how strict was it when you were "our age"?
Printed From: HairBoutique.com
Category: Hair Talk
Forum Name: Senior Strands
Forum Description: Tips & techniques
URL: https://talk.hairboutique.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=28184
Printed Date: April 19 2024 at 8:31am
Topic: how strict was it when you were "our age"?
Posted By: duke
Subject: how strict was it when you were "our age"?
Date Posted: September 10 2003 at 10:00am
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Hi, there, senior friends. I am almost 24, so I am not nearly old enough to be a senior citizen...or to remember what it was like in much of the 20th century. As those of you who visit the other hair talk boards may know, I have posted on many discussions which discuss whether or not a certain way of wearing your hair is "acceptable" or not - paticularly discussions about men having long hair. I know that during much of the 20th century - the years when you seniors were growing up and young, when people were MUCH stricter about how you could and couldn't look. So I was wondering if some of you could share memories, so that I may get a picture of what it was like. In particular, can you answer some of the following about the period from the 1920s to the 1950s: -why was it such a no-no for men to have long hair? I wouldn't call Elvis and the Beatles' hair long, not really, but back then, it was considered so and many people would have preferred to see them all in crewcuts!!! Was a man with long hair (if that even existed - practically the only one I can think of from that time was Albert Einstein, who was eccentric (and aren't professors sometimes tolerated in this respect  ?). A man seems by definition to have HAD to have short hair. What do you think people would have said back then if a professional man grew his hair a bit - called him gay? A slob? Effeminate? -What did barbers use before electric clippers to taper hair? Did they ever just do it with scissors? -Women, at least urban women seem to have normally styled their hair a lot, and to have rarely worn it really long (except maybe in Europe?) after the mass-bobbing of the 1920s (it got longer in the '30s but not always that much). Was this just fashion, or was it a matter of being socially acceptable like with men having to have short hair. To explain the point better, if a woman from the 1930s to the 1950s wore her hair truly long, and unstyled (or at least not curled/permed but in a bun or something), would it just be unfashionable, or would people say she was dirty/unkempt, ostracize her etc? I think there were more such women (eg. Virginia Woolf, I think,) than men with longish/long hair. -Was shaving one's head socially acceptable? -Finally, what precisely was the status of having a full beard? In pictures from World War I to the 1960s, men almost always shave, except for some old men, other than the odd mustache or sideburns. Was this again fashion or a real social issue? Could a businessman in the 1930s or 40s have a beard or would it be considered dirty, strange etc? I know it was associated with communism, because of bearded Russians - (duhh!) What do y'all remember? I'm curious. |