Hair: Styling, Culture and Fashion

Geraldine Biddle-Perry and Sarah Cheang are the editors of Hair: Styling, Culture and Fashion. Sarah is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Cultural and Historical Studies,London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK. She joined the Royal College of Arts in September 2011. She has a special interest in the role of Chinese material culture within histories of Western fashionable dress and domestic interiors. Meanwhile, Geraldine is a cultural historian whose main focus on production and reproduction of mainstream fashionable identities in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the assumptions of class and gender that underpin this.

The Hair: Styling, Culture and Fashion book is basically about the importance of hair in explaining cultural representation and the growth of hair histories and rituals. In the introduction, the editors emphasize the Hindu concept in explaining the histories of growth hair that represent Hindu cultural beliefs.  The writers also mention about ‘black henna’ which is has been used as cosmetic hair dye approximately 6,000 years.

The first sub-heading is Hair Myths, Histories and Taboos which explain that hair is a rich source of myth in India that where each state and region has its own stories about the myth of hair. This explains that hair plays an important role to represent each of state and region in India. ‘Shakti’ which means power or empowerment related to the female power which when woman’s unleashed hair.

The second sub-heading is Purity and Pollution: The Role of Barber. Shaving in Hinduism occurs at significant life stages. The barber who performs at such ceremonies is classified as so-called ‘untouchables’. The Untouchables works has been traditionally ‘barbering, laundering and removing nightsoil, so that the purify of the Brahmans and high caste people is preserved by other who performs polluting tasks for them’ (Fuller 1992:15).

For the third sub-heading which is about ­­­­­­­­­­­­­Piety and Profit: The Trade in Hair At Tirumala are about the income of the ‘temple hair’ has earned. Tirumala-Tirupati Devasthanams (TTDD) is known as the temple hair. Only talented barbers that meet requirement can work here.­­­­

The last sub-heading is ‘Soft as Flowers’- Traditional and Contemporary Hair Products For India and The Diaspora is about the poem Cilappatikaram, or the The Epic of the Anklet, that reveals the affluence and composure of of a courtesan’s hair dressing, and gives an implication of the variety of brand traditionally used for conditioning, cleansing, and dressing hair. Home or locally made hair treatments from shrub and fruits are still widely use. Popularity of black henna has travel beyond to South Asia and also across the globe. Black henna are reportedly being exported to international market. Specialist group of farmers plans to increase the expanse for leaves to 600 so that he can make more money by exporting dried indigo leaves. The future of Black henna looks bright and the farmers of South India are hoping that the export of this product can match that the ‘temple hair’. Personally, overall I think this book is suitable for the people who want to explore the culture in India and for the people who want to know about hair.