Hair is a potent symbol of self, of gender, of subversion. To renounce it can be just as powerful.
In all the talk of “the slap” that has gone on since the Oscars; in all the soul-searching prompted by that break from the norm, its aftermath and what it could mean not just for the Smiths or the Academy but for comedy, culture and gender writ large; in all the important medical discussions it engendered of alopecia, not to mention the complex role hair has played in Black history — there has been one constant underlying it all: the powerful symbolism of the bald female head.
Like all the politics that
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