American Beauty: Our Hair, Ourselves
August 18, 2016 7:27 AM Subscribe
Candacy Taylor spent seven years studying American beauty shop culture. Her 20,000-mile journey among salons catering to African-American, Appalachian, Cajun, Dominican, Gullah, Jamaican, Japanese, Orthodox Jewish, Lumbee Indian, Pakistani, and LGBT communities led her to this conclusion: "[R]ace matters, you know? And more specifically it's about hair texture....Practically every ethnicity has developed a specialized product or procedure to change their hair texture, and as a result, beauty shop culture is a window into contemporary understandings about race, segregation, and integration." Transcript [txt doc] of her 2014 lecture, from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
Taylor's talk is a fascinating window into what can be loaded, highly-charged topics that aren't always easy or comfortable to discuss: "I think that that's really what we need to be doing as a culture, is to stop shaming and stop making people feel bad for being curious, to open up that conversation and the dialog about race, and to offer the safe, non-judgmental place to talk about these things. And if we can start with hair, then it leads to the other real issues, the other deeper, seemingly more important issues."
More: Taylor's multimedia project, Beauty Shop Culture: Letting Our Hair Down in American Salons.
Taylor's talk is a fascinating window into what can be loaded, highly-charged topics that aren't always easy or comfortable to discuss: "I think that that's really what we need to be doing as a culture, is to stop shaming and stop making people feel bad for being curious, to open up that conversation and the dialog about race, and to offer the safe, non-judgmental place to talk about these things. And if we can start with hair, then it leads to the other real issues, the other deeper, seemingly more important issues."
More: Taylor's multimedia project, Beauty Shop Culture: Letting Our Hair Down in American Salons.
OMGAWD I LOVE
posted by whimsicalnymph at 9:58 AM on August 18, 2016
posted by whimsicalnymph at 9:58 AM on August 18, 2016
Excellent lecture.
posted by Bob Regular at 10:23 AM on August 18, 2016
posted by Bob Regular at 10:23 AM on August 18, 2016
Thank you. So interesting. And a very good lecture.
posted by severiina at 12:28 PM on August 18, 2016
posted by severiina at 12:28 PM on August 18, 2016
This reminds me of artist Sonya Clark's Hair Craft project.
posted by apricot at 6:30 PM on August 18, 2016
posted by apricot at 6:30 PM on August 18, 2016
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