You wake up in the morning and after getting ready, you start setting your hair into the perfect hairstyle. You may put on a hairstyling gel, tonic or cream. And if you are a girl, you try to tie a perfect ponytail, braid or loosen your hair with a couple of pretty colourful clips — but even then you don’t get the look you really wanted. So you try another and then another but the one you really desire seems to be unattainable and your hair unmanageable. This is called a bad hair day!

So what’s in a hairstyle that makes people so conscious of their looks? Perhaps it is because this is the first thing that others notice in you or you notice in others? Yes, your hair and overall dressing is what people immediately take note of. If you are dressed perfectly but your hair is unkempt, the first impression is down to zero. Thus, always keep your hair neatly styled in a way that suites you.

Hairstyles played a significant cultural and social role throughout history. In the past, hair represented the class, age and the social status one belonged to. People have worn their hair in a wide variety of styles, largely determined by the fashions of the culture they lived in. They believed hairstyles as the markers and signifiers of social class, age, marital status, racial identification, political beliefs and attitudes about gender. Today we will explore the ancient world and find out what hairstyles signified over the ages.

Egypt

For Egyptians, hairstyles determined the class, wealth, age and social group an individual belonged to. Both men and women usually had shoulder-length hair or hair cut short to the nape or even clean shaven heads.

Young adult mostly kept shaven heads but left a small lock of hair on one side of their head, named ‘Lock of Youth,’ to symbolise their age while young girls wore plaits, braids or sometimes ponytails.

Egyptian women decorated their hair with flowers such as the lotus blossom and linen ribbons. But the poor women would decorate their hair with berries and petals.

Greece

 In contrast to the Egyptians, classical Greeks pulled back the hair into a chignon style. Many styles involved braiding the hair and fixing it to the head and decorating with flowers, headbands, ribbons and pieces of metal.

The rich would often sprinkle gold powder into the hair. Men would have short or shaved hair and they would wear beards, unless they were soldiers. 

Rome

 Roman women wore their hair down and kept it away from the face by using a band circling the head. Young girls wore a simple bun on the nape.

In the reign of the Emperor Augustus, detailed hairstyles came into fashion; complex and outrageous hairstyle indicated the wealth of a woman; while the poor would have the simplest.

In early Roman times, men would have long hair and full beards but this changed to short hair and clean-shaven faces and, interestingly, when Caesar’s hair began to go thin in his later days, he would wear a laurel crown to hide this as it was a sign of degeneracy. Emperor Nero wore curling hairs that framed his face and it started the trend for sideburns. 

The East 

During the Vedic period (1700-1100BCE), Indian men shaved the whole head, leaving a lock of hair at the back or at the side. This hair cut was limited to people of high social positions, while women used head pieces with gems, jewels and flowers on the forehead and kept their hair long.

Ordinary men had long shoulder-length hair that was often braided. The arrival of Muslim conquerors caused a blend of Islamic and Indian cultures. Among the Muslim community, women’s hair was concealed in public with a traditional veil; they would not cut their hair as it was considered disrespectful, while men would wear a turban or fez.

China 

Chinese hairstyles varied depending on the age of the woman and her marital status and they kept their hair long because it was considered disrespectful to cut hair as it was inherited from the parents.

The Manchu regime dictated that men shave the front of the head and style the rest of their hair in braids, tied with black silk.

Japan

In the seventh century, noble women wore their hair tied with a sickle-shaped ponytail at the back. After this period and up until 1345, fashion dictated that women should wear their hair long and unbound as a sign of beauty. In the Edo Period (1603-1868), women took on much more elaborate styles, decorated with hair sticks, ribbons, flowers and combs. 

Men in Japan wore similar hairstyles to Chinese men, pulled tight into a ponytail but with the front part shaved.

Africa 

There were many tribes in Africa and plenty of different customs. Masai warriors spent hours braiding each other’s hair and would die it red with a natural pigment found in volcanic regions. Women shaved their heads when they married, to symbolise a new beginning. Boys hair were also shaved until they become a warrior, then their hair were braided. 

America 

Native Indians tribes in America were divided in hairstyles like many African tribes. Tribes close to the East Coast would shave most of their hair apart from a ridge of hair along the crown. Many warriors shaved their heads except for a fringe of hair around the head (known as tonsure), a single lock of hair on the crown of their head, or a stiff crest of hair running down the middle of the head known as a roach or in today’s world, a Mohawk.

Other native Indian tribes believed that hair symbolised power and the longer their hair, the more wisdom and power they were deemed to possess. Women also wore such styles and decorate their hair with beads and feathers.

Braiding today uses three strands of hair but native Indians used more strands to demonstrate in intricacy of their hairstyle.

The western world 

During the Middle Ages, between fifth century to the 15th, there was strong Catholic influence in the west. When the Germanic tribes settled in England, they made new customs separating them from the Roman Empire. To them, hair held great significance like the Indian and African tribes.

Military leaders would tie their hair in a knot atop their head to appear more intimidating to enemies as it symbolised authority, however, to lose ones hair was thought to bring shame. Ordinary men would keep their hair long and had bushy beards, but men who were of a lower status than the king would wear shorter hair but this changed with time and by the 11th century many men chose the ‘pageboy’ hair style like Charles VIII, the hair curved over the ears and round the back of the neck. During the Elizabethan era, men and women copied Spanish couture. Men wore their hair short, while women combed their long hair upwards where it was fixed with a wire frame that formed a heart shape. False hair and wigs were commonly used.

Victorian women kept a neat look by smoothing down their hair with oils and curled into long ringlets, fringes were short and decoration was more subtle. Loose hair was considered vulgar. Men kept their hair relatively short, pomaded with Macassar oil and most wore some form of moustache, beard and sideburns.

In 1920s, the society abandoned the puritanical standards and constraints of Victorian life. It saw the emergence of short, bobbed and wavy styles, signifying the new independent, free-spirited, free-woman ethos of the day.

Men’s hair remained short, but with the advent of TV, both men and women began to imitate and follow their onscreen idols. Thus emerged new styles and in came variations, keeping in mind a hairstyle’s aesthetic nature with a person’s physical attributes and the stylist’s artistic instincts.

Behind the names of popular hairstyles

Pompadour

The style famous for hair being elevated at the front of the head, and was worn by Elvis Presley. But this hairstyle dates back to 1721 to Madam de Pompadour, who wore this style and inspired a fad that became popular for decades especially in the high society. The pompadour style made a hit comeback when men began to wear it like Elvis Presley and its popularity exploded.

Faux hawk

False hawk as called by many, is quite similar to Mohawk — having longer hair on the top without the shaved sides. The style was seen on the soccer guru David Beckham during the 2002 World Cup.

Mohawk

The shaved head with a strip of hair up straight in the centre is typically worn by rock stars but it originates from various native American tribes and takes its name from Mohawk nation — an indigenous tribe of north America. However they did not shave their heads, instead pulled their hair from the sides, small tufts at a time! How painful!

Pixie

The name is taken from fairies, commonly portrayed to have short cut that is short in back and the sides and a titch longer on the top. Not very versatile, the Pixie is easy to maintain — wash, feather and go. Actress Jean Seberg is often credited for putting this short boyish cut on the map, chopping it off in 1957 for her first film role in the movie Joan of Arc. While in recent times, Anne Hatheway, Demi Moore and Alyssa Milano, have all worn the Pixie.

Hi-top fade

1980s / 1990s It’s a hairstyle that tried its darnedest to look like a pencil eraser. Popular with African-American youth in particular, the hair would be shaved at the neck, puffed straight up, and shaved flat at the top. This style was popularized by Will Smith and Kid ‘n’ Play.

Ducktail

Popular in the 1950s, this look requires one to comb the hair back to the middle of the head, then make a centre part up the back using the end of a comb. John Travolta wore this style in the movie Grease.  Though Hollywood adopted the ducktail to represent the wild and youthful staple appearance of the 1950s, only a small number of men actually wore this look in that era and beyond. It is also a style that, for the most part, has not made a full-circle comeback in popularity.

Mullet

This haircut dates back to the sixth century, first noted by Byzantine scholar Procopius. Back then it wasn’t called mullet but rather a ‘hunnic’. The style was worn by David Bowie and Paul McCartney in 1970s but the style saw a huge surge in 1980 when many pop adopted it. But in the next decade it was faded with other styles, and those who still wore were called mullethead, the term thought to be coined from the 1857 meaning dull/stupid person.

Combover

There comes a point in a man’s life when he no longer has hair. Some opt to shave it all off and be done with it. Others go to hair clubs for men to solve their baldness. Then, there are those who like to pretend it isn’t happening. They will grow their hair out and comb it over their bald spot in order to hide it.

Famous people sporting a combover include Donald Trump and Homer Simpson. One of the earliest reference to someone wearing such style being none other than Emperor Constantine.

Interestingly enough, Donald J. Smith and his father, Frank J. Smith in 2004 even managed to patent a version of the combover, where the baldness is maximally covered up by combing the remaining hair in three different directions. For this amazing ‘invention’, they were not only awarded patent but also a Nobel Prize!

The Rachel

Remember the hairstyle Jenifer Aniston wore in Friends? Yes, this style got the name and the popularity after this star. And so began the fad when women began requesting everywhere for the “The Rachel” style.

Afro

A hairstyle sported largely by African-Americans, but also by other ethnic groups and people with very curly hair. The style maintains that curly hair is grown and brushed out to create a perfect halo of hair surrounding the head. It was popularised by the “Black is Beautiful” or “Black Pride” movement and by icons such as Jimi Hendrix.

One of the early versions of this hair style wasn’t African nor African-American based, but rather popularly worn in the 1860s by certain sideshow women who were supposedly from Circassian ancestry, known as ‘Circassan beauties’ (also called “Moss-Haired Girls” for the way they wore their hair).

Published in Dawn, Young World, January 9th, 2015