The History and Power of Hairdressing | Elizabeth Block
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Welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Lauren, bringing you this episode with author Elizabeth L. Block. Talks at Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. You can watch every episode at youtube.com slash talks at google.

Award-winning author and historian Elizabeth L. Block joins Google to discuss her book, Beyond Vanity, The History and Power of Hairdressing. She explores the diverse history of women's hair, from the cultural power of hair in 19th century America to the untold stories of business owners and trendsetters. Through her research, we see the places and spaces of hair that allow a new understanding of its immense cultural power.

Elizabeth is an art historian and a senior editor in the Publications and Editorial Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She holds a Ph.D. in art history from the City University of New York, an M.A. in American Studies from Columbia University, and a B.A. in English and art history from the George Washington University. Here is Elizabeth L. Block, the history and power of hairdressing. Hi, Elizabeth. Hi, Linda. Thank you. So happy to be here.

Thank you so much. We appreciate you. I want to just dive right in. I want to use up as much time as we have available. And so let's start with a few softball questions, okay? I want you to talk a little bit about your inspiration behind bringing this book to life, doing the research, and how did you come across all of these reference points? What was inspiring to you? And why is it important at this time?

Well, hairdressing was my first passion topic in graduate school. So as you mentioned, I'm an art historian. I have a PhD in art history with a focus in late 19th century American painting. And I also work at a major museum. And so I have the honor of spending a

a lot of time in front of really terrific images of women on almost a daily basis. So I spent a lot of time looking at paintings by John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Eastman Johnson, on and on. And what became evident to me while I was finishing my graduate studies was that people

People were paying attention in art historical studies to the painter's technique, which is always important, and the biography of the painter is usually male, although some women, but not as much attention to the presentation of what the women were wearing, how they were styling their hair, how they were presenting themselves for this very important and expensive opportunity of having a

And so that veered into years and years of deep study and research into hairdressing practices for women in the mid to late 19th century, specifically after the Civil War. So my areas of focus in Beyond Vanity are about 1865 to 1900. And it is a very rich period in American history, particularly in the late 19th century.

very rich period in hairdressing history too, as I found. Absolutely. I mean, I think that there's something about exploring this period that really kind of builds upon the foundation of where we are right now. And to your point, it's actually, it's not only very rich, but I think that there's a need for us to continue to tap back into this period to pull some of those lessons out

from this time period all the way across culturally, hair, fashion, beauty standards, et cetera. Why was it important? Because after going through this book, I noticed that you did such a beautiful job of pulling from

not just European standards, right? You dug into more textualized hair with a focus on Black plus hair care as well. So why was it important for you to avoid solely having that European perspective? Well, my first book was dressing up the women who influenced French fashion, which focused on the top 1% of women

the wealthiest women in the United States. So women who were going to Paris to buy the most expensive fashion, silk dresses, satin dresses, just incredible amounts of wealth.

And it was really important to me in this second book, Beyond Vanity, to focus on all classes of women. And the truth of the matter is that my studies always took me in a direction of studying multi-ethnic people and practices and ways of life. I'm always drawn to

to the lower and middle classes in the United States in this period of history. So in a way, this is like coming back to my passion area, but it was extremely important to me in this book to look at women's practices, Black women, mixed race women, white women, and just see how these beauty standards were circulating in society, where that influence was coming from, and

how women were managing their hair when they had, in some cases, very limited time to do so because they were working or working against their will.

Absolutely. And this is a great call out here around the working aspect, right? Because these things seem to reach clearly into where we are right now. Some of these themes, some of these ways of being have followed us, good, bad, or indifferent. What were some of the key takeaways for you with the research that you've done? And what was most surprising culturally across cultural lines of race, for example?

I think that there's no question that the ideal beauty standard at the time was of a white woman with long, luxurious hair. Glossy, wavy or curly hair.

with some texture, long hair. The reason why women wanted to have long, healthy hair was because they wanted to be able to have enough to work with to style into the updos that were in fashion at the day. So long braids, you wanted to have braids that could twirl around your head. You wanted to be able to have enough abundance in this updo to put in, say, a crescent pin or a very special dress

jeweled ornament that perhaps was handed down to you. So the white European standard of beauty comes straight from Europe, right to the United States.

But when we focus more on the United States, we get to see how these standards were transgressed, how they were adapted. And so we see how black and mixed race women were styling their hair naturally most of the time, even though the products that were on the market, many of which were put out by black and mixed race women, were not.

were focused on straightening hair and also whitening complexions. The cosmetics and the hair history really do work together. But it's really, really fascinating. And what was surprising to me was how many women entrepreneurs there were in the business and how many of those women were black and mixed race and how they were putting out products that spoke to their communities and the needs of textured hair, but white.

In a twist that was unexpected, they were also selling these products to white women. So, I mean, when I say that this is a rich area of study, there is so much more research to do.

Absolutely. I think that there's something about you. You pointed this out, but it's interesting just from thinking about how these things have been so impactful to culture and society overall, that we are still at a place when the storytelling of women is so much focused on imagery, so much focused on language.

Talk to us a little bit more. And I think that this was something that stuck out to me. I had made a note in the copy here that talks a little bit about how things have not changed that much in terms of advertising and how with a lot of the imagery that's inside of

the book, you may have seen an enslaved person or a co-fair, for example, within an image holding children or as part of an advertisement. And they seemed to be in a place of where they were supposed to be, but people seem to forget that these folks were actually working either as enslaved people or working as the servant to that family. That was probably something that was not only

a great call out on your behalf, but it was something that I think that we need to bring back into the conversation to really kind of get people moving on this idea that the truth is the truth. And, you know, as far as advertising is concerned, we're always in need of understanding how a story can be told and how we need to remember what the truth of a story is. Talk to us a little bit more about that when it comes to the imagery that was used

throughout the book to kind of capture some of these details. The book takes a visual and material culture methodology toward the women's lives in this period. And so throughout the book, I have imagery from advertisements. And these were advertisements that were in national newspapers, national periodicals for middle-class women like Godey's Lady's book or Peterson's magazine,

but also in newspapers that were aimed specifically for Black and mixed-race readers. And that's where some of the advertising becomes the most fascinating to me. So we will, you know, have to hold me back from talking about too many of the characters, but

One of the hero figures from this book is Christiana Carto Bannister, and she was of Black and Native American descent. She worked in the late 1860s until she passed in about 1902 in Boston and Providence, Rhode Island. And

if we use her biography as much as I was able to trace of it, we can branch out from there and sort of get a sense of how freed women in the Northeast were engaging in hairdressing practices and creating community around it. So although Christiana Carto Vanisher was a

She was a free woman as far as we know. Her family was not enslaved, nor her husband, Edward Mitchell Bannister, who is a well-known black landscape painter.

We know that she was advocating, she was using her salons or hair rooms, as they were called at the time, to advocate for emancipation in the 1860s and forward. There are wonderful, wonderful newspaper reports about how her space was where people gravitated to. Just so fascinating because her husband was a fairly successful breakthrough landscape artist, difficult enough as a Black man to achieve, but

We know that he became a painter and had the freedom to become a painter as his main career because of Christiana, his wife's success in the hairdressing industry. So Edward started as a barber and was able to move into painting because of the money that his wife Christiana was bringing into their family economics.

So as far as like what, you know, what the stories are, we need to be paying attention to the stories as much as we can. And as we say in some of the scholarship reading against the grain. So we need to read these reports about Christiana and her colleagues. We need to read imagery. We need to have this, you know, visual cultural way of reading advertisements in a way that

not just at their surface level, but what was Christiana trying to get through to her clients when she put an advertisement in a paper that was aimed at white readers? What was she aiming toward when she put an advertisement for her hairdressing services and her hair products when she put an advertisement in a paper that was for her community? There's just so many stories and so much more

so many more biographies to dig through and, um, and come up with, um, as you say, you know, what's behind the surface and what the real story is for these women.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that there's something about going through this book, pulling those stories. I mean, we're in a time right now, just in general, where so many stories are finally starting to come to the surface in whatever the medium may be, whether it's in film, whether it's across socioeconomic fields.

foundational paths that have occurred, whether it's as a direct result of the Industrial Revolution. Now we're supposedly in a third or fourth Industrial Revolution now that we have AI really kind of becoming a much larger conversation piece. And so I think it's super important that you were able to capture and pull a lot of those stories out that people would have otherwise not heard of.

One of the other things that jumped out to me, and this is starting to lean a little bit more into some of these social and cultural impactful knowledge pieces, which is men.

Men were actually doing hair, not just as barbers, but as actually the hairdresser in and of itself. That was something that jumped out to me most definitely as a little bit of a teaser, like, huh.

I knew that they were there, but not in the capacity in which you were able to pull some of this knowledge and research. Talk to us just a little bit about why that's such an important factor in all of this conversation and how that reaches over to us in this future time that we're in right now from the 19th century.

One of the main discoveries during all of this research I was doing was that the world of hair was not as gendered as maybe we once thought. Now, in this book, I focus on women's hair because it's an enormous topic in and of itself. And it's important to me to focus on

a distinct period and to focus on women. If I brought in the men and the history of barbering, this would be 300 pages and $300 to buy the book. Men's barbering is such a rich topic. There are a couple of excellent scholarly books on it. So I didn't want to step on those. There are terrific resources that I use and, and,

For men's barbering, the history of black men in barbering is extremely rich, really well covered in a specific book.

So for women, what I found was that there were these salons like Christiana Carteau's salons and hair rooms in Boston and Providence. But it wasn't like only women could walk into these spaces. I mean, men were walking into these spaces and advocate advocating for freedom and emancipation and many other political issues.

subjects that that people that they wanted to forward. Now, as far as the spaces of barbershops, which are also incredibly social spaces and historically so and straight through to this very moment,

Barber shops were male run. However, I found that women did go to male barber shops at times to get their hair cut or trimmed, mostly trimmed. Because remember what I said about the ideal beauty was to grow your hair as long as you could so that you could achieve these abundant updos that you wanted to have.

However, women were very concerned about split ends. And so they wanted to trim. And so they may have trimmed their hair at home or had a sister or a friend come over and do it or their mother trim their hair. But I found that they also went to barbershops and had men do these trims. And there's wonderful images. I include some of them in the book in novels that show us that, you know, in literature of the period, there's often this trope of

A woman having her hair significant, having a significant haircut so that she could sell her hair to raise money for her family. You can think of little women here and Joe's haircut in the illustrations for little women. Joe is going to a male barber and she's getting her haircut from a male barber and the male barber's wife is sitting in the space.

watching the haircut happen. So, you know, multiple genders, you know, this weren't not it was not taboo for a woman to go to a male, a male owned barbershop or salon and have her hair cut by a man. And in fact, some of the most famous hairdressers so far, because I want to uncover more of the women who are in this world, some of the best known, um,

And we know that, especially in New York, during the so-called Gilded Age, women like Caroline Astor and Alba Vanderbilt were having, you know, of course, they wanted the best of the best. And those would have been some of the French male hairdressers that came over from France.

to do hair and they were in such high demand that sometimes women needed to book their hair appointment seven, eight in the morning and then just kind of like sit with the hair shoe and try not to mess it up until they had to go to the opera or to a fancy ball like late at night. So I always think there of like the Met Gala when you hear about women getting their hair and their glam done so early because that's the only appointment they can get. And then there's just sort of like

sitting, waiting for the sprinter van and not moving when we're in it and then getting to the gala. So yeah, so gendered spaces that were not as gendered as we once thought within the world of hair is one of the big takeaways here.

I love that. It's a great nugget to call out in the book and most definitely something for us to continue to kind of keep in mind. And just from how you were describing preparation, right? Anytime any of us are going out

nighttime or we're going to our major event or we're going to a Broadway show, same kind of thing. We're often sitting, hoping that we've done our makeup in a certain way or getting our hair done. So a lot of those ways of moving have not changed that much in that regard. I do want to explore the impact of hairdressing on fashion and beauty standards.

particularly contrasting the experiences of Black and brown women with those of women with non-textured or less visibly textured hair. Talk to us a little bit about some of the research points that you've gathered. When I think about textured hair, I think about some of the

memoirs and diaries and letters from formerly enslaved women in the period who were talking about the limited time that they had to fix their own hair. So if a woman was enslaved in the South and was working against her, working for

a white family in a way that was not chosen by her. If a woman were working in the mistress's home, one of her responsibilities would be to tend to the mistress's hair. And this is where we, Black studies, Black feminist studies come into being so incredibly important to getting at what, as you say, what was really happening at the time and sort of reading through these

stories, we can use some imagination here. So what must it have been like for an enslaved woman to work on a white woman's hair during the week? And then what would it have been like for her when she had maybe a couple of hours to herself on a Sunday, maybe, in her own quarters to do her own hair? And what we know from some of the research is that

Women were using natural substances like, you know, coconut oil, if they could get to it, olive oil, castor oil, egg yolks, working natural ingredients through their hair to add moisture, to style it in a way that they were comfortable with. Oftentimes they would be wearing like a tin yon or a hair wrap over their head to keep their hair clean and dust free. So, yeah,

Using products, but using mixtures that they made on their own to tend to and to care for their hair in the time that they had to do so. Those are some of the most fascinating bits and pieces that we can get from some of these diaries and remembrances.

Absolutely. I think the thing, some of the great pieces that you just called out about that natural hair care, castor oil, coconut oil, almond oil, etc. A lot of these things are very much a part of the conversation today and definitely in a much larger capacity across the world.

gender lines, racial lines, cultural lines, etc. And so I was really pleased myself just as a reader going through the book to hear some of these tidbits that were not so far removed, although we're in the future state of the early 19th century. But I do want to talk about a little bit

the power of hairdressing to transform people's lives, to transform and create and elevate community. Per your research, how can thinking about hair, hairdressing be used to build community and foster more inclusive behavior, be a vessel for people being invited into the conversation? And I really want us to be grounded a bit more into how we see so many more people developing their business,

What strategies they are employing to sustain that business and then how people who may not be a part of the hair dressing or hair community or just simply someone who's interested in hair as a cultural reference point. What are some of those things and ways in which people can become closer to the conversation?

conversation is happening now. And as you say, it's not all that different than in the mid to late 19th century from the ingredients that are going into the hair products to some of the basic practices of, you know, combing, caring for the scalp. I mean, at the moment, scalp health is all the rage and all these product lines that are out there. I mean,

All the product lines have a scalp oil or a pre-wash oil.

These were all happening and taking ground in the late 19th century. You know, now we talk about the skinification of hair. So again, like the scalp is skin and how do you care for it and keep it healthy? This was such a massive topic in the late 19th century because if you lost your hair to illness, having short hair was a symbol of

not having your health. It was very worrisome to friends who write in letters about other friends who have lost their hair due to typhoid fever or something. And so a lot of the products speak to restoring health.

We see so much of the same language today. It's incredible. So many, I mean, I just was looking at one of these shampoo bottle labels. I'm really interested in these old labels that are on the old bottles. And one of the things that I found was that

One of the, there's a ton of alcohol in them, which I don't think happens so much today. But in addition to like the oils, there's also salicylic acid, which is like, you know, we're, a lot of us are using now for scalp health and for, you know, cosmetics. So a lot of that is the same. I think we can draw inspiration from women like Christiana Carto Bannister and her colleagues who

If we can bring that thread through to today, the incredible work that the Crown Act is doing. This is a piece of legislation. It's a coalition that's bringing a piece of legislation through Congress. It's passed, I believe, 24 states to the moment, to this moment. And what they're fighting for and what I think is abominable that still needs to be fought for is

that needs to even go through legislation is that every single human being should be able to wear their hair however they want in the workplace, at school, without question. We're still seeing cases come to the fore, students, you know, in Texas, young male students who are, you know, being sent home for wearing, you know, locks or braids or cornrows in a way that

I mean, the racism that's rampant and, you know, the way that hair presentation is received, that has been going on, unfortunately, for centuries. But we have now, hopefully with this book, the power to pull from history and to use it in a way that can move

legislation like the Crown Act forward and to remind ourselves in everyday practice that hair is a common material, but with uncommon abilities to express individualism and, you know, let it be. I love that you mentioned the Crown Act, and I also love that you tied that back again to the

how we see each other, but also how other people see individuals. I think that there's an opportunity here for, particularly in schools right now, where we need to bring the focus away from trying to silence people through their hair care or through their hairstyle and really put a focus on elevating the individual, right? There's this term that we like to use in professional spaces, and I'm sure you've heard it called busy work.

when people are simply busy just to be busy. But this is one of those things. It's a tactic, unfortunately. And I think that there's an opportunity just from this book, for example, pulling those reference points, pulling those stories and just providing data for people. A lot of times people may not be able to attach themselves to the person. Right. But if they can pull that story

Then that's something that people can chew on. Elizabeth, last thought before we jump out of this lovely conversation. What's one thing that you want people to take away from the book? My wish is that hair studies becomes as central to women's history studies as education and politics. How's that for a lofty goal? Yeah.

That is a lofty goal. We're going to put that on a piece of paper and see how far we get. But I'm with you on that. If this was something that was taught throughout schools, grade school all the way up through college, it would also start to lessen these busy work tactics or just harmful tactics that people utilize from time to time in their day to day to lead people into these false boxes.

instead of just taking the time to get to know them. And with that, Elizabeth, we appreciate you so, so much. I want to speak to everyone out there. Please pick up this book. It is so beautiful. It is so beautifully researched. Let me show you the cover here because I'm just looking at it here. You see all of my little tabs. I love your little tabs.

Thank you. You know, pick up the book Beyond Vanity. This wonderful person, Elizabeth, has done a great job researching all of these stories, all of these diaries, all of these data points. And I encourage you to take the time to look at the artwork as well, because it is such a great aspect of this book. And with that, I thank you all. Enjoy yourselves. Stress about nothing. Bye.

Have a positive week and we will see each other soon. Cheers. Thanks for listening. You can watch this episode and tons of other great content at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Talk soon.