This open access book adopts a cultural sociology of materiality to explore the hallmark of the female athlete: the ponytail. Studying a wealth of news articles about ponytails in sports and society, Broch uncovers this hairstyle's polyvocality and argues that it is a total social phenomenon. By separating his approach from the cultural studies tradition, Broch highlights how hair is imbued with codes, narratives, and myth that allow its wearers to understand, maneuver, and criticize social gender relations in deeply personal ways. Using multiple theories about hair, bodies, myths, and icons, he creates a multidimensional method to show how icons are imitated and used. As women navigate their practical lives, health issues, and gendered expectations, the ponytail materializes their dynamic maneuvering of cultural and social environments. Sporting a ponytailitself an embodiment of movementis filled with a performativity of social movements: a cultural kinetics that is never apolitical.

Combines sociology, anthropology, and emotion-oriented theories in a meaning-centered study of the ponytail Draws upon print media over the past 80 years to hermeneutically reconstruct gendered codes and the meaning of ponytails Draws upon Durkheim's realist notion, Durkheim's Elementary Forms, and cultural sociology of performance and iconicity This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access

Autorentext

Trygve B. Broch is an Associate Professor at the Department of Public Health and Sport Sciences, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway. He is also author of A Performative Feel for the Game (Palgrave) and a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University, USA.

Inhalt

1. Imagining the ponytail.- 2. Object.- 3. Expectations.- 4. Health.- 5. Practicalities.- 6. Movements.- 7. Experience .- 8. Charge.