop your life, it’s virtually impossible to attain that magazine cover standard of beauty.

3.) Let’s start appreciating what our bodies can do, instead of what they look like. Sure, it’s the tits when someone says “you look effin’ gorgeous” but looking gorgeous isn’t all that your body can do. Try to remember that there is so much more to you than just your appearance – you are strong, you have a brain, and you can use your body however you choose.

That’s it. Three simple steps towards appreciating your body and everything that it can do. I promise to keep this pledge, will you?

Related articles

• Love Your Body Day Celebrates 15 Years of Self-Acceptance (thedailyquirk.com)

I said “Give me two pairs, I need two pairs”

Fellow Boston attorney and (full disclosure) one of my favorite people, just messaged me “please write a rant about heels.  and how they are destroying my life, my feet, my back, and my wallet.”

Well, you got it, Attorney V. Because as I received this message I am sitting in my empty office, heels cast aside under my desk, feet encased in fuzzy slippers, secretly thankful that everyone has taken today off and I can rest my feet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t get me wrong, I love love love heels. I am that girl who, despite being about 5’6, only buys “long” pants because I know I will never wear them with flats. I’m the girl who you are shocked to discover is actually shorter than you when she goes out in flip flops one night. And I’m the girl whose shoes you always want to try on.

But here’s the thing – high heels are not as comfortable as flip flops. (Or flats, I assume. I have legitimately never owned a pair of flats so I cannot testify to the veracity of this statement.) And they’re not exactly conducive to lawyering, especially trial lawyering. You can’t run in them – so no running between sessions on a busy morning in court. You can’t stealthily get anywhere – so no sneaking into the courtroom late. And they kind of hurt after standing all day – so… no standing all day.

And yet, we continue to wear them. Day after day, rolled ankle after rolled ankle, dozens of different shoe options for all those boring skirt suits. And we continue to judge – how many times have you secretly promised yourself you’ll never become one of those commuting ladies who wears sneakers to work and changes into shoes?

Why? What is the deal here?

Turns out high heels have been around forever. Like before Christ, forever. In 3500 BCE the first precursors of heels were discovered in Egyptian tombs and on murals. Then in 200 BCE. platform sandals with high wood or cork soles become pretty popular among Roman actors.

Lets jump way ahead to 1500 – Catherine de Medici is credited with the invention of high heels as a fashion statement when she wears two inch heels to make herself appear taller next to her husband Henry II. Heels disappear for a while here, mostly because during the French Revolution Napoleon bans them. Historians claim it was in an attempt to show equality since heels were associated with the rich, but wasn’t Napoleon really short?

In the 1860′s high heels make a comeback and are popular from that point on. Once mass-manufacturing is possible, high heel sales skyrocket. In the 1950′s Christian Dior and Roger Vivier invent the stiletto heel – which actually loses favor in the 60′s because of criticism by 2nd wave feminists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, prompted by the 70′s and platform boots for both sexes, stilettos start to regain prominence in the 80′s and 90′s. The feminism and high heel argument is discarded in favor of women’s claims that they wear high heels for themselves and not for men.

And now here we are. I’m currently internet stalking these shoes while simultaneously pondering whether my decision to wear heels has turned back into society’s decision. Because sometimes, even though my feet hurt, I put on heels because there’s this pressure that exists and sometimes, I feel like I can’t escape it.

What does that mean then?

Were second wave feminists were right about this too? Are stilettos are the Western equivalent of Chinese foot-binding? Do they represent a view of womanhood as decorative, constricted, controlled, hypersexualized and enslaved by fashion?

Or are post-feminists right? Are designer shoes a symbol of power and liberation for women? Do they continue to be a feminist hot-spot? (Check out this recent “feminist” high heel!)  Well, what do you think?

Bonus points if you can finish the sentence in the title of this blog.

Does how we play decide who we’ll be?

What was your favorite toy when you were a kid?

This was mine:

Yup, that’s exactly what it looks like - a wooden iron and ironing board made for a child. And I loved it. I would spend hours ironing my father’s handkerchiefs, singing songs about being some sort of Cinderella or washerwoman, and imagining that I was a character in a fairytale.

Today, my real-life adult ironing board and iron is shoved into the closet with my washer/dryer and in the last year I have been more apt to throw my clothes into the dryer to get wrinkles out than to iron.

But, that’s not to say that the gendered rearing of children doesn’t have an effect on how we do gender as we age.  In fact, how we play as kids is an important contributor to how we develop cognitively. We know that gendered toys have long-term consequences for our later cognitive and social development and because of these consequences, the media and the family (as institutions) reinforce gendered play consistently.

Girls play with toys designed to foster nurturing and motherly role-play, while boys play with toys designed to foster activity and manipulative play. Gender stereotyped toys reinforce gender roles through these stereotyped activities and roleplay.

So does that mean that all girls have to grow up to be princesses or mothers or shop-til-you-droppers? (I’m reaching into my murky memory for childhood toys and games and I keep thinking of Mall Madness, forgive me.) Or that all boys have to grow up to soldiers or train engineers or ninjas?

Clearly not. But that doesn’t mean the marketing for gendered toys isn’t out there.  Check out this little girls awesome rant about gendered marketing.

The thing is, though, that even though me and this little girl know that all this marketing gender roles stuff is bs, it’s still out there. And it’s kind of tough for us not to give in. I mean, Riley’s giving this rant while carrying a baby doll and I’m writing this blog while wearing high heels and a push up bra (I also have clothing on, don’t be alarmed). Clearly both of us have given in to gender roles a little bit.

Is that from how we play as children?

For me, the answer is yes. Every time I put on a pair of heels, I remember back to those tiny Barbie high heels. Every time I put on a pair of flats, I think of poor Skipper and her flat feet.

Can we ever move away from gendered play? Or will Cinderella continue to eat our daughters?

What do you think? Are gendered toys necessary for child-rearing? Do you use gendered toys with your kids? Why or why not?

Strength is Beauty

When I was twelve years old, I sat down at a desk across from a teensy little girl with incredibly long blonde hair and ridiculous oversized glasses. It was my first day in a new school and I didn’t know a single person. She peered across the desk at me and said “Hi, will you be my best friend?”

I shrugged my shoulders and said “Sure.”

And now, more than fifteen years later, I am sitting behind a desk with my legs elevated, deeply regretting this decision. You see that teensy little girl grew up to be a successful and highly sought after personal trainer and she kicked my ass yesterday. If only I had ended this friendship years ago, my quads might not be trying to escape my skin.

Yes, I am being a giant baby. One decent workout that didn’t involve me reading my Kindle on the treadmill and I am acting like I have just endured an Olympic-level training session. And since I now consider myself an Olympian, I thought I’d share with you the awesomeness that is my fellow Olympian Sarah Robles.

Sarah is 23 years old and is currently the STRONGEST PERSON IN AMERICA. How incredibly, undeniably, unequivocally awesome is that? Sarah can lift 568 lbs. 568 lbs. 568 POUNDS.

But wait a minute. Not only is Sarah the strongest person in America, she’s also a super positive role model for women and girls when it comes to body image.  Sarah admits to having bad thoughts, but has learned to love herself the way she is. She says “I may look like this, but I’m in the Olympics because of the way I am.” Her mantra, Strength is Beauty, is repeated over and over on her facebook, twitter, and blog. Get. It. Girl.

Sarah will be competing in the London Olympics and there is currently an IndieGoGo fundraising campaign to help fund her training and her coach’s travel to the Olympics. You see, Sarah lives on $400/month because being an Olympian doesn’t pay the bills. If you want to donate, click here!

In the meantime, I’ll be waiting (and trying to contain my excitement) for Sarah’s trip to the Olympics. It would be pretty freakin’ cool to be able to tell people you are the strongest person in the world – I hope Sarah can soon!

Related articles

• The Strongest Woman In America Lives In Poverty (buzzfeed.com)

I Can’t Go to Taco Bell – I’m on an All-Carb Diet

By now, most of you have read and made horrified comments about the Times article Bridal Hunger Games: Losing Weight in Time for the Wedding. The article talks about Dr. Oliver R. Di Pietro’s K E Diet where dieters have a tube  shoved through their nose, down their esophagus and into their intestine.  The tube remains in place for 10 days and dieters are “fed” through the tube. People are paying upwards of $1,500.00 for the ultimate in diet fashion, a trendy NG tube.

Say WHAT?

I’m not going to talk about the health repercussions of such drastic dieting or about the likelihood of gaining the weight back.  I won’t ramble on about how sensible eating and working up a sweat might be a better way to shed unhealthy excess weight.

Why not? Because you actually already know all of this. And, like me, you would just really rather be able to have a cheeseburger for breakfast, spinach dip for lunch, M&M’s for dinner,a bajillion “Light” beers throughout the day for hydration and look like Britney Spears in the Slave 4 U video without having to do anything particularly taxing to look that way. But, deep down you know you have to work out. And you know you have to eat some broccoli. So we won’t dwell on that.

What we will dwell on is how skewed society’s images of beauty have become and the lengths people will go to to get to them. Women’s bodies have always been an area of societal contention and over the years, as women’s lives became more complex and we watched ourselves lose control over the way we live our lives, society began to encourage women to focus on controlling their bodies. And in our consumer-driven culture, companies and the media saw how lucrative it could be to offer ways to control our bodies and how incredibly lucrative it could be to offer ideals that are impossible to achieve.

Like this lady who boasts a  20-inch waist:

Obviously, women who are insecure about their bodies are more likely to buy beauty products, new clothes, and diet aids. As a result, it is estimated that the diet industry alone makes anywhere between 40 to 100 billion (U.S.) a year selling temporary weight loss (defined as weight loss in which 90 to 95% of dieters regain the lost weight). These products don’t offer real solutions, don’t help women get healthy or into shape, and definitely don’t encourage positive body images.

A scary trickle down results. In 2003, Teen magazine reported that 35 per cent of girls 6 to 12 years old have been on at least one diet, and that 50 to 70 per cent of normal weight girls believe they are overweight. Remember the horror you felt when you read that Vogue article about the mom who put her daughter on a diet? Would you feel the same if the daughter put herself on the diet?

But we continue to sell (and buy!) quick fixes to reach unattainable goals. The demand for images of beauty and weight loss tips is so high that it pops up in the most unlikely of places. Take Pinterest, for example, the online pin board used to bookmark recipes and home remodeling ideas. The website recently banned images promoting self-harm after users began creating “thinspiration” boards to trigger unhealthy behaviors.

So how do we stop all of this incredibly unhealthy behavior? How do we promote healthy bodies and sound minds? How do we stop society from crafting images of beauty that are unrealistic and unattainable?

I’m not sure.

I’m Back, Bitches. (And frankly, I’m a little overwhelmed).

Hello, lovers.  I have been ill for what seems like weeks and haven’t kept up on… anything. I had to ask my students what year it was today. I felt like Miss Frizzle (who, coincidentally, I look just like).

 

So, as Ms. Frizzle would say “Buckle up, everyone!” because what I’ve got to say is going to send you spinning.

1.) Turns out, Kimberly Yee’s Gestational Age bill passed. Yep. You heard me. The bill that bans abortions after 20 weeks because she thinks the fetus can feel pain and has made an uneducated and unfounded claim that this is the point of viability has passed. So all that’s left is for the Governor to sign off on it.

You might remember my original argument here – that this is an unconstitutional violation of a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion pre-viability.  If you’re interested in reading (or rereading), you can check out the entry Is Arizona a Real Place?. 

This moronic legislation isn’t the only thing that is sending our magic school bus spinning.

2.) Alicia Silverstone is feeding her child directly from her mouth.  And thinks its adorable.

3.) Dartmouth College appears to be some sort of horrifying hell-hole where men and women violently debase and abuse each other in the interest of “sisterhood” and “brotherhood”.

4.) Racist backlash to the movie depiction of the Hunger Games has brought widespread racism to light (as well the sad, stupid racists’ Twitter identities)

5.) A MI teacher was fired for supporting her students’ plan to wear hoodies and hold a fundraiser for Trayvon Martin.

Don’t worry, I’ll stop here. But keep your seat belts securely fastened because things seem to be wildly out of control.

What is going on, guys?

Why is this happening?: On Ho-Bros and Objectification

For Halloween last year, one of my friends dressed up as another one of our friends. To ensure that everyone knew who he was dressed up as, he kept repeating her catch phrase “Where are my shoes?!” Since Halloween, I’ve been wondering what my catch phrase would be.  And just now, as I tried to figure out how to begin this blog entry, I realized it would probably be “Why is this happening?”

In nearly every class, no matter the subject, I ask my students “Why is this happening?”

When things get crazy in my life, I bury my face in my hands and ask “WHY is this happening?”

On Monday night, when I was dancing like Courtney Cox in the Dancing in the Dark video at the Springsteen concert and a man randomly appeared and started dancing all up on me, I yelled “Why is THIS happening?!”

And yesterday, when a friend posted this image from an old Maxim article on my facebook wall, I lamented “Why. Is. This. Happening.”

I ask “why is this happening?” because I’m interested in the dialogue the question brings – I know there are lots of answers and I truly want to consider all of them.

Recently, I’ve been asking this question a lot in connection with what’s going on with girls and women in our society.  From my encounter at the Springsteen concert to the Maxim article sent to me, I really just don’t understand why this is happening – why, in this alleged “post-feminist” society, are women and girls still objects?

Part of the answer might be that some people truly believe we live in a post-feminist world. What I mean by this is that we now live in a society where the work of feminism has done everything it can and equality has truly been achieved.  This is a message we get repeatedly, especially from the mainstream media.  Just look at our prime time television programming – female police officers, female DA’s, female surgeons, female chiefs of staff, female journalists… the list goes on and on.  And not once do any of these women mention the income disparities they face or the barriers to moving up in a male-dominated field.  They just excel at their jobs and teach us that women can do it all.

And if we live in a post-feminist world, well then everything’s equal, right?  And when women are treated as objects it must be because they choose to be.

Cue the rise of the Female Chauvinist Pig, a term coined by Ariel Levy. I prefer the term “ho-bro”, coined by me, but its the same idea. The idea is that as the fight for women’s equality waged on, the struggle stopped being about equality and started to resemble a fight to become “one of the boys”.   Instead of addressing the differences between men and women and liberating ourselves, women began shunning their “female” identities and became one of the guys.

This method had potential – prove that as a sex, women are just the same as men and equality might be achieved.  But somewhere along the line, the method spiraled out of control and the message got lost. Women were reviling their female “weaknesses”, becoming bros, and telling the world that being a woman was somehow less than being a man.

Inherent in this bro culture is the objectification of women.  So instead of addressing the problems associated with women’s sexuality being tied to the concept of women as objects, women began embracing their identity as objects. And thus, the ho-bro was born.

She’s everywhere. She’s Whitney and Snooki and JWoww and Cameron Diaz and that horrible female blogger in NYC whose name I can’t remember and have spent at least 20 minutes google searching for.  She’s on college campuses – Google Intern Grace Barstool and read her letter asking to write for them.  She’s Hugh Hefner’s daughter running Playboy, she’s the female executives judging stay at home moms, she’s me – laughing at sexist jokes. Why is this happening?

We’ve left a place where it’s ok to talk about inequality and entered a place where we pretend it doesn’t exist.  We perpetuate the objectification of women and tell ourselves that women are choosing to be objectified. Because at least if you’re being objectified it means you fit into society’s standard for beauty.

So, what can we do? I think the first step is to stop objectifying ourselves and other women.  Realize that being a woman is more than being a sexual object. Know that its ok not to fit into the norms of society, that you have a voice and can use it, and that your body isn’t public property. Stand up for yourself. You are not just an object.

What do you think? Why is this happening? And what can we do?

Booty and the Beast

Remember Oneal Ron Morris? She was the woman charged with impersonating a medical professional and injecting cement into women’s butts.

Well she’s back in the news because she’s facing some new charges.  But that’s not what I want to talk about.  I want to talk about beauty ideals – and just how crazed we’ve all become.

Take a good look at Ms. Morris.  Just where did she get the idea that this is what a woman’s body should look like?

I wish I could say that this is the most horrifying plastic surgery phenomenon I’ve stumbled upon recently. But it’s not.  Last week I taught a class on vaginal rejuvenation surgery, which is a slick way of saying random plastic surgery on a fully functional vagina with absolutely no problems. To make it look prettier.

Sigh. Where do these beauty ideals come from? What is going on?

Almost Perfect… But Not Quite

I started teaching college kids when I was pretty young.  So me and the students? We got each other. All of my references made sense to them – they had grown up in the same time frame as me, so I could tell a joke and they would DEFINITELY get it. And now, I am old. I didn’t realize it until this semester. I mean, I had felt it creeping up on me… like last semester when I said “Let’s talk about sex (long pause) baby. Let’s talk about you and me” when I was introducing our Sexualities section and they all looked at me like I had three heads. But, this semester I am now positive that I am an elderly woman. Forget not knowing “Let’s Talk About Sex”, these students don’t even know The Real World when it was good.

There is a huge generation gap between adults who are currently in their early 20s and adults who are currently in their late 20s. And I am consistently surprised at just how big this gap is.  Here’s my latest example.

I just read Courtney Martin’s Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters and thought it would be a great piece to discuss with my students when we talked about bodies.  Martin elucidates this dichotomy that exists in every woman – that of the perfect girl and the starving daughter – pretty well and in a way that really hit home for me.  She writes:  

“A starving daughter lies at the center of each perfect girl.  The face we show to the world is one of beauty, maturity, determination, strength, willpower, and ultimately, accomplishment.  But beneath the facade is a starving daughter who annoys us, slows us down,  embarrasses us.  She is the one who doubts our ability to handle a full-time job and full-time school. [...] Young women struggle with this duality.  The perfect girl in each drives forward, the starving daughter digs in her heels.  The perfect girl wants excellence, the starving daughter calm and nurturance. The perfect girl takes on the world, the starving daughter shrinks from it.  It is a power struggle between two forces, and at the cent, almost every time, is an innocent body.”

I read this excerpt to my students, excited to talk about the pressures they feel to be perfect and where these pressures come from.  I was sure we’d have a lot to talk about because I look at my generation of women and see this dichotomy everywhere. I am surrounded by women with advanced degrees who are climbing to the tops of their fields, women who balance work and family seemingly with ease, who work out at 4 a.m. to get to work by 7 a.m., who coordinate their heels and their handbags while breastfeeding their babies, who see a problem as a challenge and face it head on, who change their careers as seamlessly as they change their hair colors and who just do it all.

I was positive they’d share the fears of the starving daughter with me because I see her all the time.  Like when I’m with my friends in my living room when we’re drunk on red wine and talking about nonsense just to hear about something other than “it all“.   I see her in the women dancing in the middle of a humid dance floor – eyes closed, pretending that their cell phones aren’t full of emails, their voicemails aren’t full of “I needs” and their minds aren’t racing with thoughts of what needs to get done before they go to sleep.

But they didn’t. They basically told me that this Martin woman is cray cray.

“Why is she trying so hard?” they asked.

“Why doesn’t she just take a nap?” they implored.

I looked at them, dumbfounded, wondering how they weren’t connecting with Martin.

“But don’t you want to be perfect?” I asked them.

And they laughed at me.  “Silly woman. No one can be perfect!”

Hmm. No one can be perfect? That flies in the face of everything I believe. Sure, my parents were nurturing and supportive and amazing and never told me I needed to be perfect. In fact, they pretty often told me to just do my best and be happy and that would make them happy. But for some reason (cough, society, cough) I heard “your best needs to be perfection, happiness will come when things are perfect”. We can always do better, be better, achieve more.

“Not so!” shout my students. “Calm it down, lady.”

We tried to get to the bottom of this huge chasm of difference in our ways of thinking in class. I mean, I teach at the college I went to. I have students in my class who have led pretty much the same exact life as me – same elementary school, same middle school, same high school, now same college. But we have radically different life views.

So, we looked at our age gap. We’re between 7-10 years apart. We compared the world during my childhood and adolescence to the world during their childhood and adolescence. And we got to the bottom of it.

I grew up in the 90′s. We had the dot com boom, a super fast economic “recovery” following a recession (read: we used our credit cards like maniacs), Blossom, Clarissa, Dana, DJ, and Daria taught us to be tough can-do chicks, and things were pretty rad.

Image via Wikipedia

These kids grew up in the 00′s.  They saw the dot com bust, a rapidly failing economy, an endless war in the Middle East, and Teen Moms, Degrassi Girls, and Zoey101 teaching them that girls have issues. Things have been pretty sucktacular for them.

Sure, we were all told “you can do anything” by our parents. But their society is telling them “no matter what you do, you might fail.”  Many have watched their hardworking parents lose their jobs for no reason.  They watch us, the women who think we have to do everything, struggle and fight for things and feel exhausted.  They have grown up in a time where fate deals heavy and often totally random blows.

The other day, before our analysis of why we think so differently, I asked my students what they do in their free time.  They told me they napped.

Napped.

And there’s the difference.  We Perfect Girls/Starving Daughters watch the shit hit the fan and think we can fix it, even if it’s actually impossible to fix.  So we stress out and try too hard and breakdown when we can’t fix it. Them? The No One’s Perfect/I’m Exhausteds? They watch the shit hit the fan and think no one can fix it, it’s impossible. So they take a nap.

Neither identity works.  But how do we step outside of these roles? How do we stop society from creating our identities?  And for you perfect girls out there – when does “almost perfect, but not quite” end?

Hair and Politics: Seriously, please stop touching me.

Before class today, one of my students told me that another student, who I have also had in class, said to her one night “YOU HAVE LIZ HAIR!” So this student also happens to be a redhead, but that wasn’t quite what her friend was getting at.  It was that she had hair like this:

Yep. That’s my hair – normal, everyday hair. As you can imagine, having hair like this has spawned lots and lots (and lots and lots and lots and lots) of conversations, unwanted touching, assumptions, and broken vacuums. Once, I was in the Hermitage looking at unbelievable works of art when a woman came up behind me, caressed my hair and mustered all her English to tell me “Your hair. Its beautiful.” Well thanks, devushka! But I’m pretty sure these amazing icons are much more beautiful… let’s focus on them, da?

You might be wondering why I’m telling you all this – well, it’s because hair isn’t just a personal matter.  It’s actually a fairly political topic.

I’ve talked a little bit about hegemonic norms in this blog, but lemme give you a quick recap.  So there’s this idea that society has created this sort of… stratification of people based on whats valued – these values are developed through institutions (like government, families, media, etc) and in turn people are placed in certain stratified positions.  Anyway, these stratified positions start with the hegemonic norm at the top – the most valued and exalted type of person – and then taper on down. People who fit in to the hegemonic norm get all these privileges and benefits associated with being the norm and people who aren’t… well they are subordinated. For example, the hegemonic norm here in the US is: white, middle-class, abled, young, and male. (This is way oversimplifying things, but this is a blog, not a class.)

We spend a lot of time talking about how these norms dictate people’s behaviors and appearance, usually in connection with bodies. But we don’t often think about how hair (color, texture, type, style) is regulated by society. Even though it is, in a big way. What do you think the hegemonic norm is for hair in the U.S.?

Historically, hair has been always an arena for control and dominance. Think about the federally run boarding schools for Native Americans, established to assimilate Native Americans to the American way beginning in the late 19th century. Not only were students prevented from speaking their native languages, but their hair was cut immediately upon arrival.  Long hair has cultural and spiritual significance for many Native Americans and this act of hair-cutting served to splinter students’ identities.

Similarly, think about the implications that hair has for black women. Madame CJ Walker, the first black millionaire, made her millions selling hair products designed to straighten women’s hair. In her piece, Straightening Our Hair, bell hooks writes about the implications of hair straightening, noting that “the reality is: straightened hair is linked historically and currently to a system of racial domination that impresses upon black people, and especially black women, that we are not acceptable as we are, that we are not beautiful.” Renee Martin has an excellent piece on the natural hair movement, Can I Touch Your Hair? Black Women and the Petting Zoo, and the embrace of natural hair as beautiful.

Martin lets readers know that personal decisions about hair are political for many black women. ”What many white people often fail to realize is that wearing our hair natural is a political choice on the part of the black woman. In a culture that constantly teaches that anything black, or associated with blackness is negative, to publicly wear your hair natural is to embrace blackness as a positive.”

Even women who fall into the hegemonic norm – white, middle class women – face pressure from society to conform exactly to that norm.  Think about all of the treatments available for hair today – keratin treatments, Brazilian hair straightening, hair straighteners, relaxers, dyes, diffusers… the list is endless. And while the decisions white women face regarding their hair choices don’t carry the same political ideology, it’s simply because white women get to wear that privilege knapsack - where their hair is the norm.

I won’t even go into the implications hair might have for gender, sexuality, and/or sexual orientation.  There’s a great article by Alex Blaze, Hair, Gender, and Power that might get you thinking about that too.

I guess what I’m saying is that “Liz hair” could mean a whole bunch of different things because hair is such a heavily regulated area. And that a lot of our decisions that seem entirely personal are actually political decisions – statements about our ideologies, our role in society, and the dominant culture.

What do you think? Is hair just hair?