Instagram story viewer> @sunsetandecho> Tagged

Sarah Mesle

@sunsetandecho

1.8K

followers

2478

following

USC, Avidly, usually muttering. Preorder "Tangled" @beaconpress! “Reasons and Feelings: Writing for the Humanities Now” @uchicagopress #hairstudies

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

White women and their hair. In TANGLED, writer Sarah Mesle unpacks white hair as a potent emblem of the “all-American” woman–and as a meticulously fashioned weapon of racism and classism. Sarah will be joined by Heather Radke. Followed by a book signing. Thursday at 6PM, in-store, tickets still available! Link in bio for tickets. #tangled #downtowevanston @downtownevanston @evanstonroundtable @radhradke @sunsetandecho

42

1

Today at First Sentence Fridays: @lauren_f_klein on her new book from @mitpress, Data By Design! Read about Lauren's book and writing process at Avidly.org. First Sentence Fridays celebrates the prose and process of new books. To pitch your book, email @sunsetandecho at sarahmesle at gmail.com!

49

2

Today at Avidly.org--First Sentence Friday, with @solidgoldmacher. Order her new memoir Terms & Conditions now!
First Sentence Fridays celebrates the prose and process of new books. To pitch, email @sunsetandecho at sarahmesle at gmail.com

29

0

Today at Avidly.org: First Sentence Fridays, with @chris.freeburg . Read about the first sentence of Chris's new book from @yalebooks : "What is soul?" With a special cafe shoutout to @avionicsfmc. First Sentence Fridays celebrates the prose and process of new books— email @sunsetandecho at sarahmesle at gmail.com for inquiries!!

69

4

Today at First Sentence Friday: @bri_tt_rusert , on her new book from @dukeuniversitypress , The Afric-American Picture Gallery! Preorder now, and read more at avidly.org! If you have a forthcoming book that might be a good fit for FSF, email @sunsetandecho at sarahmesle at gmail. Next Week at Avidly: @chris.freeburg on the first sentence of "Soul: A Brief History of Black Cultural Life"

59

2

Come one, come all! We’re at @neibabooks, y’all! Take a gander at what we brought to our booth this year, New England booksellers!

#NEIBA2026 #BeaconOnTheMove #BookConference

98

4

10

0

Tangled: Seven Iconinc Moments in White Women's Hair And What They Tell Us About Power, Pleasure, and Complicity – starting this one now.

"...What I'm after is a record of recent American whiteness, told through white women's hair."

"Spending a lot of time or money or emotional energy on our hair ... can be interpreted, even by other women, as a sign that we're not serious people. But the misogyny white women face serves a complex purpose. Misogyny may keep white women below a white man. But the presence of misogyny works like a filter allowing white women to blind ourselves to our own racialized power. Assuming that our hair feelings have only to do with our trivialized femininity, we avoid recognizing how those feelings intersect with our privileged racial position. We use the real misogyny we face as an alibi for the racialized power we enact."

"But if hair is a racial sign, it is ALWAYS a racial sign...Black women's hair could signifiy Black Power only because white women's hair had always, whether overtly or evasively, been signalling white power. Reading deeply in the history of American culture shows that there has never been a moment when women's hair hasn't mattered to the ongoingly contentious question of what whiteness is, and, relatedly, what Americanness itself should look like. Interpreted as merely aesthetic, dismissed as a matter of popular fashion, white women's hair decisions have largely escaped the attention that other vehicles of white power have received."

I’ve read a lot about race and power through the lens of hair, but nothing focused on white women’s recent hair history - I’m in.
#SarahMesle #Tangled #BecaonPress

11

0

It's First Sentence Friday! Today featuring @sampintotoo and Inside the Body of Black Feminism, from @dukeuniversitypress

If you have a forthcoming book and wonder if it would be a good fit for FSF, email sarahmesle at gmail to discuss!

32

2

48

8

Today at Avidly: A First Sentence Friday featuring @ericwertheimer 's new book of poetry, The Lay Down Yard, from BlazeVox Press. Read and subscribe/follow to learn about new posts! If you have a new book coming out, let us know. Submission details at avidly.org, or email @sunsetandecho

27

1

In a fit of rage at what I perceived as the egregious mistreatment of my favorite character, I refused to participate in the tv phenomenon of GAME OF THRONES. Catelyn Stark–whose final thoughts, it must be said, are of her hair–was a matriarch done dirty by tv writers who preferred their women sexier, bitchier, and in a lot more peril. That did not prevent me from religiously logging on to LARB each week to read Sarah Mesle’s brilliant reviews, which often delved into the ‘hair studies’ on which she has now, officially, written the book. Mesle was absolutely transcendent in her readings of Daenerys’s braids, Cersei’s gleaming then shorn golden locks, and Sansa’s aspirational red tresses. That work, paired with her academic training as a specialist in 19th-century American literature, comes to glorious fruition in TANGLED. Over 7 delicious chapters, Mesle takes a tour of the past half-century of white women’s hair. Hair, she argues, has always been a nexus of gendered and racialized power, shot through with intimacy and performance, tangled up in violence and desire. ⁠
⁠
Every page of TANGLED is rich and rewarding, simultaneously readable and dense with historical context and critical inquiry. Self-serious readers (of the male academic variety) might bristle at the thought of Michel Foucault and Angela Davis sharing the page with Julia Roberts and JoJo Siwa, but Mesle asserts that they are part of the same conversation about the ways we discipline, punish, and ponytail, to borrow her magnificent phrase. I could read Mesle’s thoughts on the deceptive ‘naturalness’ of white women’s hair and its ability to wield the violent power of white supremacy under the guise of innocent femininity ALL DAY, and I frequently found myself rereading entire chapters of this book because the readings were so tight. (Seriously: Mesle offers a gloss of BallerinaFarm’s ponytail that was so razor sharp I had to pull my car to the side of the road to re-listen.) Mesle untangles the various sociopolitical accretions of white women’s hair with a deft hand: TANGLED is exactly the kind of cultural and political critique that can be read in the classroom, for book club, or by the pool.

99

4