The Politics of Pigtails and Pompadours: Chinese Hair Imports in Turn-of-the-Century Popular American Periodicals

Abstract

This article examines Chinese hair imports in the text and imagery of popular American newspapers and magazines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, overlapping the first federal restrictions on Chinese immigration. As Sinophobia swept across the country, hundreds of editorials and illustrated news items on "artificial" hair from China circulated nationwide in such publications as the New York Times, San Francisco Call, and Cosmopolitan. Chinese hair imports were essential to building the age's signature pompadour hairstyle popularized by the iconic Gibson Girl, an early version of the New Woman linked to fantasies of the white American nation-state and national boundaries. At the same time, however, the Gibson Girl phenomenon pivoted on participation in mass consumerism, and a reliable supplement of hair via imports from China. During the era, media sensationalism surrounding the pompadour's incorporation of Chinese tresses, especially male "pigtails," spawned questions and anxieties around domesticity and consumption, national belonging and exclusion. Exploring the verbal and visual discourses of Chinese hair imports and pertinent hairstyles in early popular American periodicals, this article uses feminist theories, critical race feminisms, fashion and beauty theories, and Asian American studies to broaden critical insights into gendered and racialized traditions of exclusion.