ABSTRACT
In postmodernity, it is claimed, the body functions as a manufactured object that can be read as a text, the displayed signs by which we perceive the character and status of another. Biography becomes a reflexive project in which choices over consumption and lifestyle are indicative of identity, an identity which is in flux and open to a self-conscious re-formulation. Here I argue that hairstyling, along with clothes, diets, cosmetic surgery and so on, can shape the malleable body, transforming discourse into commodity, a ‘fictive’ but knowing portrayal of self. While it has become commonplace to suggest that bodies are organised by a variety of discourses and that we reflexively negotiate a route through them, the discursive repositioning of self via hair symbolism is less frequently theorised.1 Yet the hair business is an important sphere of modern consumption, and a space in which identity can be inscribed onto the body – an arena for both the production and consumption of an aesthetically pleasing self. Furthermore, from there being a handful of hair salons at the beginning of the century, the hair business is a twentieth-century success story, a newly established and thriving multi-million dollar industry that, I argue here, has been transformed by women’s consumption.2
