"Field Notes on Hair"

“Field Notes on Hair”

By: Vicki Weiqi Yang

"Beauty vs. Brains"
It's always been a subject of debate for women everywhere, but what is more important,
brains or beauty? Many millennials will argue now that brains are much more attractive,
but many women who are older argue that beauty is the most important thing a girl should
have to worry about. Is it the generation gap?
(Picture provided by: grokshockstudios.com)

Vicki Weiqi Yang is a fourth-year political science major at the University of Chicago, and plainchina.bennington.edu mentions that some of her research interests include: urban innovation, structures of governance, and the geopolitics of East Asia. The story of her stroke and how she dealt with it was featured in the 2013 edition of The Best American Essays. Her essay is titled “Field Notes on Hair” and it introduces us to the author after she experienced a stroke at a very young age. Although the author jokes about her condition throughout her story, the experience was very traumatic and it left a scar that may never fade away. After her stroke, she began to have very vivid dreams of everybody leaving and they happened to leave her books behind. Strangers started to take the books and then her dream got very violent as she began to attack the strangers taking her books. It was after that she realized her biggest fear during her stereotactic radiosurgery would not be the loss of her hair, but instead the loss of her intellect.

Vicki made it clear many times that intellect was far more important to her than looks, and it was the main point of her story. The purpose of her recalling her traumatic stroke and the healing process was to teach young girls that looks aren’t everything, and we should be focused on the knowledge that we have and can retain. Vicki Weiqi Yang wanted to show the generation gap between her and her mother, and how opinions between the two are very different. This was the context and she just wanted to show young girls that it’s okay to care about your looks, but what’s inside your brain is what really matters. Our generation, the millennials, were targeted in this story and with Vicki vividly describing her dreams and thoughts, she truly got her point across. I believe she did accomplish her purpose because she’s helping our generation feel empowered by telling us that we are much more than a couple of pretty faces, and instead we are smart individuals who are capable of doing much more with our education and intellect.