Power, Pleasure, and White Women’s Hair with Sarah Mesle

Only a small percentage of women are naturally blonde, yet blonde hair has become one of the most powerful symbols of beauty and privilege in American culture. This week, Christiana sits down with Sarah Mesle, USC professor and author of Tangled: Seven Iconic Moments in White Women's Hair and What They Tell Us About Power, Pleasure, and Complicity, to examine the cultural politics of white women’s hair. Through stories of blonde privilege, Britney Spears, and Princess Diana, Sarah explains how hair reveals the complicated relationship between beauty, identity, and power. Sarah’s website: https://sarahmesle.com/ Follow Sarah: Instagram Follow Pop Syllabus: YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Substack Merch available now! Sponsor Pop Syllabus: advertise@companionarts.com If there’s a topic you’d like us to deconstruct, tell us in the comments. Email: hello@popsyllabus.com 1:26 Meet Sarah 1:47 Hair and white feminine power 3:50 Sarah’s interest in hair 5:08 White visual performances and whiteness as a currency 8:50 January 6th uprising 10:40 Partisan aesthetics 13:50 Princess Diana and women with short hair 18:43 Blonde hair 20:58 JoJo Siwa 21:33 Maternal love and white resource hoarding 22:40 White mothers giving their daughters elaborate hair styles 25:00 Blonde privilege and the value of the currency of whiteness 27:47 How Black women are treated depending on their hair styles 29:30 Class and white women’s fear of “trashiness” 32:40 Relationship between white women’s hair and thighs 33:30 Thin hair 35:17 Long hair and the women surrounding Trump 36:06 Picking white women to focus on in “Tangled” 40:32 Britney Spears 45:50 Complicating the idea that there are victims and villains 47:00 Cruel optimism 48:10 Gwyneth Paltrow 51:00 Opting out and diverging from the norm 54:30 The game is rigged 55:20 What’s next? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices