Object

Abstract

AbstractAnalogies are elementary forms of meaning-making. In this chapter, I explore how the ponytail hairdo is imbued with meanings as we ascribe animal traits to people and human characteristics to animals to create “objective” or “natural” realities. The cultural creation of the natural through analogies, resemblances, and inductive reasoning makes symbolic work disappear from aesthetic surfaces, yet survive in an invisible cultural depth, reappearing in Freudian slippages and affective snippets of text. I show how meaning moves through the sensual materiality of the ponytail, and this aesthetic surface awakens a cultural depth to mediate social relations. The ponytail—or horsetail, as it is called in Norwegian—exudes kinetic energy that is recaptured on the catwalks of global fashion capitals. Like a horse’s tail provides balance for the animal, the ponytail balances the wearer’s stride and allows a feeling of movement, being moved and passionately moving others. The ponytail moves to move us.