Hair Moments in Pop Culture # 4: Recent Blondes of Note
What exactly is a "Hair Moment" in storytelling?
I’d be remiss if I didn’t use this pop culture round-up to mark Ken’s reference to “blonde fragility” in the Barbie movie.
[Chorus]
I'm just Ken
Anywhere else I'd be a ten
Is it my destiny to live and die a life of blonde fragility?
I'm just Ken
Where I see love, she sees a friend
What will it take for her to see the man behind the tan and fight for me?
As I move through the world of media, news, entertainment and advertising looking for “Hair Moments,” I’ve become aware that there is a subtle yet rigorous logic behind what I consider to be a true “Hair Moment” versus a moment that simply references hair.
In past newsletters I’ve defined the Hair Moment is a moment that involves or references hair in any form, not just for the sake of hair itself, but in a way that metaphorically connects it to some wider truth about the condition of being.
But when is a hair moment a whole moment, and when is it just a punctuation of living. Does it have to be a plot point, or a character point, or a way of marking time passing to become a full on hair moment?
I’ll explain.
Throughout the first and second seasons of The Bear (2022-23), Natalie “Sugar” Berzatto (sister to Chef Carmy), played by Abby Elliott, is a blonde. But for one episode, the high octane, high stress family Christmas episode, she is a brunette. Why?
At face value, this hair change helps to signify a change in the timeline: a flashback, going back in time. But still, it prompts us to look and think more deeply about Natalie as a living, breathing character, one with a whole history of choices and changes. Her hair color isn’t addressed within the episode, or even later on, but from this episode forward we understand her to be a person who changes her hair.
Based on other moments of characterization, we could extrapolate on the why: perhaps she changes her hair color in order to fit in, or to impress, or to please others. Maybe she was just conforming to a beauty trend of the moment. It may have been more interesting if her part had changed too—side part to center parted, but perhaps it’s more significant that she’s a person who has had center-parted hair her entire life? Regardless of the trends.
Ultimately, we are invited to know this character better through what happens, even subtly, with her hair.
In the second season of Search Party, the fair-haired Elliott Goss, brilliantly and hilariously played by comedian John Early, begins to lose his already wispy hair.
Elliott’s hair loss joins a litany of other health-related concerns that we, being privvy (without spoilering!1) to what he has been a party to in the first season, understand as related to the stress of hiding the truth, both to himself and to the outside world. The hair loss is happening as a sub-plot, but it relates to the condition of being that Elliott finds himself thrust within: symptomatic of the guilt of being an “accessory” to a sticky situation the first season and his growing status as a public figure.
Whether he admits it to anyone else—least of all himself—Elliott’s hair concerns this season are a direct result of his actions, and the situation in which he finds himself.
But is this a hair moment?
Another example.
I’ve been rewatching Sex and the City noting every hair moment that comes up within the show. There are many.
Some small, like in Season 2 Episode 8—“The Man, The Myth, The Viagra”—when Carrie makes a “huge” request of Big: “I want you to know my friends better,” she says, perched on a stool at Big’s kitchen counter while he cooks for her. “I know your friends fine,” he says, offering Carrie a taste of something. “Charlotte is the brunette, Miranda is the red head. And Samantha is trouble.”
In this smaller hair moment, we see the patriarchal move to categorize women according to their hair phenotypes, as though being “blonde” or “brunette” relates directly to some quality of personality. I won’t pretend that there aren’t stereotypes around this plastic categorizing of women. Obviously, the idea of being “a blonde” is something that the Barbie movie, and Ken in particular, seizes on.
And yet, some hair moments in SATC speak to even larger themes, larger concepts of femininity, of hair maintenance, and the pressure to perform one’s body. Which, in this show, means performing one’s body mostly for men.
In Season 2 Episode 6, for example,—”The Cheating Curve”—Samantha sleeps with her trainer from the gym. When they’re in the shower together she says “If I had known we were going to do this, I would have shaved my legs!” “Don’t worry,” he replies, “I’ll shave them for you.” The shaving is overtly sensual, and as the razor crests her knee, he looks up at her and says “Are you a dirty girl?” Carrie’s voiceover kicks in at this point “..and then, to Samantha’s surprise and delight, Thor just kept on shaving.”
We learn later that Thor shaved Samantha’s pubic hair into his signature shape: a lightning bolt.
At the diner later on, Samantha wonders out loud what it is these days about “men wanting to shave your pubic hair.” True to character, Miranda suggests that men just want a “little girl.” Samantha laments. “You can’t just let it grow wild anymore,” she says. “These days, [your pubic hair] says as much about you as your shoes!”
Later in the episode, Samantha makes an unpleasant discovery. She realizes Thor has been sleeping with lots of other women at the gym when she sees a hairy lightning bolt that matches her own in the locker room.
And in the category of hair moments I truly question, I couldn’t help but wonder: can we consider the mere existence of Garth Brooks’ alter-ego Chris Gaines a hair moment just because we all know it’s just Garth Brooks in a wig?
I’m gonna go ahead and say yes. The steady state soul patch is a masterful touch.
What’s the statute of limitations on spoilers?