Me, My Hair, and IMe, My Hair, and I
Twenty-seven Women Untangle an Obsession
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eBook, 2015
Current format, eBook, 2015, , Available.eBook, 2015
Current format, eBook, 2015, , Available. Offered in 0 more formats"[A] splendid collection . . . By turns wry, tender, pointed, and laugh-out-loud funny." -Publishers Weekly
"Untangles the many truths about hair, and the lives we lead underneath it." -Pamela Druckerman, author of Bringing Up Bébé
Ask a woman about her hair, and she just might tell you the story of her life. Ask a whole bunch of women about their hair, and you could get a history of the world. Surprising, insightful, frequently funny, and always forthright, the essays in Me, My Hair, and I are reflections and revelations about every aspect of women's lives from family, race, religion, and motherhood to culture, health, politics, and sexuality.
They take place in African American kitchens, at Hindu Bengali weddings, and inside Hasidic Jewish homes. The conversation is intimate and global at once. Layered into these reminiscences are tributes to influences throughout history: Jackie Kennedy, Lena Horne, Farrah Fawcett, the Grateful Dead, and Botticelli's Venus.
The long and the short of it is that our hair is our glory-and our nemesis, our history, our self-esteem, our joy, our mortality. Every woman knows that many things in life matter more than hair, but few bring as much pleasure as a really great hairdo. Ask a woman about her hair, and she just might tell you the story of her life. Ask a whole bunch of women about their hair, and you could get a history of the world. Surprising, insightful, frequently funny, and always forthright, the essays in Me, My Hair, and I are reflections and revelations about every aspect of women's lives from family, race, religion, and motherhood to culture, health, politics, and sexuality.
Elizabeth Benedict is a graduate of Barnard College and the author of five novels, including the bestseller Almost and the National Book Award finalist Slow Dancing. She is the editor of the anthologies What My Mother Gave Me, a New York Times bestseller, and Mentors, Muses & Monsters, and has written for the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, and the Huffington Post, the Rumpus, and Tin House. Two of her essays have been selected for Best American Essays collections. She has taught widely and works as a writing coach and editor.
INTRODUCTION
Ask a woman about her hair, and she just might tell you the story of her life.
Ask a whole bunch of women, and if Me, My Hair, and I is any indication, you could get a history of the world: reflections and revelations about family, race, religion, ritual, culture, politics, celebrity, what goes on in African American kitchens and at Hindu Bengali weddings in Calcutta, alongside stories about the influence of Jackie Kennedy, Angela Davis, Lena Horne, Madonna, Audrey Hepburn, Shirley Temple, Sandra Dee, Joan Baez, Farrah Fawcett, Kelly McGillis, Judith Butler, the Grateful Dead, and Botticelli's Venus.
What's abundantly clear in all these personal stories is that hair matters. Many other facts of life matter too, oftentimes more than hair (illness, poverty, war, famine, flood, and sometimes shoes and makeup), but hair can be counted on to matter just about every day, at least to a high percentage of women--and to more than a few men, at least back in the day. The Beatles' long hair, when it first shimmied and shook on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, in time to "I Want to Hold Your Hand," changed the course of social history. Way before that, the Old Testament's Samson believed that his hair, seven braids' worth, was the source of his strength, and his enemies hired the temptress Delilah to cut if off.
As I read and reflect on these essays, I'm struck by just how much hair matters to so many of us, and by the tangled intricacies of why. Why so much? And why with this intensity?
"A woman's hair is her glory," Maya Angelou explains in Good Hair, Chris Rock's documentary about African American women and their hair. But long before it has a ch
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