Michiko Kakutaniコミュの（40）RAPUNZEL'S DAUGHTERS

March 23, 2004
BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Does She or Doesn't She? Only Her Sociologist Knows
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

RAPUNZEL'S DAUGHTERS
What Women's Hair Tells Us About Women's Lives
By Rose Weitz
Illustrated. 266 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $24.

In Rose Weitz's new book, ''Rapunzel's Daughters: What Women's Hair Tells Us About Women's Lives,'' academic jargon merges with Oprah-style psychobabble, feminist deconstruction meets up with the self-help movement. The result is a book that is pompous, superficial, pretentious and fatuous, all at the same time: a book that reveals just how easily so-called sociology and women's studies can slip-slide into pop-cult nonsense.
In these pages the obvious is served up self-importantly (''each person's hair truly is unique'') and dubious generalizations are delivered with a drumroll: ''Women with frizzy 'Jewish' hair; with the long, oiled braids of India; or with straight jet-black Asian hair all sooner or later learn that these aspects of their appearance can lead others to regard them as less competent and professional.''
The idea for the book -- an examination of the role that hairstyles have played in women's lives and what they say about cultural mores, ethnic identity and gender stereotypes -- is a potentially intriguing one. But in these pages Ms. Weitz, a professor of sociology and women's studies at Arizona State University, demonstrates neither the academic chops nor the simple curiosity that might have fueled an illuminating book.
The rich subject of how women's hairdos have changed over the centuries -- from the knee-length styles worn by some wealthy married women in 12th-century England to the Afros and long hippie hair that became fashionable in the 1960's and 70's -- is tossed away in a single chapter that is by far the strongest portion of the volume. The rest of the book is devoted to familiar musings about women's hair today: the role it can play in romance, office politics and teen-age jockeying for status; the ways in which hairstyles can help project an image or telegraph feelings of rebellion, conformity or ethnic pride.
The observations in ''Rapunzel's Daughters'' rely heavily on interviews Ms. Weitz conducted with a broad, politically correct spectrum of women: white, black, Asian and Latina, straight and gay, single and married, young and old.
We're told about a migrant farm worker who awoke each day before dawn to fix her daughters' hair before going to work in the fields, sending a message to the girls about the importance of appearance. We meet a law student who grew up in a small Southern town, where she and her friends would spend two hours before school setting and styling their hair. And we are introduced to a stripper who, to attract older customers, cuts her bangs short and very straight to look like a pin-up girl from the 1940's and 50's.
But while some women quoted here can be articulate or funny about their hair experiences, their remarks are all too often used to illustrate the author's trite theories or are drowned out by her fuzzy, jargon-filled speechifying, her eagerness to inject sociological drama into every incident and story.
Ms. Weitz tosses around phrases like ''language of appearance,'' ''hair strategies'' and ''beauty expectations'' without a shred of humor or wit. She writes about the ''social dangers of short hair,'' argues that hairstyles can ''come to feel like a life-or-death issue'' and describes one woman with a shaved head as trying ''out an alternative model of womanhood.'' She talks about the ''friendship-like nature'' of relationships between women and their hairdressers, and she refers to beauty salons as ''female spaces.''
Feminist ideas borrowed from writers like Naomi Wolf (''The Beauty Myth,'' ''Fire With Fire'') and Susan Faludi (''Backlash'') are doggedly recycled, while dozens of the sort of feel-good banalities found in women's magazines are lobbed at the reader. Ms. Weitz writes that ''learning to regard hair as important affects girls in myriad ways, and brings with it both pleasures and pains.'' She asserts that ''the first step in getting a man is catching his eye.'' And she observes that ''the benefits of looking attractive are as obvious in the job world as on the playground and in romantic relationships.''
In the end ''Rapunzel's Daughters'' feels like a sorry case of lost opportunities. The role of hair in myth, art and religion is dealt with only in the most cursory manner, while the possibilities for textual analysis offered by movies, magazines and music videos are barely explored.
Ms. Weitz's allusions to the fairy tale that inspired the title are perfunctory in the extreme (a much more thorough and entertaining look at the myth was provided by a 2001 exhibition ''Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let Down Your Hair'' at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington), and she fails to grapple convincingly with the hair symbolism in well-known stories like O. Henry's ''Gift of the Magi.'' She makes little of the brouhaha over Jennifer Aniston's ever-changing hairstyles on ''Friends'' and discusses Hillary Rodham Clinton's ever-changing hairdos only in passing.
While she repeatedly mentions women's penchant for going blond, she provides a lot less detail and historical context than Joanna Pitman did in ''On Blondes'' or Natalia Ilyin did in ''Blonde Like Me.''
All in all ''Rapunzel's Daughters'' is a book that represents sociology at its laziest and women's studies at its most superficial. It's a case study in the watering down of these disciplines and the substitute by some of their practitioners of topicality and relevance for serious scholarship and genuine insight.

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