This open access book adopts a cultural sociology of materiality to explore the hallmark of the female athlete: the ponytail. Studying a wealth of news articles about ponytails in sports and society, Broch uncovers this hairstyle’s polyvocality and argues that it is a total social phenomenon. By separating his approach from the cultural studies tradition, Broch highlights how hair is imbued with codes, narratives, and myth that allow its wearers to understand, maneuver, and criticize social gender relations in deeply personal ways. Using multiple theories about hair, bodies, myths, and icons, he creates a multidimensional method to show how icons are imitated and used. As women navigate their practical lives, health issues, and gendered expectations, the ponytail materializes their dynamic maneuvering of cultural and social environments. Sporting a ponytail―itself an embodiment of movement―is filled with a performativity of social movements: a cultural kinetics that is never apolitical.
Author(s): Trygve B. Broch
Series: Cultural Sociology
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 234
City: Cham
Series Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Figures
Introduction: Imagining the Ponytail
A Cultural History of the Ponytail
Bodies and Hair as Multidimensional
A Critical Sociology of (Sports)Women’s Hair
The Polyvocality of a Total Social Fact
A Note on Methods and Outline
References
Object
Touching Culture
Norwegian Horsetails
Gendering Analogies
Ponytailed Pride
Notes
References
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Expectations
The Materiality of Expectations
Fashionable Ploy or Democratic Credibility?
Fashionably Extraordinaire and Deceptively Normal
Ponytailed Men and Women
Notes
References
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Health
Childhood
Youth
Adulthood
Notes
References
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Practicalities
Denaturalizing Inequality and Naturalizing Equality
Moving with Practicality
Constrictions and Expansions in Ideological Boundaries
Notes
References
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Movements
Bodily Movements and Naturalized Progression
Kinesthetic Freedom and Woman Nature
Notes
References
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Experience
Democratic Hopes and Setbacks
Changing Rules and Boundaries
References
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Charge
References
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Index
