The Very Complicated History Of Women With Short Hair

Hey i'm back. My brain went catatonic after the election from sheer emotional exhaustion, so i spent the last month and a half sewing this regency outfit uh. I think it was worth it, but now i'm here to yell at you some more about something else that i've hyper fixated on. Basically, i've been spending. My time sewing some historical costuming stuff that i'm not ready to show off yet um and it dawned on me. Ah, i have short hair. I spent some time waffling around if i need to buy away or not, but then i remembered wait, people of all genders have had short hair for forever. Let'S talk about it. The way we look at people of the past is, first of all, extremely monolithic. There'S used to that because sometimes we do need to discuss topics in a way that covers the whole population, but a lot of the time. It can also erase people of history who didn't exactly fit that mold, especially when it comes to fashion, by the way, for a lot of this video i'll, be talking about women in the sense of how people in past eras would have understood the idea of womanhood There were, of course, historically people. We would now recognize, as trans women, who often did have short hair. The specific concept that i'm going to address is more centered around cis women and the idea that they all had long hair until the jazz age. So just fair warning: there may be some cis-centric and incredibly binary language used here in order to address the topic as history dealt with it. Also, this video focuses on women of western history, since that's the specific cultural stereotype that i want to address when it comes to talking about hair fashion in history. There'S this incredibly stark divide between the upper and lower classes, working women in the 18th and early 19th century didn't have the time, privilege or money to wear their hair in super elaborate styles, more than likely you wore your hair neatly pulled back and under a bonnet Or a cap, but before the late 1700s arrived you probably weren't, going to see an upperclass woman wear her hair cut short for fashion. There were, however, other reasons she might have had short hair. It was believed that cutting the hair short may relieve a fever. For instance, and at least for the upper class, wigs were all the rage this, the first general half of the 1700s is the rococo era. Everything is huge. Everything is opulent. Everything is powdered to [ __ ]. A lot of women didn't wear full wigs, but rather their own hair, mixed in and carefully crafted with hair pieces and everything gathered up around a hair wrap. The goal of this era is the complete opposite of naturalism. You wanted to have long hair that you could use for these complicated styles or at least to make a lot of curls with, and then the hair powder tax happened and wigs [ __ ] died. Well, it didn't happen overnight. A lot of the upper class were like: oh, we don't care about the cost, it's fine, it wasn't fine, they did care, they gave up the wigs. This close to the beginning of the 1800s was where naturalism started to take over people began wearing their hair, as it was the fashion shrank and emphasized the natural form. There'S a lot of cartoons from this era, making fun of the fashion from this time, especially the way that you could often see women's whole behinds under their dresses, but one other style trend does spring up. At the same time the quaffier, a la titus french people. Please don't come for me. I got c's in french class two years in a row, so i'm i'm a lost cause. The quaffiurala titus was mostly a french trend, and the titus in question is in reference to titus junius brutus, the eldest son of lucius junius brutus, who apparently founded the roman republic in 509 bc. So one explanation as to the rise of this hairstyle goes back to the play brutus written by voltaire, in which titus is sentenced to death by his father for his participation in the tarquinian conspiracy long story. Anyway. The play was resurrected during the french revolution because of its topical themes and one of the main actors had his hair cut. Like a roman bust statue quote when he appeared, the public welcomed him with several bursts of applause. Eight days later, all the young people of paris had their hair cut short and, from that evening dates the fashion of styling one's hair. A la titus, of course, like clockwork men, come out of the woodwork to make up some crap about how the cool new hairstyle is actually bad for health. They said not only was the style unfeminine, but it was also going to cause inflammation migraines conjunctivitis, dental cavities, earaches sore throats blah blah blah blah blah, with no actual explanation as to how men who have worn short hair for centuries have somehow avoided these effects. Okay, then, the complaining didn't work, however, and the quaffiur ella titus remained highly fashionable for women until around 1804 ish. The quaffirella titus is a hairstyle that both men and women adopted, but was mostly an upperclass fashion. Choice for women clothing communicated your class, so it was generally the social rule that the lower classes shouldn't dress the same way as wealthier people did both because they couldn't afford these fashions and because the stark boundaries of class society were much more powerful than than they Are today you very rarely associate across class lines and dressing in experimentally, fashionable or an elaborate manner was seen as something that rich people did. This doesn't mean that the poor only dressed in shabby clothes, though people of the lower classes, absolutely did make their own clothes and wanted to look nice and be in fashion. The silhouettes of working people's wardrobes would reflect the fashionable silhouette, but may not be always as up to date as decorated or as lavishly produced in fine materials or as diverse in terms of having as many outfits to choose from and, most importantly, quite often, people's old Clothes may be reworked or fitted to suit, whatever new fashionable style has come along, but when it comes to hair class, differences are starker than ever, because the associations, the upper class had with short hair, are absolutely not the same ones that women of lower classes did. If you've ever been exposed to les miserables in any way, if you were on tumblr from 2012 to 2014, you definitely were whether or not it was against your will. You may remember the scene where fontine is forced to sell her hair for money to support her daughter cossette in the book she says my child is no longer cold. I have clothed her with my hair for working class. Women short hair wasn't associated with radical fashion. It was associated with the incredible pain of poverty and of having to give up your beauty out of desperation. It was also, as i said before often the case, with women who had been sick with fever or worse institutionalized. In britain it was compulsory to shave off the hair of women in prisons, workhouses and hospitals until the 1850s. So, no matter the situation seeing short hair on women brought up a lot of sad assumptions for people. Working-Class women, therefore, would be more likely to have sought to protect and take care of their hair because their long hair socially represented their standing and health. Thomas adolphus trollope wrote about his visit to a country fair in brittany, france in 1840. He said what surprised me more than all were the operations of the dealers in hair in various parts of the motley crowd. There were three or four different purchasers of this commodity who traveled the country for the purpose and attending of the fairs and buying the tresses of the peasant girls. I should have thought that female vanity would have eventually prevented such traffic as this being carried on to any extent, but there seemed to be no difficulty in finding possessors of beautiful threads of hair perfectly willing to sell. We saw several girls sheared one after the other, like sheep and as many more standing ready for the sheers, with their caps in their hands and their long hair, combed out and hanging down to their waists upper class. Women didn't have the association of poverty with short hair, so it was a fashion choice that they could choose, and it's incredibly ironic that, as fast as the cuaferla titus came into fashion, it faded as well a few decades into the 1800s wealthy women all wanted their Long hair back and they achieved this with hair pieces and less often due to their obvious artificiality. Wigs all over again and sadly, these wigs and hair pieces were often made with the same hair that poor women were forced to sell a loss of their own social standing and beauty in order to provide it to rich women and a booming industry. It was, and honestly still is, today, smithsonian magazine wrote of the hair industry. In the victorian era, large numbers of hair collectors and hair growers were needed to supply the 12 000 pounds of human hair said to be required annually for hair pieces in europe and the united states. The bulk of it was gathered from switzerland, germany and france with smaller supplies. Coming from italy, sweden and russia, there were reports of dutch farmers collecting hair orders from germany once a year peasant women in eastern europe cultivating their hair with the thrifty purchase with which one sows, wheat or potatoes hair peddlers in over in france, offered women advanced payments On future crops and italian dealers paraded the streets of sicily in search of a good yield. Every time period has its own list of traits that make the ideal woman. But let me tell you the victorian era, just about freaking lost its mind, trying to figure out all the things that a woman should look like. According to the arts of beauty or secrets of a ladies toilet with hints to gentlemen and the art of fascinating by lila montez of 1858, the following classical synopsis on female beauty, which has been attributed to felibian, is the best. I remember to have seen the heads should be well rounded, and look rather inclining to small than large the forehead white smooth and open, not with the hair growing down too deep, but like the head, well, rounded, and rather small in proportion rather than large, bright brown Or auburn not thin, but full and waving, and if it falls in moderate curls the better. The chestnut black is clear, bright and lively, and rather large and proportionate and full semi-circular and broader in the middle than at the ends of a neat, terrific, but the red and white finally blended together and should look firm and soft and rather small, well folded and Have an agreeable teenager should be placed so as to divide the face into equal parts, should be of a moderate size, straight small and a lips not of equal thickness. They should be well turned small, rather than gross soft, and even to the eye middle sized white. Well, arranged and she even have a moderate size, white, soft and agreeably round delicacy of its skin should be continued, or rather white gently spread and with a much softer appearance of strengthening those arm. And it should be long and delicate and even with the joints and nervous parts of it should be too large and small. The breasts equal and roundness and firmness rising gently the legs very straight and varied by proper rounding and the more fleshy parts of them. And finally, turned white and small at the ankle jesus christ, but we know very solidly that victorian women didn't all fit that mold, nor did all of them care to. So the victorians were a little obsessed with hair. Maybe a lot obsessed with hair, especially long and beautifully treated hair hair, was the keystone of a woman's youthfulness, her sexuality. It took on an almost magical property in art. An angelic woman's hair had healing properties. It was comfort. A demonic, woman's hair was like a spider's web or a snare. It could either be shelter or a tool of death. It'S interesting how the role of women's hair in victorian fiction often reflects her role in society when she uses her hair, for others benefit she's a pure woman, but if she uses her hair for her own purposes, weaves it she's vain, unsightly or dangerous. This symbolic power thought into the idea of a woman's hair, carries over into the victorian tradition of trading hair with loved ones. A lover, a friend, a family member hair could be plaited or woven and placed in lockets bracelets are made into jewelry. There'S a strong cultural idea of personification happening here. Thinking human sympathy into this thing that used to be a part of a person. Maybe i should be wearing something a little less regency for this section. This is the best victorian i got for now, like i said earlier, i'm still in the process of selling something better anyway, similar to the tragedy of loss of hair in the regency or napoleonic era. Earlier a woman with shorn hair in the victorian era was also thought of as a tragedy. The most famous scene of little women by louisa may alcott is the scene in chapter 15, where joe march cuts off and sells her hair for money in their time of need. This scene is framed by her sisters as a devastation, because joe has seemingly lost something integral to her beauty. As a woman joe, on the other hand, is what would be considered a pretty radical woman for the time, and she says it will be good for my vanity. I was getting too proud of my wig it'll. Do my brains good to have that mop taken off my head feels deliciously light and cool, and the barber said i could soon have a curly crop which will be boyish becoming and easy to keep in order this view she takes on short, hair, isn't unique to Joe march, in an 1861 issue of goatee's ladies book, an anonymous writer penned an essay about all the benefits in favor of short hair on women. I know mr godee to an absolute certainty from both reason and experience. That short hair would be a great comfort and convenience and a real blessing to womankind everywhere. Any intelligent, lady or gentleman must admit that it is a great tax upon us to have so much hair to be done up and arranged every day and sometimes often or for a common lifetime amounting to many thousand times just to suit a foolish fashion. And because our mothers and grandmothers did before us, men have not submitted and will not submit to this inconvenience. Yet women have to but the negative view of these women by society, while often accurate to the woman's own feelings. If her loss of hair was unwilling or driven by poverty, doesn't encompass women who cut their hair as a deliberate and willing choice. But these women were typically the radical artsy types and here's why the victorians were incredibly gender conscious in a bit of a different way than we are today or in any decade post world war ii. For that matter, respectable women wouldn't have worn their long hair loose, especially if you were married because you may be mistaken for being a sex worker. Loose hair was considered incredibly intimate and something generally that you'd only show your husband in the bedroom. In a similar vein, what you wore quite literally determined your gender and cross-dressing was often enough to place you in the victorian and edwardian third gender category entirely. George chauncey explains this pre-war gender system in great length in the book. Gay new york, gender urban culture and the making of the gay male world 1890-1940, especially before world war. One gender inversion, was a topic completely tied to sexuality and mind you. For the most part. This time period, sexuality was looked at more as a thing you did. Rather than an identity that you had deviation from the norm in sexuality was usually attributed to some sort of deviation and gender as well. Many people were simply dubbed inverts, because their gender was considered inverted rather than homosexual. This is because gender identity held vastly more importance in society than sexuality did whether or not someone could look at you on the street and instantly be able to clock your socially expected gender presentation to a society that places an emphasis on public image is considered more Integral to upholding the framework of society than what someone did in private in the bedroom, unless, of course you got caught, chauncey writes sexual desire for men was held to be inescapably. A woman's desire and the invert's desire for men was not seen as an indication of their homosexuality, but as simply one more manifestation of their fundamentally woman-like character, because you are a man attracted to men. You must therefore have an element of womanhood inside you. This made the social divide for men, not between straight and gay men, but rather between traditionally masculine men and feminine men, who were often placed in a unique gender of their own. The fairy fairies were placed in the category of a third sex which held both masculine and feminine elements, and many manish women inhabited this zone as well wearing short hair. As a woman was incorporating a traditional element of masculinity, okay, so you're getting close to the third sex now, but short hair could get away with a lot of excuses. But if you also wear masculine clothes or do masculine activities or get caught being a lesbian you're, officially, according to the social structure of gender, no longer a woman, you belong to the third sex. This is also a little bit of the historical reason why lesbians tend to feel alienated from womanhood altogether, if you've ever wondered. Why non-binary lesbians are a thing here you go, and especially for men. So much as wearing certain articles of clothing may clock you as an invert or a fairy in new york, wearing a red necktie and sometimes a green necktie, was a typical coded signal to quietly tell people you're one of those people which makes all the red and Green neckties and jc lindecker paintings honestly make a lot more sense. That'S right! I'Ve found a way to weasel my favorite golden age, gay boy painter into this video and i'll. Do it again cheers? Actually, there were a lot of things in the victorian era that could essentially ungender you. A woman attending university was one of those things. For instance, a doctor howard h clark wrote of a common idea that men held asserting that educating women in the same way as men would arrest the development of their reproductive systems and turn them into sexless amazons. A lot of this degendering was a direct result of the women's rights, equal education, free love and suffrage movements which picked up a lot of steam in the late 1800s riding a bike. Your womb's gon na shut down and you're no longer a woman studying in a man's field, you're diverting too much energy away from your uterus. Your womb's gon na shut down you're no longer a woman wearing managed styles like shorter hair and skirts that double his pants. That'S cross-dressing you're confusing me. I think your room might shut down and you're, not a woman anymore. As you can see, a lot of these gendered activities and clothes were extremely serious facets of what defined your gender as society, determined and male doctors went to desperate lengths to think of medical reasons for justifying why these things were a problem. Cross-Dressing was literally illegal in most places, and it was quite a serious offense but as usual, the 1800s are a time of pretty extreme contradictions. Gender presentation was an extremely rigid system, but, despite all the talk and nervousness about it, people love to break those boundaries for fun. In los angeles, there was an annual festival called all fools night where there was a massive party of sexual rowdiness and campy gender play. According to gay los angeles by lillian faderman and stuart timmons, the 1890s saw this festival drawing crowds of over a hundred thousand people to the commercial district, which obviously drew the ire and pearl clutching of local conservative protestant groups. And in the end, these groups managed to weaponize an 1874 law banning any mask-wearing, false whiskers or personal disguise that had obviously been passed to target bandits and highwaymen, because the law couldn't deliberately be used against people wearing the wrong gendered clothes. They had the la city council draft ordinance 50 22, which made it illegal for a man to masquerade. As a woman and a woman to masquerade as a man in 1898, it was passed and all fool's night was banned and ordinance. 50 22 was from then on. Weaponized against trans people drag queens and butch lesbians, in los angeles, until beyond the mid-century. It was even revised in 1922 to specify that if anyone was caught in the wrong clothes in the streets, they would need to be jailed for six months and find 500. It was more legally threatening to people assigned mail at birth, as was the case in many cities. But despite the legal threats, los angeles was still an extremely attractive destination for people seeking to escape the gender boundaries placed on them, especially for sapphic women and women who sought to work in traditionally male fields. In los angeles, often times, women could get away with dressing. In masculine clothes or having short hair, and it could be legally justified with their choice in occupation or simply by bringing all the hollywood starlets who seem to be able to get away with anything in the realm of androgynous fashion and gender presentation. All that said, fashion is, as fashion does, and there was a brief period from around the 1860s to the early 1890s, where short cropped hair was in fashion. It had a lot of detractors and, of course, from both men and women and women who opted to get their hair cut were often sneered at, but this doesn't stop radical women from wanting to get short haircuts one such woman was the finnish artist ellen bezleff. We don't know a whole lot about her other than she was highly independent, talented liked to wear pants and hike around in nature and never married in literature. There'S the main character will, in the 1878 book an american girl and her four years in a boys college by all of san luis anderson will is the first girl to attend an all-boys school in michigan. She wears her hair cut short likes to do traditionally. Boyish activities like working out and chopping wood and is an incredibly outspoken feminist. I talked before about the pain that poor women might associate with short hair and that may not make it a desirable fashion statement for them, and this was especially so when it came to enslaved black women for the entire history of slavery on this continent, black people Were required by various laws to wear certain clothing items, fabrics and styles in order to deliberately differentiate them and prevent them from moving up in society. In 1786, spanish colonial governor don esteban miro enacted, the edict of good government also referred to as the tinion laws, which required creole black women to cover their hair in a head wrap. This was in response to the fact that these women were wearing their hair in beautiful, elaborate styles adorned with jewels and feathers, making them look of a higher class than they actually were. This perception threatened white women's status as supposedly superior and therefore threatened the social order required now to wear head wraps. These women wore the wraps in creative ways and adorned the wraps with decorations, using the things demanded of them to express creativity and individuality and, as a result, the head wrap itself became a symbol loaded with simultaneous contradictions. But overall it came to represent for a lot of people, a symbol of identity and community, something shared between america and their communities in africa and the caribbean and a symbol of resistance as well. Head wraps were one of the few ways that enslaved women were able to express themselves shaney mcknight from not your mama's. History is an incredible historian and re-enactor, and she talks about this topic a lot on her channel. So please go check out her work and give her some support i'll, be linking her stuff in the description below coming back around to the pain of short hair. Specifically, though, it was all too common for enslaved women to have their hair cut off or shaved due to the jealousy of the enslaver's wife or the rage of the enslaver himself, but more commonly it was white women doing the act quite often the shaving of the Hair was used as a punishment or simply as a tactic, to attempt to break the spirit of the enslaved person. Remember earlier, when i mentioned imprisoned women having their hair cut off well, what women were most likely to be imprisoned, unjustly the practice of removing a black woman's hair to punish her was carried over from one form of imprisonment to another. The era of elaborate long hairstyles that required hair pieces and wigs ended promptly during world war, one when wartime hardships made it both unsensible and tone deaf to wear such lavish styles. This combined with a lot of other factors, led to the explosion and cropped hairstyles on women and the hair collection industry. Quite nearly died, i mean it didn't, but it came. Close short hair on women has had its ups and downs in the mainstream fashion world. Ever since, but there's always been a place in recent history for the pixie cut, but the buying and selling of human hair is still a complicated subject. Today, as the smithsonian says again like the market of the past, it still relies on a gap in wealth opportunities or values between those willing to part with their hair and those who ended up acquiring it. It'S no coincidence that the vast majority of hair that enters the global market today is black at the time of entry, hair flows most freely from the places where economic opportunities are few. This isn't to say that people who buy human hair pieces, extensions and wigs today are evil or something that's not the case, especially when a lot of people in the market for these items are economically disenfranchised themselves. That'S just how capitalism works, but that's another topic for another day and i want to leave you with the thoughts that got me started on this topic. Bender. I cut my hair off about a decade ago now. For me, it felt incredibly liberating for gender and lesbianism reasons, as well as just convenience, because my hair is naturally extremely curly, and to this day i have a complicated relationship with it, and when i started researching history, i was looking to find people like me reflected In the past history, telling and historical reenactment are incredibly powerful tools for showing people that people of the past weren't a monolith, and there was so much diversity that gets overlooked. There were women with short hair before the 20s for all manner of reasons. Some of them were painful, others were for fashion and still others were statements against society or gender affirming or just self-affirming. The same is true today, so happy holidays, wash their hands, wear thy mask and take care of each other, because things are gon na, be tough for a while longer so hang in there. So you