This week, I was invited by someone on the internet to imagine what it was like to BE Cher in the 1970s. As I watched the video of patched performances in colorful glittering outfits, I realized that to imagine what it was like to be Cher in the 1970s was to imagine having long and shiny, thick black hair.
It instantly reminded me of one of my favorite hair icons, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, or Empress “Sisi,” who was born 1834 in Munich, Germany and assassinated in 1898 with a needle to the heart on a trip to Geneva, Switzerland. Empress Sisi became the empress of Austria—and later Austria-Hungary—when she married Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria in 1854, a member of the house of Habsburg.
You may have noticed that I skipped a week here. For whatever reason, I couldn’t get my head on straight about how I felt about long hair, and which threads I wanted to pull around it. How to balance hair’s power with the weight of that power. How to parse the difference between long hair and big hair, in my view two very different hair forms with different ways of taking up space in the world.
I came up against how we approach defining “muchness” or “excess” in relation to hair, and how tangled those narratives are historically with narratives that prop up European standards of beauty, and tired notions of “femininity.” After a while, I realized that in my habit of expanding hair’s metaphoric possibilities, I was resisting admitting that hair could itself be a limiting force. A limiting narrative of beauty, of ritual, and ultimately, of control.
What is your hair’s relationship to power? Does your hair store power in any special way?
Once again I was in the room with Empress Elisabeth of Austria, whose hair became emblematic of the prison of the mind and her royal station, and whose hair was deeply fetishized both in her own time and even still today.
Before I had any awareness of what hair would come to mean to me, I had the extraordinary chance to visit two places that Empress Elisabeth of Austria had lived. The first was during college when I got to accompany my mother on a series of life-long dream-trips across Europe. Between the shatter-crunch of daily schnitzels and the swirls of glittering decorative motif that rim magnificent Secessionist halls, we visited the Hofburg palace in Vienna, Austria.
On the tour of the palace, the “Sisi Museum,” I was enchanted by the mysterious and melancholy Rapunzel-esque figure of Empress Sisi: her entrapment and her choice to never cut her long, long hair. I remember buying a postcard of her most famous portrait and tucking it into my journal. In the portrait, her back is turned to the viewer, and her pale profile peeks out from behind a long flow of thick, wavy hair, which cascades unfettered down her back and over the luscious silks of a simple white dress.
As we toured the Imperial apartments of the palace, the Empress’ hair was the major theme of the tour. For reasons I couldn’t understand at the time beyond the sheer notability of its length and her rumored remarkable beauty, the Empress’ hair seemed to be of utmost importance to the people and legacy of Vienna itself.
The tour guide showed us through to the chamber where she would take her daily bath and where her attendants would wash and wash her hair, condition it with oils, and methodically brush it to de-tangle. Her hairdresser as an impressive and imperious figure standing always behind the Empress combing and then braiding her long, luscious hair, was a particular point.
In the bathing chamber, I recall the surprisingly stark metal tub, a galloping pattern of roses on the wallpaper and the practical linoleum flooring installed to protect the wood from incessant bathing. These breaks in the otherwise opulent chambers of the Imperial family were meant, I understood, to convey the rooted practicality and “non-fancy” nature of the Empress herself, who often lamented the time and care her hair took up in her day despite obsessively maintaining it.
As we passed from the bathing chamber into her dressing room beneath the ornate gilded scrollwork that crested every doorway, I caught my own reflection in the dusty mirrors beyond the tub. In the aged and flaking glass, rays of weak sunlight ricocheted across the dull floor. I thought: it would be easy to imagine this place as a thick-aired prison.
“Heavy,” I remember the tour guide saying. How heavy her hair was, especially when it was wet, and especially when it was balanced on top of her head in a crown-like braid for formal occasions.
After the tour, I had to lie down on a bench in the Michaelerplatz and take a nap.
Heavy is the crown.
I can’t help but think this singular character, which has inspired so much narrativizing and speculation, achieves special metaphoric resonance mainly due to her long and flowing hair, which became a symbol of her fiery character, and which eventually came to rule her life. When hair lengthens beyond its basic functioning, does its metaphor also change?
In movies and TV retellings of her life, Sisi’s hair and its length is often used as a symbol of her defiance. Her head-strong-ness. Her virility and her youth. Over time, perhaps, it grew into a prison, staking her to the palace, staking her to the forever ritual of combing and conditioning it, washing and combing it again.
I often think about how hair measures time. A record of growth. During the pandemic, one of my dear friends grew her hair and just kept growing her hair—mostly out of necessity—not going into a salon for a measure of years. Her hair was so long that by the end she described it as “too heavy.”
In a spiritual context, hair that is longer may signify a timeline of religious pilgrimage or devotion to one’s faith, or at least a measure of belief. What stories length of hair might tell. Of journeying, of seeking, of internal led to external growth and change.
But what else gathers alongside hair? What emotional or existential weight do we carry in our hair? What burdens of expectation? How does hair carry heaviness?
According to records written by Empress Sisi’s personal tutors and hairdressers, her hair required rigorous and consistent daily rituals of care. Every morning it took nearly three hours to brush and comb her hair, which was fanned out over a white lace peignoir, ultimately covering her entire body. Then her hair would be braided and pinned up into her signature style of thick corded braids woven to form a loose and cascading “crown” atop her head.
The weight of this hairstyle reportedly gave her terrible headaches.
Every two weeks, her hair would be meticulously conditioned with a mixture of cognac and fresh eggs to keep it shiny, strong and healthy. And then, my favorite part, any hairs that fell out during her rigorous daily haircare would then have to be presented to the Empress in a ceremonial silver bowl for inspection.
While she had her hair done, Sisi would learn languages. Fluent in French and English in addition to her native German and, later in life, Hungarian (she was instrumental in brokering the unification of Austria-Hungary and was rumored to have taken the Hungarian Prime Minister as a lover). Eventually, the Empress also endeavored to learn Greek. During one of their sessions, her Greek tutor reported her saying,
…while my hair is busy, my mind stays idle. I am afraid that my mind escapes through the hair and onto the fingers of my hairdresser. Hence my headache afterwards.
An unhappy marriage and restless nature gave way to many bouts of ill-health. Throughout her reign, Sisi was sent to various far-flung places to recuperate from the stresses of life in the public eye. Many suspected that her frequent traveling masked a desire to escape the courtly duties of life in Austria, where nearly every decision was snatched from her, including the rearing of her own children, including the nature of her conversations, and the degree to which she was allowed to participate in matters of the state.
Empress Sisi studied widely subjects ranging from philosophy to political theory. She was an enthusiastic reader of poetry, and wrote her own, words that hover above the page like mist, missives of remembrance and longing. I wonder how much of her sadness got caught up in her web of hair, and whether it was really grief that she held onto, daily and fruitlessly combing it out, attempting to make sense of her life—making of it instead a chosen prison.
On a health trip to the Greek island of Corfu, Empress Sisi found a place she might land for a while. She built a mansion there in 1867 and it became her haven.
The Achilleion Palace is built on a stark cliffside overlooking the glittering sea. inspired by the Greek gods and designed in a neoclassical style, the palace rises up among the wind-shifted palms. The peace is occasionally interrupted by the unsettling squawk of peacocks, which roam the grounds freely. She once reportedly said that if she ever felt that she had landed in a place that she could not escape, she would immediately begin to hate it there. I wince at the available metaphor of flightless birds.
It is said that Empress Sisi did not allow her portrait to be painted or taken after the age of 30. She wished to freeze her image in eternal youthfulness. For all of hair’s utility as a record, sometimes hair obliterates and hides. Even Sisi would not want to be remembered.
As I re-roam my own memory palace of the light-filled halls of the Palace Achilleion, a building dedicated not to a god but to a mortal hero, Achilles, I wonder if Sisi ever saw her hair as her weakness.
:: In Suz News ::
I am headed to Wassaic Project in upstate New York for my very first artist residency this week ! And ! I get to bring my family with me.
Looking forward to digging into some deep creative practice in the woods. I’ve got big plans for a bunch of fabric, some hair-related sculpture and, of course, tons of writing.
Excited to get fellow artists in residence into conversation about hair. Excited to debut my own new helmet of hair (oh, the journey). Excited to discover all the ways my brain might leak out, in Empress Sisi’s words, through my hair over the coming weeks.
Stay tuned for updates.
xo
I remember the years of brown, thick, wavy, long heavy hair hanging below my buttocks. At 5'2" that was a lot of hair. After my second baby I decided it was time for the hair to be cut shorter and it was such a relief. To my surprise, I discovered I had wavy, unruly hair and not straight as I had thought. Now in my old age with white hair I choose comfort and convenience and wear it very short and natural.
Thank you for this essay. I never thought to think of Elisabeth’s hair in that way.
I visited the palace in 1995 and became intrigued by Empress Elisabeth and bought a biography by Brigitte Hamann called “The Reluctant Empress--A Biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria”. It’s fascinating and heartbreaking. The biography is a bit controversial because the author dives into what was making Elisabeth so unhappy and ill. I highly recommend it.
At 65, when so many women my age seem to be wearing their hair short, I’m letting mine grow, to see how long it can get. It’s thin and wavy/curly, so weight isn’t a problem. I wear it up to keep it out of the way; I let it down and braid it at night for sleeping, as my great-grandmother did.