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A review by panda_incognito
Me, My Hair, and I: Twenty-Seven Women Untangle an Obsession by Elizabeth Benedict
3.0
Hair has never been a special interest of mine, but this essay compilation caught my eye at the library with its beautiful cover and quirky concept. From glances inside, I could see that the prose was excellent all throughout, so I decided to give it a try. Many women had interesting stories to share about the way hair affected and framed their life circumstances and journeys, and I enjoyed the anecdotes and philosophical musings, but even though each essay was unique and personal in the moment of reading it, now that I am finished with the book, most of them blur together because they dealt with such similar themes and circumstances.
There was a mix of diverse writers, so I learned new things about other's religious traditions and cultural backgrounds, but the age and economic similarities between the authors got tiring. Because they are mostly from the same generation, they had similar cultural influences and hair experiences, and now they have many of the same thoughts about hair, family, maturity, and identity. I would have appreciated the inclusion of some younger writers still figuring out their hair and themselves. Also, these were the voices of people well-off enough to spend a lot of money on styling and products. There's no shame in financial security, but it got awfully tiresome to read recitals of which fancy salons these women frequented and what hairstyles they got there over the course of years.
The most interesting essays dealt with universal human feelings in the context of the woman's individual experience, while those which fixated only on the writer's hair and circumstances got tiresome quickly and meshed in memory with the other boring ones. I can't tell you how many essays I read about women with frizzy brown hair who had to learn how to tame it and accept themselves. Were there three? Eleven? It felt like more than half the book. Even though the frizzy brown hair essays included interesting anecdotes or thoughts, the focal point was what the hair was like, and I hardly remember those stories now. Also exhausting was the sheer number of women who had hair expectations imposed on them by culture, religion, or their mother and found themselves by detaching their sense of self from that culture, religion, or mother. All of the stories were unique in some way, but I think this book would have been more enjoyable in a shorter, more selective form without so much theme repetition.
There was a mix of diverse writers, so I learned new things about other's religious traditions and cultural backgrounds, but the age and economic similarities between the authors got tiring. Because they are mostly from the same generation, they had similar cultural influences and hair experiences, and now they have many of the same thoughts about hair, family, maturity, and identity. I would have appreciated the inclusion of some younger writers still figuring out their hair and themselves. Also, these were the voices of people well-off enough to spend a lot of money on styling and products. There's no shame in financial security, but it got awfully tiresome to read recitals of which fancy salons these women frequented and what hairstyles they got there over the course of years.
The most interesting essays dealt with universal human feelings in the context of the woman's individual experience, while those which fixated only on the writer's hair and circumstances got tiresome quickly and meshed in memory with the other boring ones. I can't tell you how many essays I read about women with frizzy brown hair who had to learn how to tame it and accept themselves. Were there three? Eleven? It felt like more than half the book. Even though the frizzy brown hair essays included interesting anecdotes or thoughts, the focal point was what the hair was like, and I hardly remember those stories now. Also exhausting was the sheer number of women who had hair expectations imposed on them by culture, religion, or their mother and found themselves by detaching their sense of self from that culture, religion, or mother. All of the stories were unique in some way, but I think this book would have been more enjoyable in a shorter, more selective form without so much theme repetition.