More to hair than meets the eye, panelists say

Can the crazy stuff that grows out of our heads ever just be hair?

At a Thursday evening panel discussion held at Barnard College, the consensus seemed to be no, probably not.

According to panelists Atoosa Rubenstein, BC ’93 (who formerly served as editor-in-chief of CosmoGIRL! and Seventeen magazines), Ayana Byrd, BC ’95 (current articles editor at Glamour and author of “Hair Story”), and Anne Kreamer (author of “Going Gray”), hair can reflect women’s politics, social aspirations, and insecurities. Janet Jakobsen, director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women and Interim Associate Dean of Faculty Diversity, moderated the event, titled “Just Hair.”

Jakobsen addressed a crowded James Room, opening with a statement that echoed through the night’s comments. “Carrying a social statement on top of one’s head is a big burden,” Jakobsen said. “It says whether one wants to fit in or not to fit in.”

Byrd, whose book “Hair Story” focuses on black women’s experiences with hair, was the first panelist to speak. She shared her story of coming to Barnard, broke, and cutting off all of her hair to save the time and money spent on relaxers. “It changed everything that I thought about myself,” Byrd said. “I wasn’t into makeup or clothes, so all you got was my hair.”

After wearing a hat for an entire semester, Byrd was forced to come to terms with her natural hair. Now, she doesn’t wear her hair straight at all, because the positive reactions to it upset her. “It made me uncomfortable that something superficial should all of a sudden be so glorious,” Byrd said.

That positive reaction is exactly what women don’t get when they reveal their natural gray hair, according to Kreamer, who wrote “Going Gray.” She told the audience that after spending $65,000 dying her hair for 25 years, she is working to combat the myths that gray-haired women are less attractive or employable.

While presenting a slideshow on powerful gray-haired women, Kreamer paused to note that of 16 female U.S. senators, none show a hint of gray. “Now, Hillary Clinton lets a little stick out sometimes—I guess when she’s busy—and if she went gray, everyone else would be less stigmatized,” Kreamer said.

In Rubenstein’s first public appearance since stepping down from the top post at Seventeen in 2006, she spoke freely about struggling with her long, dark curls at home and at work. The moment when her husband said her hair felt like “stuffed animal hair,” for example, was not a high point in their relationship, she said, laughing.

After coming to terms with her hair as a young adult, she found herself feeling so insecure at Seventeen that she had it permanently straightened to feel more in touch with her readers.

Now, though, she disagrees with Kreamer, and emphasized how hair color can be a means of expression, especially for young people. “I don’t feel a slave to my hair color. It’s possible to color your hair and not feel embarrassed,” Rubenstein said.

The audience of over 200 students, alumni, and faculty raised more issues of hair length, religion, sexuality, and the cultural definition of “good hair,” which Byrd addressed specifically. “‘Good hair’ is an idea completely outside of what grows out of our own heads, and we’re put in a pecking order based on it,” Byrd said, provoking more questions.

The panel prompted audience member Alexandra McCleary, BC ’12, to contemplate the perception of hair along racial lines. “It was really interesting to see how hair has such an impact on how people perceive you,” McCleary said. “But white people have that ‘good hair’ perception too that can be hard to live up to and not natural either,” she added, responding to Byrd’s comments.

Jakobsen said in interview after the event that although the three women’s stories differed, they shared fundamental elements “about individual choices working in this huge social context and making a personal statement about where you fit in.”