Recently rewatching Jeff Stilson and Chris Rock's Good Hair (2009) reminded me to post about changing -- and enduring -- hair styles. First, a shoutout via Good Hair to Joe Dudley and Dudley Products, Inc., of Greensboro, North Carolina. Second, a salute to Angela Davis for helping make the Afro and "natural hair" popular thorugh the 1970s (that's the cover of Angela Davis: An Autobiography, 1974, above).
Hair says a lot, speaks volumes, expresses either freedom or its opposite. Trends come and go though many seem not to recognize even this simple fact. For men, one look at a powdered wig in a painting and we can fix the approximate time frame. Beards in North America indicate the prevailing fashions of somewhere between the 1860s and 1880s, or again (starting as insurgent, then becoming more "tolerated" by the mainstream) between the 1960s and the present. Moustaches are more likely to fit with the 1840s and 1850s, around the time of the Great War and 1920s, and then peppered onward from the 1970s to the present.
For men and women, large afros indicate initially a 1960s and 1970s mission statement, then sporadically they persist through the present, but usually in shorter more "moderate" form. Short straight hair and preppy outifts in the USA have been the typical mainstream Republican uniform for men since the 1960s (even shorter hair before that); for women, specially coiffed blownout hair with many red outfits (usually pantsuits) seems to be the Republican norm for women. Democrats and Independents seem more eclectic regarding hair style and sartorial choices, harder to gauge except they are not Republicans.
And then there are hats and sideburns, wigs, weaves and colors. This could go on for quite a little while.
Do you have favorite type hairstyles? I still favor sideburns. As I post, my hair is cut short but no one would ever confuse me for a Republican, mainstream or otherwise, now, before -- or ever.
Today's Rune: Opening.
3 comments:
I've noticed some of those trends you mention. This could make for an interesting work, on group hairstyles. I don't notice hair a lot, almost never on men unless it's long. I notice it on women, but haven't extracted any trends really, although many women seem to get their cut short as they get older.
Erik, I just saw "Good Hair" too, and got quite a kick out of it. I used to have long, thick(er), naturally curly hair till some evil medication thinned and straightened it out. Sigh.
Thanks for the comments! Here's to having hair -- any hair -- unless one prefers not to . . .
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