Dreamers practice models, I argue here, that in daytime serve as efficacious ways of acting in a cultural world but that also incorporate socioeconomic hierarchies that may be disadvantageous for the dreamer. Melding personal experience with models represented as images, dreamers conceptualize these disadvantages and pursue remedies for them. I explore these ideas through the dream of a US undergraduate (Marlene) about hair. Hair is the target of an anthropological debate about putatively universal symbols and cultural messages, which this paper will address. In Marlene’s dream, hair symbolizes what I call a US Cinderella model for being a woman — a model that embeds a gender hierarchy within Marlene’s identity. Marlene’s dream, however, reconfigures her identity and this model along with it.
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