Despite the fact that the general public has become accustomed to seeing women with short hair, a newly shorn bob still manages to make headlines each year, especially when linked to a celebrity known for having flowing locks.
While the popularity of the hairstyle has come and gone in mainstream fashion over the past few decades, it's never really disappeared, and somehow it's never lost its strong connection with high style and female empowerment. Actresses like Jennifer Aniston and Winona Rider helped to boost its popularity, but the bob's real claim to fame during this period came from fierce fictional characters, such as Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction and Gwyneth Paltrow as Margot in The Royal Tenenbaums. įrom Courtney Love to Posh Spice, various versions of the bob were worn by rebellious female celebrities during the '90s and early 2000s. The article also claims that even conservative society matrons were wearing bobbed wigs to mimic the look, indicating that there really was no way of stopping the trend from spreading across America. A New York Times article from 1920 says that young women with disapproving parents went so far as to go to their doctors' offices to be diagnosed with falling hair in order to receive a "prescription" for a bob haircut. Preachers conducted sermons against it, schools banned it and pamphlets warned young women that short hair would lead to a variety of undesirable health conditions. Meanwhile, those who wanted women to maintain their traditional roles as well-behaved daughters and wives did whatever they could to discourage the trend for bobbed hair. Whatever helps their emancipation, however small it may seem, is well worth while." In 1927, actress Mary Gordon told Pictorial Review: "I consider getting rid of our long hair one of the many little shackles that women have cast aside in their passage to freedom. Despite the controversy, many women were happy to embrace the haircut's perceived connection to feminism. Bobbed hair was a permanent signifier of a woman's rebellious nature. Bobbed hair became associated with the "shocking" behavior of the young women who drank alcohol, wore makeup and bared their knees. For many conservatives, the appearance of bobbed hair signified that women were - gasp! - trying to "act like men" by going against traditional gender roles and beauty standards. However, the trend for short hair was certainly met with its fair share of controversy.
Still, most hair dressers were ill-equipped and unwilling to do such a daring chop, and sources indicate that women often resorted to heading to barbershops since barbers were more willing to do such a dreadful deed. Years before the emergence of the jazz-age flapper, bobbed hair had already started to gain mainstream popularity. An article in Vogue from January 1915 mentions that Castle, "did the newest thing in coiffures when she bobbed her hair," but went on to state that, "there is little likelihood of its general adoption." Oh, Vogue! How wrong you were.īy May 1915, the same magazine was featuring advertisements for hair "transformers" that would allow women to try this "latest fad" by providing the visual effect of bobbed hair without permanently sacrificing their long locks. While the bob haircut may have been sported by small groups of rebellious women decades before, many historians track the start of the trend to a well-known American dancer named Irene Castle, who lopped off her hair for convenience before entering the hospital for an appendectomy in 1914.
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