Elizabeth L. Block, "Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing" (MIT Press, 2024)

New Books Network

In the nineteenth century, the complex cultural meaning of hair was not only significant—it could affect one’s place in society. After the Civil War, hairdressing was a growing profession and the hair industry a mainstay of local, national, and international commerce.

In Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing (MIT Press, 2024), Elizabeth L. Block expands the nascent field of hair studies by restoring women’s hair as a cultural site of meaning in the early United States. With a special focus on the places and spaces in which the industry operated, Block argues that the importance of hair has been overlooked due to its ephemerality as well as its misguided association with frivolity and triviality. Using methods of visual and material culture studies informed by concepts of cultural geography, Block identifies multiple substantive categories of place and space within which hair had pronounced impact. These include the preparatory places of the bedroom, hair salon, and enslaved peoples’ quarters, as well as the presentation spaces of parties, fairs, stages, and workplaces.

Here are also the untold stories of business owners, many of whom were women of color, and the creators of trendsetting styles such as the pompadour and Gibson Girl bouffant. Block’s groundbreaking study examines how race and racism affected who participated in the presentation and business of hair, and according to which standards. The result of looking closely at the places and spaces of hair is a reconfiguration that allows a new understanding of its immense cultural power.

Block reveals many shocking and illuminating truths about hairdressing—including that men’s pomades in the early 19th Century were often made with bear’s grease, lard, or mutton fat; or that plant-based hair dyes in the same time period were often supplemented with lead or sulphuric acid.

Despite the shocking nature of some of these previous practices, Block displays throughout Beyond Vanity that hairdressing was anything but frivolous. Rather, it reveals “the salient ways the practices, labor, maintenance, and presentation of hairstyles claimed substantial amounts of place, space, and time.”

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