Long Hair Don't Care: At the Intersection of Race, Beauty and Power in Feminine Self-Representation

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2015
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en_US
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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Abstract
Hair is much more than meets the eye. It has recently been a topic of interest in the realm of sociology and anthropology. In depth literature has questioned the relationships between hair and race, hair and beauty, and hair and gender. Hair has been recognized as an important cultural marker denoting meanings specific in time and place to societies. In my thesis I will focus on an unchartered territory in understanding hair: length. Hair length denotes so much about American culture and our society. Length can be understood in a multitude of ways especially when beauty, power and race are added in. Interviews with college females will only support the myths of long hair that are inherent in our society. Their own lived experiences will add a spark of reality to abstract and metaphorical myths surrounding long hair. The experience of long hair will also be contrasted with short hair; how the two differ supporting each other in the normalization of societies standards. This thesis will serve to identify these traditional and normalized understandings of hair length and support them through the lived experience of the interviewee's.
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