So long as your hair looks good

Celebrity examples
Famous national and international personalities have a big influence on the hairstyles that boys and men choose. Ex-footballer David Beckham (Leytonstone, 1975), for instance, has been creating new trends for years. His constantly changing hairstyle inspired all sorts of young people. Today’s crop of football stars aren’t afraid to try out different hairstyles, either. One player takes to the field with the sides of his head shaved and the hair on top bleached or dyed a bright colour, while another is praised for a style with multiple tight partings or razored-in designs.

Women tend to look less to athletes for their hairstyles and more to other celebrities such as influencers, actors and singers. They might be keen to have the same lush locks as Beyonce, Kim Kardashian or Kendall Jenner.

Rebelling
Although your hairstyle can be a way of keeping up with fashion, it is also an opportunity to show your rejection of society or your parents’ authority. For decades, young people have adopted different clothes and hairstyles to rebel against the older generation. The ‘Nozems’ – a rebellious Dutch youth subculture in the 1950s similar to American ‘Greasers’ and British ‘Teddy Boys’ – were a good example. According to their elders, these kids just hung around aimlessly. Dressed in macho leather jackets and jeans and with attention-seeking greased-up quiffs, they deliberately set themselves apart from their conventionally dressed dads, who wore proper suits and kept their hair short.

Parents and teachers strongly disapproved of the Nozems’ choice of clothes and hairstyle, which they viewed as being deliberately ‘difficult’. They had always been taught that the only way to succeed in life was to work hard, do your best and show your best side. Weird clothes and greasy quiffs definitely did not fit that image. The open disapproval of parents and teachers did nothing, however, to discourage alternative hairstyles and clothing. In reality, the Nozems and their international equivalents were merely the vanguard for the tumultuous rise of rebellious youngsters. Hippies with their exotic clothes and wild hair, punks with their ripped clothes and brightly dyed Mohican hairstyles were still to come.

Men’s hairstyles in the 17th century
But the Nozems were by no means the first to create a stir. Particular hairstyles caused a commotion even earlier in history too. In the 17th century, for instance, long hair came into fashion for men. This was unusual as it had previously been considered inappropriate. Protestant pastors loudly denounced the style, urging gentlemen to cut off their ‘wild hair’. In their view, a hairstyle was supposed to be an outward indicator of the difference between men and women: females should have long hair, males short. So a man with long hair was unnatural, monstrous even. Men evidently took little notice of such sermons, though, as they are frequently shown with long hair in portraits from the period. It seems they placed greater importance on the latest fashions than on anything a preacher might have to say on the subject.

Women’s hairstyles in the 20th century
If 17th-century men grew their hair long, women in the 1920s opted to cut it short. This had a great deal to do with the end of the First World War, when women were eager to liberate themselves from all manner of restrictions and wanted to drive, smoke and, yes, to cut their hair short! Suddenly, women had ‘boyish’ hairstyles. Although we shouldn’t take that too literally: their hair might have been shockingly short for the time, but it was still longer than men’s. And because women wore luxurious, feminine pins and bands in their short hairdos, the difference between men and women was still obvious.

Over four decades later – in the 1960s and 70s – by contrast, the difference between men’s and women’s hairstyles did indeed become less apparent. ‘Unisex’ styles came into fashion for the first time in that period. One well-known example was the ‘urchin cut’, a hairstyle with very short tufts that originated in the army. But it wasn’t just soldiers who had their hair cut this way, schoolboys and women went for it too.

Wigs
And you’d be wrong to think that hairstyles only consisted of actual hair. Back in the 18th century, for example, wigs were an indispensable fashion item for the well-to-do. Hair fashions changed regularly in this period: one minute the man-about-town preferred two horizontal rolls of hair above the ear, the next minute, three or more rolls were de rigueur. The length of the pigtail and the shape of the bow tied in their hair were further important additions to these sophisticated hairstyles.

And the well-to-do ladies of that time weren’t going to be outdone by the men in the hair stakes either. Fashion prints from the period feature some remarkable-looking models of wig. Ladies wore immensely high wigs, for instance, with all sorts of decorations: besides strings of pearls and jewels, they even incorporated model ships and baskets of flowers in their hairpieces. How they managed to balance such contraptions on their head remains a mystery.

People still wear wigs today. Around Carnival time and Halloween, they break out the coloured hairpieces from the dressing-up box. And wigs also offer a solution, of course, to people who are entirely or partially bald due to illness or medical treatment.

So long as your hair looks good
Professional footballers, Kim Kardashian, 17th-century men, women from the 1920s and the people from the ‘Age of Wigs’: at first sight, you might not think they have a lot in common, but you’d be wrong. What they all share is the importance they place (or placed) on their hairstyles. because so long as your hair looks good…