By Emmeline Armitage
(Photo: Getty Images)
You’ve probably seen the video. The one where child star Millie Bobby Brown cuddles into herself on a salon chair and watches – along with a litter of iPhones dangling in her face – as her hair gets buzzed off her head. Or perhaps you’ve seen the clip of Shailene Woodley cropping her hair back in 2013, tearing up as it falls like heavy snow around her ankles. There are in fact a whole host of actresses who have cut their hair short for a role, extending back beyond the banality of YouTube transformations to the likes of Audrey Hepburn, and in more recent memory Kristen Stewart, Halle Berry, Demi Moore and Emma Watson (who apparently took a picture of a pixie-cropped Mia Farrow to her hair appointment, “I want to look like that”).
And it’s not just actresses that are now being put in the spotlight for their creativity with scissors. In the midst of lockdown, timelines have been flooded by three predominant kinds of cut: the stress-induced, spur of the moment “bangs” (an Americanism I’ll happily accept because it sounds dramatic and indulgent); the maintenance-free, hygiene-efficient, Kaia Gerber-inspired “choppy bob”; and the TikTok viral (sorry, I did just go there) “dual strands” that has so uniquely begun to frame the virtual face of the internet. The numerous occasions on which I’ve opened up a zoom call to the confessional pour of “so I did a thing” have since trigged a deep conditioning Google search on the history of women cutting their hair.
In the height of the Roman Empire long, luscious locks were a staple component of the female wardrobe. Often worn with a veil, those that chose to bare their hair on the streets were seen to be rejecting their material status, and were often conflated with a subscription to prostitution and sexual licentiousness. Right through to the Middle Ages and beyond, long hair has maintained its tie with “femininity”, becoming a base on which lavish adornments precariously sat (think Marie Antoinette). Long hair was so much part of the “feminine aesthetic” that whole movements of art and culture, such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, found regularity and colourful home in the twists and turns of floating strands. When gifting a piece of hair to a lover finally became the ultimate act of intimacy and devotion, the idea that hair was somehow metonymic for womanhood and yet dangerously tied to a discourse of property and object-fascination, became entrenched in society more so than ever.
The act of cutting hair, up until the last century, was then characterised by a sort of systemic rebellion. Perhaps one of the most famous early examples of a woman performing such an act is Joan of Arc, who in the 15th century trimmed her hair in similar length and style to a pageboy so that she could enter the battlefield. The adoption of a “male haircut” in order to comply with standards of warfare goes hand in hand with the assumption that long hair promotes “femininity”. In a world where the ability to maintain healthy hair was a symbol of wealth and overt sexuality, the radicalism attached to both physically and metaphorically cutting ties with this ideology was a powerful statement.
It was apparently the look of Joan of Arc that inspired Polish-born hairdresser Monsieur Antoine to create “the bob” in 1909. Famed flappers of the 1920s conjure mental images of cuts like swimming caps, or tightly curled ridges that hug the hair – dancer Irene Gibson was notably one of the first women to adopt this style. In his short story ‘Bernice Bobs Her Hair’ from the collection Flappers and Philosophers (1920) F. Scott Fitzgerald maps the introduction of Bernice to a sports car-driving, champagne-drinking and quick-to-critique society. Floundering in dinner-table conversation, Bernice shocks those surrounding her by pondering whether or not she should bob her hair. When she finally takes the plunge, to appear more interesting and free-spirited, to become a physical conversation-starter, the barber appears shocked – mouth open, cigarette dropped. As the hair jumps down from her head to the floor, she simultaneously mourns both her precious tresses, and her troubles – “she would never again feel its long voluptuous pull”. Years after the radicalism of Joan of Arc, to cut hair short was still an act against societal propriety.
The shock factor inherent to reactions of short hair is often formed by the assumption that a female has rejected being sexual and “womanly”. When many young girls cut their hair, or adapt their “look”, it is assumed to be the knock-on effect of a break up – coming just after the ice cream, but before the sacrificial burning of T-shirts. This assumption however carries with it a weight of problems. The idea that women might have to reinvent themselves, reject their “femininity”, symbolically cry out for help with a destruction of visual magnitude is outdated, and yet still propels into many conversations.
In the midst of my Google searching I stumbled across that consistent and unending source of entertainment: the suggestion box. “Women” and “hair” popped up with two alarming FAQs, one of them being “what does short hair say about a women” (I chuckled away for a good few minutes thinking about the sort of confused man that articulates such anxieties into a search bar), and the other, a more harmful question, “is long or short hair more attractive”. I then spent a good few minutes nauseating over the women that might have anxiously typed this question with one eye open, pretending they didn’t. These two inquiries alone speak to how entrenched in society the idea is that hair is an external pleasure, for the sake of an audience, rather than for the self.
An interview with Millie Bobby Brown from just after she shaved her head leaves an uncomfortable taste in my mouth. A reporter gives unsolicited sympathy to the teen, consoling her and commending her bravery, “that had to be hard to do as a young girl where your hair is your everything”. Thank goodness a media-trained and wide-eyed Bobby Brown refracts back the question, denying that it is her “everything” and quite rightly pointing out that patients of cancer and alopecia are not blessed with such a choice. With most of these actresses I mentioned earlier, in interviews supposedly about their new films, the conversation follows the line of hair, and the tone of reporters follows the line of “sacrifice”. Woodley cut her hair to portray a 16 year old with Stage IV Thyroid cancer, and after cutting her hair encouraged young girls to cut their own hair, and add the hashtag #itgrowsback. Because that’s the miraculous thing about hair – just ask Britney – it does grow back.
One of the reasons why we are witnessing such a rise in hair cutting at the moment is because, in times of crisis, to have an effect on your appearance gives you a sense of control. A global pandemic may be out of our hands (well, kind of), but you know what you can do with your hands? Cut a damn fringe. In the First World War a series of women cut their hair short, both in similar state of crisis, and because it was easier to maintain (for nurses, more hygienic). And looking back at some famous cuts, practicality dominates – for example, Irene Gibson originally cut her hair short because she was going into the hospital for an appendectomy, not quite so radical a statement as has since been made out.
There is no denying that a change in hairstyle can be associated with transitional significance. Rachel from Friends and Rory from Gilmore Girls are two television characters famed for the way in which their narrative can be mapped and analysed through their relationship with hair. This is a fair and interesting assumption, but one that placed on the majority of women becomes far too reductive. There’s a reason we’re seeing a rise in evolving looks as the position of women in the world continues to take on new meaning. There is no need for hair to be associated with outdated concepts of “femininity”, and no set “look” from which to play off of. Cutting your hair is a form of experimentation, a way to retain a feeling of control in a world of malleable design, an act that ultimately symbolises self-ownership of the body. It can be an act of defiance, but it can also be an act of boredom, free will in its matted, manifest form. And who knows, maybe the world is slightly lighter with an inch or two just off the shoulders?