Hairstyles

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Tina Gianoulis

Human beings have styled and adorned their hair since the beginning of recorded history. This styling has different and often contradictory purposes. As an intrinsic, yet malleable part of the body, the hair and its styling can serve as an intimate form of self-expression. Yet hair is also a public and very visible part of personal presentation, and, as such, hairstyle becomes a public, even a political statement. As part of the physical body, hair has a role in sexuality, and it is often one of the first things noticed in a prospective sexual partner. Hair is also a major component of fashion, the way that society dictates its members should look. Because of its many interpretations, hairstyle can serve as a medium of conformity or rebellion, it can lure or rebuff prospective mates, and it can be a constant source of frustrating labor for the individual who cannot get it to behave.

Though hairstyles have constantly changed, and those changes have often been seen as radical innovations, most styles have come and gone many times. The straight hairstyle that has become popular for women in the late 1990s and was de rigueur in the late 1960s and early 1970s is basically the same style that was considered appropriate for unmarried girls in medieval Europe. Though hairstyles are constantly changing, there are usually strictly enforced cultural norms, beyond which it is forbidden to deviate. These norms are enforced by rules in schools and on the job as well as by social pressure.

Throughout history, hair has been shaped and decorated to announce its wearer's place in society. In ancient Egypt, nobility was denoted by a bald, shaved head which was then covered by thick, black wigs made of wool, palm fibers, or human hair, braided and decorated. Ancient Romans made marble wigs for their statues in order to update them as hairstyles changed. They changed often, according to one Roman writer: "It would be easier to count the acorns on an oak tree ... than to count the number of new hairstyles that appear every day."

In fifteenth-century Europe, a high forehead was prized, and Elizabethan women plucked their hair out to the very tops of their heads. Queen Elizabeth herself had more than eighty red wigs to make sure that her hairstyle was always in perfect condition. Louis XIV brought wigs into fashion in early eighteenth-century France when he wore them to conceal his balding head. In the late 1700s, Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, led French fashion with the elaborate hairstyle that was named for her. Women of the day wore flowers, feathers, jewels, and even model ships in hair that was piled high and held in place with beef fat. This pomade often attracted insects, and folklore of bugs and even mice living in the depths of elaborately styled hair persisted right up to the beehives of the 1950s.

Up until World War I, respectable American women wore their hair primly up on their heads, but by the 1920s, women were entering a freer era, as documented in F. Scott Fitzgerald's story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair." Men often express a preference for long, flowing hair on women, and a by-product of both twentieth-century waves of feminism has been the popularity of short hairstyles, announcing a new independence from men. The short bobs of the Roaring Twenties were appropriate for the breezy informality of the times as well as being a sort of feminist statement, freeing suffragists and their sisters from the time-consuming triviality of hair care.

The 1930s and 1940s marked a return to glamour, with cascading tresses. These were reined in somewhat during World War II by a severe, all-business style that reflected women's role working on the home front. In the 1950s and early 1960s, big hair was back, with beehives and stiffly lacquered curls. Many women teased their hair to get the desired volume or wore "rats," balls of hair or netting that were placed underneath to increase hair height. As the hippie counterculture rose at the end of the 1960s, the natural look came into vogue, and women who had once tortured their hair into tight curls began to iron it or roll it on beer cans and toilet paper rolls to achieve the lank straightness prized both on fashion runways and at university sit-ins. Men, too, began to wear their hair long in the late 1960s, and long, straight hair became a symbol of the youthful culture of protest and revolution. The Broadway musical that claimed to define the generation was called, simply, Hair.

With the punk movement of the 1980s, hair fashion exploded beyond any modern precedent. Expressing the nihilistic angst of youth rebelling against complacency, punks made themselves look freakishly dramatic. Both women and men dyed their hair bright blues, purples, and oranges, using gel or dramatic cuts to create sculpted spikes of hair. Some wore their hair in "mohawks," imitating the traditional hairstyle of an American Indian tribe who shaved the sides of the scalp, leaving a sheaf of hair standing in the middle. Though conservative society despaired, the punk rockers did much to liberate the boundaries of fashion.