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Feminist hair theory ruffled by mockery
Tony Allen-Mills, Washington
A FEW years ago Rose Weitz?s new book about the sociological significance of women?s hairstyles might have been hailed as an important contribution to feminist theory.
Instead, the book by one of America?s leading professors of women?s studies has fallen victim to a rising tide of popular disdain for what one critic described as self-important feminist ?psychobabble?.
In a rare breakdown of the political correctness that routinely protects women?s issues from critical scrutiny, Weitz has received brutal reviews for her book Rapunzel?s Daughters ? What Women?s Hair Tells Us About Women?s Lives.
Rapunzel was the fairytale princess who let down her long coiled hair so that a prince could rescue her. ?The rest of us sometimes suspect that, as was true for Rapunzel, our hair offers us the key to finding a prince who?ll bring us love and happiness,? Weitz declares.
As professor of sociology and women?s studies at Arizona State University, Weitz is a prominent feminist writer, best known for her work as editor of the Oxford University Press series, The Politics of Women?s Bodies.
Her new 250-page book has been presented as an ?eye-opening? look at the way women supposedly define their identities, relationships and careers by the way they do their hair. It includes a survey of historical hairstyles, analysis of male attitudes to hair and a chapter entitled No More Bad Hair Days.
Weitz concludes that women should think carefully about their attitude to hair in order to ?chip away at the prison bars of the beauty culture?. Yet her theories were dismissed last week as ?trite? in a New York Times review which declared the book to be ?pompous, superficial, pretentious and fatuous?. It was also described as ?a book that reveals just how easily sociology and women?s studies can slip-slide into pop-cult nonsense?.
One critic condemned its ?saccharine insights? and ?shop-worn? ideas.
Weitz is not the first feminist writer to suffer critical barbs this year. Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, sparked a furore by claiming that as a student she was groped by Harold Bloom, the well known literary scholar. Far from igniting public concern, the revelation earned Wolf derision as critics wondered why she had waited 20 years to make such an accusation public.
The attacks on Weitz and Wolf have coincided with the emergence of an aggressive breed of conservative feminists who are determined to counter what one of them called ?Ms information? ? the notion that everything should be blamed on men. ?Feminism in this country has become a parody of itself,? said Christina Hoff Sommers, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute where Lynne Cheney, wife of Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, is also a fellow.
?The women?s movement has been hijacked by a small group of chronically offended gender feminists who believe that women are from Venus and men are from hell,? Sommers said. ?I do not believe that women in American society are oppressed, or are members of a subordinate class. It is no longer reasonable to say that as a group (American) women are worse off than men.?
Sommers complains about a professor of women?s studies who renamed her seminar an ?ovular?. She also cites a feminist musicologist at the University of California who claims to have detected themes of rape and sexual assault in Beethoven?s Ninth Symphony.
?We need a forward-looking women?s movement guided by common sense and fairness. Instead we?ve got political correctness, victim politics and male-bashing,? Sommers said.
Wendy McElroy is a dissident feminist who has set up ifeminists.com, her own website. She said the reaction to the Wolf affair ?clearly shows that a cultural tide has turned. Wolf tried to fall back on Old Reliable ? a tearful confession of feminist victimhood ? and encountered scepticism instead of automatic sympathy?.
McElroy noted that until quite recently those with doubts about Wolf?s story would not have dared to voice them. ?The silence is over,? she said. ?The claim of victimhood is no longer enough to make listeners suspend their critical faculties.?
That turned out to be bad news for Weitz, who begins her book with Aristotle?s remark that women were merely ?misbegotten men?. In a rapid survey of changing attitudes to hair, she notes that Queen Elizabeth I ushered in a new age of short hair for women in England and finds that the main problem with the 20th-century fashion for dyeing hair blonde was that it ?stigmatised grey hair in women?.
Several critics praised Weitz?s historical research but yawned at her sociological analysis. Her attempt to turn every plait, ponytail and Afro into a facet of potential female oppression had one critic yearning for a simpler age ?when hair was judged mainly by its length?.
With her focus groups, feminism and what The New York Times described as ?fuzzy, jargon-filled speechifying?, Weitz?s book earned the critical equivalent of a short back and sides. ?All in all, Rapunzel?s Daughters represents sociology at its laziest and women?s studies at its most superficial,? the Times review concluded.
What she says is true, most men prefer women with good hair, that's natural, most women prefer successful men, only unsucessful men complain about that though.
If they dont like what mens preferences are then they can dip each other instead. These cheerleaders are the reason people like the 'sex and the city' girls take so long to setle down, they are put in a tail spin till they are 40 because of mis-analysis like this.
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