The Politics of White Women’s Hair

Let's do some HAIR STUDIES! How does blondeness recruit and convey power? When is curly hair a signifier of unruliness — and when does it say Cool Girl? Will we ever be free of the tyranny of the beachy wave? What's the New Karen Cut? Should we talk about Julia Roberts' hair in Pretty Woman for a solid 10 minutes? (Yes!) Sarah Mesle joins the pod to talk about her new book, Tangled: Seven Iconic Moments in White Women's Hair and What They Tell Us About Power, Pleasure, and Complicity, parse "good" blonde dye-jobs, wonder what happened to the Old Lady cut, and answer all of your questions about the politics of white lady hair.

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Show Notes:

• Follow Sarah on Instagram here
• Buy Tangled!!!!!!! It's so good!
• How to submit your hair studies pitch to Avidly
• A great short piece by Sarah on why hair studies matters
• Tressie McMillan Cottom on blondeness
• The episode of the Amy Poehler podcast I reference about blondes — with Leanne Morgan
• And also the episode of Amy Poehler I reference re: Paula Pell and her beautiful hair
• Sarah mentions the Dragon Prince series by Melanie Rawn
• Sarah also references Sabrina Strings' excellent book Fearing the Black Body
• Sarah also cites this article from Helana Darwin
• The Dolly Parton and Miley in 2010 (!) singing Jolene (I also love this one that's part of Miley's Backyard Sessions)

We're currently looking for your questions on the following topics:

• WHAT'S GOING ON INFLUENCER CULTURE? with Katie Sturino — what's going on with privacy, spon, monetization, politics, algorithm fatigue — anything you want to ask someone who's watched the influencing world transform from inside
• THE LATEST IN BOOK TRENDS with Alyssa Morris (from our very popular BookTok episode!). Ask Alyssa about whatever you're seeing in the book world: covers, genres, how it's handling fan-fic, BookTok trends.....
• JOURNO-INFLUENCERS with s.e. smith — yep, another episode on influencers, this time on how they're changing the norms of journalism. What journo-influencers do you follow and what makes them compelling? What's the future of journalism when it's wed to this style of promotion? Is it actually anything new? Ask away!
• Anything you need advice for/want musings about for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything — it’s literally the name of the segment.

 

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