About the book: 2020 / Hair is perhaps the most striking example of the dual position of the body in culture: it is biological matter with certain physical properties, but at the same time social attribute, the most important part of a person’s identity. Susan Vincent explores the complex interweaving of meanings associated with this part of the human body, traces the universal foundations and specific techniques of hair care in Western culture of the 17th–20th centuries, the formation and transformation of professions related to this subject, political aspects of hairstyles and the overpowering power of social norms in relation to appearance. Susan J. Vincent is a cultural historian and research fellow at the Center for Renaissance and Early Modernism at the University of York..