Why bobs, perms and beehive hairstyles reveal the stories of women's lives

Irish Times

2 days ago

Human hair is imbued with meaning. It is not uncommon to keep a lock of hair belonging to a deceased loved one or from a child's first haircut.
Changing one's hair marks rites of passage such as reaching adulthood, ending a significant
relationship
or
becoming a parent
. Hair, as part of our physical bodies, is highly personal and intimate. Yet at the same time,
hairstyles
are visible to others and therefore highly public.
The way we shape, arrange, and decorate our hair signifies status, political and religious beliefs and is a central part of our identities. On top of this, hair is closely linked to gender, and for
women
it is particularly associated with ideas around femininity and female sexuality.
Women's hairstyles change with fashion and the 20th century has seen an explosion of styles, with each decade having different signature looks.
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Observing how international hair fashions were adopted by women in Ireland between 1900-1960 and scrutinising the wider commentary about them, is an excellent way of examining women's everyday lives in the past. Hairstyles are of interest of historians because they can tell us about politics, economics, gender, social norms and the overarching cultural attitudes of a time and place.
At the beginning of the 20th century, long hair was very much in vogue for women. Hairstyles immediately communicated where you stood on the social ladder. The upper classes wore their hair in elaborate updos adorned with jewels, shells, ribbons and feathers. These styles were time-consuming, impractical and expensive to create.
They signalled wealth as only the rich could afford the time, money and domestic staff required to produce them. A Dublin-based magazine for women,
Lady of the House, featured tips on achieving these styles, advising: 'We are forced to rely on art to a certain extent when nature fails'.
A portrait of Irish nationalist activist Maud Gonne McBride in the 1890s. Photograph: Keystone/ Getty Images
It recommended using postiches, which were extra hairpieces such as fringes, pompadour rolls and hair pads that added volume and length, much like hair extensions today. Postiches were made by a specialist hairdresser called a posticheur. They used combings (the hair that falls out when brushing) that women saved up and collected, sometimes for years, in a vessel called a hair receiver.
The very rich could also buy hair. Lady of the House explains how a 'really fine suit of hair of the purest blonde type will sell for ... (between) 1,000 and 2,500 francs.' That was a lot of money in 1900.
It was the traders, as opposed to the original owners of the hair, who made big profits from the hair industry. Making postiches was meticulous work that involved shaking out dust and debris from the hair combings, teasing out the individual strands and disentangling them using a hackle or a wire brush. Any nits, which were common, would be squashed and picked out. The hair was then woven into the desired form ready to adorn the heads of wealthy female customer.
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Into the 1910s, the overall look became slightly looser, and the added hairpieces and embellishments were discarded. Women of marriageable age wore their hair up in a bun or a coiled plait either on top of the head or towards the back, with a pompadour puffed-out style at the front. These popular styles had names such as the Psyche Knot, the New Récamier and the Gibson Girl.
During their campaign for the right to vote, suffragettes wore these elegant hairstyles as part of their tactics. Their opponents regularly accused them of being unwomanly, perverted, old hags. To counteract such accusations, suffragettes instituted a uniform to ensure they appeared ladylike, respectable and beyond reproach.
The 1920s brought huge change to Ireland with the establishment of the Free State in 1922. Machines and technology such as cars, electricity and telephones were becoming commonplace. Fashions loosened, skirts got shorter and the bob, a radical new hairstyle became the height of fashion. Antoine, a Parisian hairdresser and an early adaptor of the style said modern women with careers and busy lives required 'small, neat heads, not enormous masses of hair'.
Irish-born architect and furniture designer Eileen Gray in 1914. Photograph: George C. Beresford/ Hulton Archive/ Getty Images
The bob was short, it was all about angles and straight, clean lines representing the ideas of modernism. Androgynous and boyish, it played with strict gendered identities. Coming after the horrors of the , it celebrated youth, life and hedonism and it went hand in hand with the phenomenon of the flapper.
As well as their signature short haircuts, flappers were young women who smoked cigarettes, rode bicycles, went dancing, and wore make-up. In Ireland, as elsewhere, the flapper was derided as a foreign import, representing immorality, disobedience and vice. Historian Louise Ryan has charted attitudes to flappers and 'modern girls' in the Irish press. There was certainly criticism from the pulpits and reports of dismay at young women attending Ceilís organised by the Gaelic League but dressed in the latest Parisian fashions.
Yet the advertisements and the women's pages of the same newspapers often celebrated the independence, vitality and purchasing power of the flapper, demonstrating the different viewpoints at play in 1920s Ireland.
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From the 1930s – 1950s short, curly hair was fashionable in Ireland. This look could be achieved in various ways. The Marcel wave in which the hair was curled by heated tongs was available in hairdressers, or pincurls, in which damp hair was wound around the finger and pinned close to the scalp and combed out once dry.
However, both methods were laborious and needed constant upkeep. The invention of the permanent wave was a game-changer, meaning even those with naturally straight hair could have it curled, lasting for two or three months at a time. There were various experimental formula for chemical perms throughout the early 1900s, among them the Eugene system, which was heavily advertised in Ireland. It was expensive and time-consuming taking anywhere between three and ten hours.
The smell was unpleasant, and it involved a terrifying looking machine called a chandelier, which used electric rollers to cookthe hair attached with wires to an overhead device.
A model having her hair permed by a permanent wave machine in London, 1928. Photograph: Henry Miller News Picture Service/ Archive Photos/ Getty Images
Electric shocks, burns and damaged hair were too often the result. In 1935 a Dublin woman, Kathleen Crean, sued Neville Ryan, trading as the Grafton Hairdressing Co. for injuries she sustained while getting a perm. The newspaper report stated that she had several burns on her scalp and the backs of her ears, and she was suffering from nervousness. She was awarded £100 (€114) compensation – the monetary award signifying the cultural value placed on a women's hair.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Free State Government passed a series of laws that restricted women's citizenship by limiting their employment opportunities, excluding them from jury service and banning contraception.
Women's sexuality was tightly controlled and deviance was punished – often through incarceration in religious-run institutions. Where the cutting of hair in the 1920s was act of freedom and rebellion, there are many instances of forced hair cutting which served to humiliate women and control their behaviour.
During the War of Independence
there are numerous reports of both the IRA and the British army violently cutting off women's hair as punishment – either for fraternising with British soldiers, or for being associated with the republican side. The 2021 report of the Mother and Baby Homes commission of investigation documents how nuns cut off the hair of many womenon arrival at the home. They were required to keep it short thereafter.
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With long flowing hair a potent symbol of female sexuality, nuns themselves covered their hair and usually wore it short. The custom of willingly cutting or shaving hair is an act of religious devotion in many cultures. Before taking their vows, nuns commonly cut off their hair in a symbolic act that renounced vanity and the display of the body.
Vocations were one option for Irish women at a time when emigration was high, employment prospects were low, the marriage bar in effect and motherhood alongside domesticity were championed as the pinnacle of womanhood. The numbers of women in religious orders grew steadily in the first half of the 20th century, peaking in the 1960s.
Dublin-born movie star Maureen O'Hara pictured in 1954. Photograph: Bettmann Archive/ Getty Images
Until the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, women had to cover their hair with a hat or a mantilla in a Catholic church or in court. More generally, married women covered their heads to show their marital status.
But equally, there was a practical consideration to this, as headscarves were used by all women to cover hair that was being set into the fashionable curly hairstyles. Historian Caitríona Clear has written that professional women in the 1940s – 1960s wore an unofficial uniform consisting of tailored suits and 'lacquered, helmet-like hair'.
She contends that this was a form of armour which contained and protected women's bodies while in public. At this time women's rights in Ireland were in short supply, demonstrating how social conditions affect fashion choices.
In the early 1950s young people dressed quite formally, in much the same way as their parents did, but by the later years of that decade, international youth styles were appearing on the streets of Dublin.
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The cinema was hugely popular in Ireland and films from Hollywood brought international starlets and the most up-to-date fashions to Irish eyes. For Irish teenagers, hairstyles seen on screen were a relatively quick, cheap and easy way of identifying with new youth culture trends. Young Irish women adopted the beehiveand ponytail hairstyles.
The beehive was a tall hairstyle achieved through big rollers and backcombing until the hair stood vertically. It then was patted into place and secured with lacquer and hairspray. Mentions of the beehive hairstyle first appeared in Irish newspapers and magazines in the very late 1950s. By 1961, it seems to have fallen out of favour and when mentioned, it was in disparaging terms.
Teenage girls enthusiastically adopted the style, but it was considered highly impractical. It required dedication and upkeep and wearers were known to sleep with their heads upright so as not to ruin their hairdo.
A bouffant hairstyle pictured in 1963. Photograph: Getty Images
The beehive and other bouffant styles that were popular in the 1960s were linked to an optimism internationally towards technology, progress and the future. But just like in the early part of the century, these big elaborate hair styles were followed by a dramatic change with the reintroduction of short, angular, bobbed styles once more.
Colouring hair became more acceptable and commonplace from the 1960s onwards. In the 1970s, longer, looser styles followed at a time when women's right were back on the agenda. The marriage bar was finally lifted and there were hard-fought campaigns for equal pay and access to contraception.
Beauty practices such as hairdressing and styling are a common feature of women's culture that is often trivialised. But cutting, styling, colouring and removing hair is not just inconsequential frivolity. It can be an act of sacrifice or submission, of self-preservation, of celebration, rebellion or defiance. Through knowledge of the history of women's hairstyles, we can more easily imagine the everyday lives and connect to the emotional and bodily experiences of women in the past.
Katie Blackwood is Historian in Residence at Dublin City Council