Hair Politics: Understanding body politics through Dominican women's hair choices

This thesis is an ethnographic exploration of Dominican women’s hair choices. My ethnography makes use of beauty, the body, and hair to understand the hair culture on the island. I have spent three months in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic and visited traditional and curly hair salons to create a real-life image of why and how women wear their hair the way they wear it. Class, race, dominating beauty ideals all influence how Dominican women perceive themselves, and per extension their hair as beautiful. The curly hair boom, mostly promulgated through the growing use of social media has started a hairy revolution, destabilising the tradition of the Dominican blowout, for which the Dominican salon is so known for. While curly hair and straightened hair paradoxically, and fluently coexist in the Dominican Republic, the tensions of spending money on hair care continue to persist for both hair practices. This thesis offers a fluid perspective of women’s body choices, by addressing...Show moreThis thesis is an ethnographic exploration of Dominican women’s hair choices. My ethnography makes use of beauty, the body, and hair to understand the hair culture on the island. I have spent three months in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic and visited traditional and curly hair salons to create a real-life image of why and how women wear their hair the way they wear it. Class, race, dominating beauty ideals all influence how Dominican women perceive themselves, and per extension their hair as beautiful. The curly hair boom, mostly promulgated through the growing use of social media has started a hairy revolution, destabilising the tradition of the Dominican blowout, for which the Dominican salon is so known for. While curly hair and straightened hair paradoxically, and fluently coexist in the Dominican Republic, the tensions of spending money on hair care continue to persist for both hair practices. This thesis offers a fluid perspective of women’s body choices, by addressing the agentic, oppressive and liberating aspects of Dominican women’s hair practices.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

Hair Politics: Understanding body politics through Dominican women's hair choices