The first book to explore the role of hair in women's lives and what it reveals about their identities, intimate relationships, and work lives Hair is one of the first things other people notice about us--and is one of the primary ways we declare our identity to others. Both in our personal relationships and in relationships with the larger world, hair sends an immediate signal that conveys messages about our gender, age, social class, and more. In Rapunzel's Daughters, Rose Weitz first surveys the history of women's hair, from the covered hair of the Middle Ages to the two-foot-high, wildly ornamented styles of pre-Revolutionary France to the purple dyes worn by some modern teens. In the remainder of the book, Weitz, a prominent sociologist, explores--through interviews with dozens of girls and women across the country--what hair means today, both to young girls and to women; what part it plays in adolescent (and adult) struggles with identity; how it can create conflicts in the workplace; and how women face the changes in their hair that illness and aging can bring. Rapunzel's Daughters is a work of deep scholarship as well as an eye-opening and personal look at a surprisingly complex-and fascinating-subject.

Anthology of sequels featuring classic fairy tale characters.

A retelling of a folktale in which a beautiful girl with long golden hair is kept imprisoned in a lonely tower by a sorceress. Includes a note on the origins of the story.

This volume presents an exploration of the role of embodied cognition in creating personal, imaginative renditions of hair, that also distally relate to the symbolic significance of the fairytale character Rapunzel’s hair (in terms of physical life, romantic life, spiritual life, and psychic life, respectively). Integral to this relation, is the author’s idea of “fancifold”, which is a quality or state of the imagination that can produce unique neuropsychological elements of enchantment and disenchantment entwined. This book will be of interest to scholars and other researchers concerned with how cognition (including psychology and the brain, psychology and literature, psychology and art, philosophy of mind, and metaphor) might relate specifically to understanding the subjective experience of hair.

The much-loved Grimm's fairy tale that inspired Tangled, going back to its roots

Body hair, especially on women, provokes, disrupts, and, at times, offends. It is tangled up with culture itself—in art, families, workplaces, relationships, sex, the beauty industry, governments, and capitalism. From Chinese activists challenging the Communist Party, to students in Arizona rejecting their family and workplace ideas about grooming, to high-art feminist photographers boldly featuring hairy women, Fahs deftly explores the volatile and ever-changing landscape of women's body hair politics. She showcases an underground movement of artists, zine-makers, rebels, and activists who have used women's visible body hair as a declaration of freedom from patriarchal norms. Fahs presents body hair not just as a personal grooming choice but as a connection to broader cultural stories about women's reproductive rights, feminist battlegrounds about autonomy, neoliberal intrusions into beauty regimens, and even global tensions around women's place in society. Ultimately, Unshaved shows the collision between the mundane and the extraordinary, the everyday and the revolutionary.

A retelling of the traditional tale in which a beautiful girl with long golden hair is imprisoned in a lonely tower by a witch.

A Vindication of the Redhead investigates red hair in literature, art, television, and film throughout Eastern and Western cultures. This study examines red hair as a signifier, perpetuated through stereotypes, myths, legends, and literary and visual representations. Brenda Ayres and Sarah E. Maier provide a history of attitudes held by hegemonic populations toward red-haired individuals, groups, and genders from antiquity to the present. Ayres and Maier explore such diverse topics as Judeo-Christian narratives of red hair, redheads in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, red hair and gender identity, famous literary redheads such as Anne of Green Gables and Pippi Longstocking, contemporary and Neo-Victorian representations of redheads from the Black Widow to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and more. This book illuminates the symbolic significance and related ideologies of red hair constructed in mythic, religious, literary, and visual cultural discourse.

How Black women celebrate their natural hair and uproot racialized beauty standards Hair is not simply a biological feature; it’s a canvas for expression. Hair can be cut, colored, dyed, covered, gelled, waxed, plucked, lasered, dreadlocked, braided, and relaxed. Yet, its significance extends beyond mere aesthetics. Hair can carry profound moral, spiritual, and cultural connotations, serving as a reflection of one’s beliefs, heritage, and even political stance. In Natural, Chelsea Mary Elise Johnson delves into the complex world surrounding Black women’s hair, and offers a firsthand look into the kitchens, beauty shops, conventions, and blogs that make up the twenty-first century natural hair movement, the latest evolution in Black beauty politics. Johnson shares her own hair story and amplifies the voices of women across the globe who, after years of chemically relaxing their hair, return to a “natural” style. Johnson describes how many women initially transition to natural hair out of curiosity or as a wellness practice but come to view their choice as political upon confronting personal insecurities and social stigma, both within and outside of the Black community. She also investigates “natural hair entrepreneurs,” who use their knowledge to create lucrative and socially transformative haircare ventures. Distinct from a politics of respectability or Afrocentricity, Johnson’s argument is that today’s natural hair movement advances a politics of authenticity. She offers “going natural” as a practice of self-love and acceptance; a critique of exclusionary economic arrangements and an exploitative beauty industry; and an act of anti-racist political resistance. Natural powerfully illustrates how the natural hair movement is part of a larger social change among Black women to assert their own purchasing power, standards of beauty, and bodily autonomy.

Princesses Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Rapunzel swap fairy tales with one another in this hilariously clever new classic! Once upon a time, four fairy tale misses, tired of dwarves, witches, princes, and kisses,so bored and fed up, or just ready to flop,upped and left home for a fairy tale swap.What happens when Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Rapunzel get so fed up with their fairy tales that they decide to switch places with one another? Hilarity ensues in this clever, rhyming story about whether the grass really is greener at someone else's castle.Author Stephanie Clarkson crafts an incredibly witty manuscript, with rhymes that shine and predicaments that will make little girls everywhere laugh out loud, as illustrator Brigette Barrager brings these beautiful princesses to life with her rich, warm colors and charming retro-girl style!