Editing Hairstyle (section)

==Prehistory and history==
People's hairstyles are largely determined by the fashions of the culture they live in. Hairstyles are markers and signifiers of social class, age, [[marital status]], racial identification, political beliefs, and attitudes about gender.

Some people may cover their hair totally or partially for cultural or religious reasons. Notable examples of head covering include women in Islam who wear the [[hijab]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://arabsinamerica.unc.edu/identity/veiling/hijab/|title=Women > Veiling > What is the Hijab and Why do Women Wear it? – Arabs in America|website=arabsinamerica.unc.edu|language=en-US|access-date=2018-02-27}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Halley |first=Catherine |date=2022-04-06 |title=Muslim Women and the Politics of the Headscarf |url=https://daily.jstor.org/muslim-women-and-the-politics-of-the-headscarf/ |access-date=2025-04-13 |website=JSTOR Daily |language=en-US}}</ref> married women in [[Haredi Judaism]] who wear the [[Head covering for Jewish women|sheitel]]<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://forward.com/articles/203226/taxonomy-of-the-sheitel/|title=Taxonomy of the Sheitel|work=The Forward|access-date=2018-02-27}}</ref> or [[Head covering for Jewish women|tichel]], married [[Himba people|Himba]] men who cover their hair except when in mourning, [[Tuareg people|Tuareg]] men who wear a veil, and men and women in [[Sikhism]] who wear the [[dastar]], whether baptized or not, as a symbol of their faith and cultural identity.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.sikhnet.com/news/gift-dastar|title=The Gift of Dastar {{!}} SikhNet|work=SikhNet|access-date=2018-02-27|language=en}}</ref>

===Paleolithic===
The oldest known reproduction of hair [[braid]]ing lies back about 30,000 years: the [[Venus of Willendorf]], now known in academia as the Woman of Willendorf, of a female [[Venus figurine|figurine]] from the [[Paleolithic]], estimated to have been made between about 28,000 and 25,000 BC.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/prehistoric-art/paleolithic-art/v/nude-woman-venus-of-willendorf-c-28-000-25-000-b-c-e|title=Nude woman (Venus of Willendorf)|via=www.khanacademy.org}}</ref> The [[Venus of Brassempouy]] counts about 25,000 years old and indisputably shows hairstyling.
<gallery>
File:Venus von Willendorf 01.jpg|The ''[[Venus of Willendorf]]'' with braided hair
File:Venus of Brassempouy.jpg|The [[Venus of Brassempouy]]
</gallery>

===Bronze Age===
In the [[Bronze Age]], razors were known and in use by some men, but not on a daily basis since the procedure was rather unpleasant and required resharpening of the tool which reduced its endurance.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Harding|first=Anthony|title=Razors and male identity in the Bronze Age|url=https://www.academia.edu/2459391|journal=Durch die Zeiten (Festschrift für Albrecht Jockenhövel)|date=January 2008 |language=en}}</ref>
<gallery>
File:Reconstructed sumerian headgear necklaces british museum.JPG|Reconstructed headgear of [[Puabi]], the First Dynasty of Ur, circa 2500 BC, [[Early Dynastic Period (Mesopotamia)|Early Dynastic period III]]
File:Meskalamdug helmet British Museum electrotype copy original is in the Iraq Museum, Bagdad.jpg|Golden helmet imitating hairstyle, the First Dynasty of Ur, circa 2500 BC, Early Dynastic period III
File:Sumerian portrait statuette of a woman 02.jpg|Sumerian portrait statuette of a woman
File:Statue from Khafajah, female worshiper.jpg|Sumerian statue from Khafajah, female worshiper
File:Egyptian lute players 001.jpg|Egyptian women with braided hair and ornamental headdress,  circa 1350 BC
</gallery>

===Ancient history===
In ancient civilizations, women's hair was often elaborately and carefully dressed in special ways. Women coloured their hair, curled it, and pinned it up (ponytail) in a variety of ways. For waves and curls, they used wet clay, which they dried in the sun before combing out, or they used a jelly made from [[quince]] seeds soaked in water. Additionally, various kinds of [[Hair iron|curling tongs]] and [[Hair iron|curling irons]] were popular tools for hair styling.<ref>{{cite book|last=Yarwood|first=Doreen|title=The Encyclopedia of World Costume|year=1978|publisher=Scribner|location=New York|isbn=0-517-61943-1|pages=[https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofwo0000yarw_i6a3/page/216 216–220]|url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofwo0000yarw_i6a3/page/216}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Sherrow|first=Victoria|title=For Appearance' Sake: The Historical Encyclopedia of Good Looks, Beauty, and Grooming|year=2001|publisher=Greenwood|isbn=978-1-57356-204-1|page=[https://archive.org/details/forappearancesak00sher/page/142 142]|url=https://archive.org/details/forappearancesak00sher/page/142}}</ref>

Hairstyles in ancient Korea and Japan were influenced by Chinese hairstyles.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Choi |first=Na-Young |title=Symbolism of Hairstyles in Korea and Japan |journal=Asian Folklore Studies |volume=65 |issue=1 |pages=69–86 }}</ref> For instance, the ''chu'kye'' style worn in [[Goguryeo|Koguryo]] was similar in style and head placement as the ''chu'kye'' style in China. The hairstyles were characterized by the large topknots on women's heads. Also, hairstyles were used as an expression of beauty, social status, and marital status.<ref name=":1" /> For instance, Japanese girls wore a ''mae-gami'' to symbolize the start of their coming-of-age ceremony. Single women in Baekjae put their hair in a long pigtail and married women would braid their hair on both sides of the head. The hairstyles displayed their marital status to those around them.{{Citation needed|date=December 2023}}
<gallery>
File:MET h1 1990.281.jpg|Female figure with elaborate coiffure and hairpins, West Bengal, India, 1st century BC
File:Chandraketugarth, epoca sunga, dea della fecondità, II-I sec. ac. 02.JPG|Female figure with elaborate hairpins in coiffure, India, 2nd-1st century BC.
File:Woman with a mirror, China, unearthed at Songjialin, Pixian, Sichuan, Eastern Han dynasty, 25-220 AD, ceramic - Sichuan Provincial Museum - Chengdu, China - DSC04768.jpg|Lady with a coiffure and mirror, China, 25-220 AD.
File:Admonitions Scroll Scene 7.jpg|Painted scroll with hairdressing scene, China, 6th-8th century.
File:Clevelandart 1962.32.jpg|Mayan royal woman with elaborate headdress, Mexico, circa 795.
</gallery>

===Roman Empire and Middle Ages===
Between 27 BC and 102 AD, in [[Roman Empire|Imperial Rome]], women wore their hair in complicated styles: a mass of curls on top, or in rows of waves, drawn back into [[Ringlet (haircut)|ringlets]] or [[Braid (hairstyle)|braid]]s. Eventually noble women's hairstyles grew so complex that they required daily attention from several enslaved people and a stylist in order to be maintained. The hair was often lightened using [[wood ash]], [[Calcium oxide|unslaked lime]] and [[sodium bicarbonate]], or darkened with copper filings, [[oak apple|oak-apples]] or [[leech]]es marinated in wine and vinegar.<ref name="adams1">{{cite book|last=Adams|first=David and Jacki Wadeson|title=The Art of Hair Colouring|year=1998|publisher=Cengage Publishing|isbn=978-1-86152-894-0|page=1}}</ref>  It was augmented by wigs, hairpieces and pads, and held in place by nets, pins, combs and pomade. Under the [[Byzantine Empire]], noblewomen covered most of their hair with silk caps and pearl nets.<ref name="yarwood216">{{cite book|last=Yarwood|first=Doreen|title=The Encyclopedia of World Costume|year=1978|publisher=Scribner|location=New York|isbn=0-517-61943-1|page=[https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofwo0000yarw_i6a3/page/216 216]|url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofwo0000yarw_i6a3/page/216}}</ref>

From the time of the Roman Empire{{citation needed|date=December 2014}} until the Middle Ages, most women grew their hair as long as it would naturally grow. It was normally styled through cutting, as women's hair was tied up on the head and covered on most occasions when outside the home by using a [[Snood (headgear)|snood]], [[kerchief]] or [[veil]]; for an adult woman to wear uncovered and loose hair in the street was often restricted to prostitutes. Braiding and tying the hair was common. In the 16th century, women began to wear their hair in extremely ornate styles, often decorated with pearls, precious stones, ribbons, and veils. Women used a technique called "lacing" or "taping," in which cords or ribbons were used to bind the hair around their heads.<ref name="sherrow2">{{cite book|last=Sherrow|first=Victoria|title=Encyclopedia of hair: a cultural history|year=2006|publisher=Greenwood|isbn=0-313-33145-6|page=[https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofha0000sher/page/2 2]|url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofha0000sher/page/2}}</ref> During this period, most of the hair was braided and hidden under [[wimple]]s, veils or [[kerchief|couvrechefs]]. In the later half of the 15th century and on into the 16th century, a very high hairline on the forehead was considered attractive, and wealthy women frequently plucked out hair at their temples and the napes of their necks, or used [[Chemical depilatory|depilatory cream]] to remove it, if it would otherwise be visible at the edges of their hair coverings.<ref>{{cite book|last=Davis|first=Natalie Zemon and Arlette Farge|title=A history of women in the west volume III: Renaissance and enlightenment paradoxes|year=1993|publisher=Belknap Press|isbn=978-0-674-40372-7|page=62}}</ref> Working-class women in this period wore their hair in simple styles.<ref name="sherrow2"/>

<gallery>
File:Romano-British Hair piece YORYM 1998 695.jpg|Romano-British hair piece with [[Jet (gemstone)|jet]] pins found in a lead coffin in [[Eboracum|Roman York]]
File:Portrait of young Roman woman.jpg|Late 1st century BC portrait of a Roman woman with an elaborate hairstyle found on the [[Via Latina]] in [[Ancient Rome|Rome]]
File:Busto de Vibia Sabina (M. Prado) 01.jpg|130 AD bust of [[Vibia Sabina]] with a hairband and center parting
</gallery>

===Early modern history===
====Male styles====
During the 15th and 16th centuries, European men wore their hair cropped no longer than shoulder-length, with very fashionable men wearing bangs or fringes. In Italy, it was common for men to dye their hair.<ref>{{cite book|last=Condra|first=Jill|title=The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Clothing through World History: Volume 2, 1501–1800|year=2007|publisher=Greenwood|isbn=978-0-313-33664-5|pages=45 and 72}}</ref> In the early 17th century male hairstyles grew longer, with waves or curls being considered desirable in upper-class European men.

The male wig was supposedly pioneered by King [[Louis XIII|Louis XIII of France]] (1601–1643) in 1624 when he had prematurely begun to bald.<ref>{{cite web|author=marcelgomessweden |url=http://thebeautifultimes.wordpress.com/tag/louis-xiii/ |title=Louis XIII « The Beautiful Times |publisher=Thebeautifultimes.wordpress.com |access-date=16 January 2013}}</ref> This fashion was largely promoted by his son and successor [[Louis XIV|Louis XIV of France]] (1638–1715) that contributed to its spread in [[Europe]]an and European-influenced countries. The [[beard]] had been in a long decline and now disappeared among the upper classes.

Perukes or periwigs for men were introduced into the English-speaking world with other French styles when [[Charles II of England|Charles II]] was [[Stuart Restoration|restored to the throne]] in 1660, following a lengthy exile in France. These wigs were shoulder-length or longer, imitating the long hair that had become fashionable among men since the 1620s. Their use soon became popular in the English court. The London diarist [[Samuel Pepys]] recorded the day in 1665 that a [[barber]] had shaved his head and that he tried on his new periwig for the first time, but in a year of [[Black Death|plague]] he was uneasy about wearing it:<blockquote>3rd September 1665: Up, and put on my coloured silk suit, very fine, and my new periwig, bought a good while since, but darst not wear it because the plague was in [[Westminster]] when I bought it. And it is a wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done as to periwigs, for nobody will dare to buy any hair for fear of the infection? That it had been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague.</blockquote>

Late 17th-century wigs were very long and wavy (see George I below), but became shorter in the mid-18th century, by which time they were normally white (George II). A very common style had a single stiff curl running round the head at the end of the hair. By the late 18th century the natural hair was often powdered to achieve the impression of a short wig, tied into a small tail or "queue" behind (George III).

Short hair for fashionable men was a product of the [[Neoclassicism|Neoclassical movement]]. Classically inspired male hair styles included the [[Bedford Crop]], arguably the precursor of most plain modern male styles, which was invented by the radical politician [[Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford]] as a protest against a [[Duty on Hair Powder Act 1795|tax on hair powder]]; he encouraged his friends to adopt it by betting them they would not. Another influential style (or group of styles) was named by the French "[[Titus haircut|coiffure à la Titus]]" after [[Lucius Junius Brutus|Titus Junius Brutus]] (not in fact the Roman Emperor [[Titus]] as often assumed), with hair short and layered but somewhat piled up on the crown, often with restrained quiffs or locks hanging down; variants are familiar from the hair of both [[Napoleon]] and [[George IV]]. The style was supposed to have been introduced by the actor [[François-Joseph Talma]], who upstaged his wigged co-actors when appearing in productions of works such as [[Voltaire]]'s ''[[Brutus (tragedy)|Brutus]]'' (about [[Lucius Junius Brutus]], who orders the execution of his son Titus). In 1799, a Parisian fashion magazine reported that even bald men were adopting Titus wigs,<ref>Hunt, Lynn, "Freedom of Dress in Revolutionary France", p. 243, in ''From the Royal to the Republican Body: Incorporating the Political in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France'', Editors: Sara E. Melzer, Kathryn Norberg, 1998, University of California Press, 1998, {{ISBN|978-0520208070}}</ref> and the style was also worn by women, the ''[[Journal de Paris]]'' reporting in 1802 that "more than half of elegant women were wearing their hair or wig ''à la Titus''".<ref>Rifelj, Carol De Dobay, ''Coiffures: Hair in Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Culture'', p. 35, 2010, University of Delaware Press, {{ISBN|978-0874130997}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=fFdBoGMJktgC Google Books]</ref>

In the early 19th century the male beard, and also [[moustache]]s and [[sideburns]], made a strong reappearance, associated with the [[Romanticism|Romantic movement]], and all remained very common until the 1890s, after which younger men ceased to wear them, with [[World War I]], when the majority of men in many countries saw military service, finally despatching the full beard except for older men retaining the styles of their youth, and those affecting a [[Bohemianism|Bohemian]] look. The short military-style moustache remained popular.

====Female styles====
[[File:Hals, Frans - Singing Girl - 1626-30.png|thumb|Low "messy" bun in an everyday domestic context in 17th-century Holland. [[Girl Singing (Hals)|''Girl Singing'' by Frans Hals]], about 1628]] [[File:Marie-Antoinette, 1775 - Musée Antoine Lécuyer.jpg|thumb|[[Marie Antoinette]] with pouf hairstyle]]
[[File:Hopi woman dressing hair of unmarried girl.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Hopi]] woman dressing hair, ca. 1900]]

From the 16th to the 19th century, European women's hair became more visible while their hair coverings grew smaller, with both becoming more elaborate, and with hairstyles beginning to include ornamentation such as flowers, ostrich plumes, ropes of pearls, jewels, ribbons and small crafted objects such as replicas of ships and windmills.<ref name="sherrow2"/><ref>{{cite book|last=Sherrow|first=Victoria|title=For Appearance' Sake: The Historical Encyclopedia of Good Looks, Beauty, and Grooming|year=2001|publisher=Greenwood|isbn=978-1-57356-204-1|page=[https://archive.org/details/forappearancesak00sher/page/143 143]|url=https://archive.org/details/forappearancesak00sher/page/143}}</ref> Bound hair was felt to be symbolic of propriety: loosening one's hair was considered immodest and sexual, and sometimes was felt to have supernatural connotations.<ref>{{cite book|last=Condra|first=Jill|title=The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Clothing Through World History: 1501–1800|year=2007|publisher=Greenwood|isbn=978-0-313-33664-5|page=149}}</ref> Red hair was popular, particularly in England during the reign of the red-haired [[Elizabeth I]], and women and aristocratic men used [[borax]], [[Potassium nitrate|saltpeter]], [[saffron]] and [[sulfur]] powder to dye their hair red, making themselves nauseated and giving themselves headaches and nosebleeds.<ref name="adams1"/><ref>{{cite book|last=Sherrow|first=Victoria|title=For Appearance' Sake: The Historical Encyclopedia of Good Looks, Beauty, and Grooming|year=2001|publisher=Greenwood|isbn=978-1-57356-204-1|url=https://archive.org/details/forappearancesak00sher}}</ref> During this period in Spain and Latin cultures, women wore lace [[mantilla]]s, often worn over a high comb,<ref name="sherrow2"/><ref>{{cite book|last=Keyes|first=Jean|title=A history of women's hairstyles,1500–1965|year=1967|publisher=Methuen|asin=B0000CNN46}}</ref>  and in [[Buenos Aires]], there developed a fashion for extremely large tortoise-shell hair combs called [[peinetón]], which could measure up to three feet in height and width, and which are said by historians to have reflected the growing influence of France, rather than Spain, upon Argentinians.<ref>{{cite book|last=Root|first=Regina A.|title=The Latin American fashion reader (Dress, Body, Culture)|year=2005|publisher=Berg Publishers|isbn=978-1-85973-893-1|page=33}}</ref>

In the middle of the 18th century the [[pouf]] style developed, with women creating volume in the hair at the front of the head, usually with a pad underneath to lift it higher, and ornamented the back with seashells, pearls or gemstones. In 1750, women began dressing their hair with perfumed pomade and powdering it white. Just before World War I, some women began wearing silk turbans over their hair.<ref name="sherrow2"/>

====Japan====
In the early 1870s, in a shift that historians attribute to the influence of the West,<ref>{{cite journal|last=O'Brien|first=Suzanne G.|title=Splitting Hairs: History and the Politics of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century Japan|journal=The Journal of Asian Studies|date=10 November 2008|volume=67|issue=4|pages=1309–1339|doi=10.1017/S0021911808001794|s2cid=145239880|url=http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=23FA96F632BC198005F26BFA146E96BA.tomcat1?fromPage=online&aid=2541948|access-date=19 September 2011}}</ref> Japanese men began cutting their hair into styles known as {{Transliteration|ja|jangiri}} or {{Transliteration|ja|zangiri}} (which roughly means "random cropping").<ref name="slade2010">{{cite book|last=Slade|first=Toby|title=Japanese Fashion: a Cultural History|year=2010|publisher=Berg Publishers|isbn=978-1-84788-252-3}}</ref> During this period, Japanese women were still wearing [[nihongami|traditional hairstyles]] held up with [[kanzashi|combs, pins, and sticks]] crafted from tortoise, metal, wood and other materials,<ref name="sherrow2"/> but in the middle 1880s, upper-class Japanese women began pushing back their hair in the Western style (known as {{Transliteration|ja|sokuhatsu}}), or adopting Westernized versions of traditional Japanese hairstyles (these were called {{Transliteration|ja|yakaimaki}}, or literally, "soirée chignon").<ref name="slade2010"/>

===Inter-war years===
[[File:Rudolph Valentino.jpg|thumb|upright|Movie star [[Rudolph Valentino]]]]

During the First World War, women around the world started to shift to shorter hairstyles that were easier to manage. After WWI women started for to [[Bob cut|bob]], [[Bob cut|shingle]] and [[Pixie cut|crop]] their hair, often covering it with small head-hugging [[Cloche hat|cloche]] hats. In Korea, the bob was called {{Transliteration|ko|tanbal}}.<ref>{{cite book|last=Jun Yoo|first=Theodore|title=The politics of gender in colonial Korea: education, labor, and health, 1910–1945|year=2008|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-25288-2|page=76}}</ref> In Europe and the US the bob was seen as a step towards women's liberation.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Roberts |first=Mary Louise |date=June 1993 |title=Samson and Delilah Revisited: The Politics of Women's Fashion in 1920s France |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2167545 |journal=The American Historical Review |volume=98 |issue=3 |pages=657–684 |doi=10.2307/2167545 |jstor=2167545 }}</ref> Women began [[marcelling]] their hair, creating deep waves in it using heated scissor irons. Durable [[Perm (hairstyle)|permanent waving]] became popular also in this period:<ref name=WDL>{{cite web|title=Women Getting their Hair Done at the Chez Marie Beauty Shop|url=http://www.wdl.org/en/item/4026|publisher=[[World Digital Library]]|access-date=8 February 2013}}</ref> it was an expensive, uncomfortable and time-consuming process, in which the hair was put in [[Hair roller|curlers]] and inserted into a steam or dry heat machine. During the 1930s women began to wear their hair slightly longer, in [[pageboy]]s, bobs or waves and curls.<ref name="yarwood216"/>

During the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese women began wearing their hair in a style called {{Transliteration|ja|mimi-kakushi}} (literally, "ear hiding"), in which hair was pulled back to cover the ears and tied into a bun at the nape of the neck. Waved or curled hair became increasingly popular for Japanese women throughout this period, and permanent waves, though controversial, were extremely popular. Bobbed hair also became more popular for Japanese women, mainly among actresses and {{Transliteration|ja|[[Modern girl|moga]]}}, or "cut-hair girls," young Japanese women who followed Westernized fashions and lifestyles in the 1920s.<ref name="slade2010" />

During this period, Western men began to wear their hair in ways popularized by movie stars such as [[Douglas Fairbanks Jr.]] and [[Rudolph Valentino]]. Men wore their hair short, and either parted on the side or in the middle, or combed straight back, and used [[pomade]], creams and [[Hair conditioner|tonics]] to keep their hair in place. At the beginning of the Second World War and for some time afterwards, men's haircuts grew shorter, mimicking the military [[Crew cut|crewcut]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Peterson|first=Amy T. and Ann T. Kellogg|title=The Greenwood encyclopedia of clothing through American history|year=2008|publisher=Greenwood|isbn=978-0-313-35855-5|page=278}}</ref>

===Post-war years===

After the war, women started to wear their hair in softer, more natural styles. In the early 1950s women's hair was generally curled and worn in a variety of styles and lengths. In the later 1950s, high [[bouffant]] and [[Beehive (hairstyle)|beehive]] styles, sometimes nicknamed [[Beehive (hairstyle)|B-52s]] for their similarity to the bulbous noses of the [[Boeing B-52 Stratofortress|B-52 Stratofortress]] bomber, became popular.<ref>{{cite book |author=Patrick, Bethanne |author2=John Thompson |title=An Uncommon History of Common Things|year=2009|publisher=National Geographic|isbn=978-1-4262-0420-3|page=206|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bcaXzXPP8ooC&pg=PA303}}</ref>  During this period many women washed and set their hair only once a week, and kept it in place by wearing [[Hair iron|curlers]] every night and reteasing and respraying it every morning.<ref>{{cite book|last=Craats|first=Rennay|title=History of the 1960s|year=2001|publisher=Weigl Publishers|isbn=978-1-930954-29-8|page=15}}</ref>  In the 1960s, many women began to wear their hair in short modern cuts such as the [[pixie cut]], while in the 1970s, hair tended to be longer and looser. In both the 1960s and 1970s many men and women wore their hair very long and straight.<ref name="Yarwood 1978 220">{{cite book|last=Yarwood|first=Doreen|author-link=Doreen Yarwood|title=The Encyclopedia of World Costume|year=1978|publisher=Scribner|location=New York|isbn=0-517-61943-1|page=[https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofwo0000yarw_i6a3/page/220 220]|url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofwo0000yarw_i6a3/page/220}}</ref> Long, natural hair was also worn due to the emergence of [[Counterculture of the 1960s|counterculture]] movements such as that of the [[hippie]]s who used such styles to symbolize their opposition to the norm. From the 1950s onward, various groups have pushed the norms for hairstyles as symbols of their unique ideology or identity. The [[Skinhead]]s, who opposed the hippies, shaved off much of their hair. The [[Punk subculture|punks]] of the later 1970s, meanwhile, wanted to cause outrage, styling their hair in unique ways (such as the [[Mohawk hairstyle|mohawk]]) and dyeing it in unnatural shades.<ref name=":0" /> Women straightened their hair through chemical straightening processes, by ironing their hair at home with a [[clothes iron]], or by rolling it up with large empty soda cans while wet.<ref>{{cite book|last=Sherrow|first=Victoria|title=For Appearance' Sake: The Historical Encyclopedia of Good Looks, Beauty, and Grooming|year=2001|publisher=Greenwood|isbn=978-1-57356-204-1|page=[https://archive.org/details/forappearancesak00sher/page/144 144]|url=https://archive.org/details/forappearancesak00sher/page/144}}</ref>

[[File:Bantu Knots 2 - hairstyle - model Gwyneth Ellis.jpg|thumb|upright|Bantu Knots]]
[[File:Wild hair.jpg|thumb|right|Woman wearing a loose [[Afro]]]]
Since the 1960s and 1970s, women have worn their hair in a wide variety of styles. Part of this came from the "Black is Beautiful" movement which promoted the natural beauty of the Black population as opposed to what some considered a Eurocentric model. Some critics argue that straightening or relaxing African hair is trying to conform to a white standard of beauty. However, there are those that disagree with this belief. Nevertheless, Malcolm X advised against Black people straightening their hair for such reasons.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Patton |first=Tracy Owens |date=Summer 2006 |title=Hey Girl, Am I More than My Hair?: African American Women and their Struggles with Beauty, Body Image, and Hair |journal=National Women's Studies Association Journal |jstor=4317206 |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=21–51}}</ref> Black hair then became not only an act of beauty but an act of revolution.<ref name=":2" /> The Afro, specifically, was both fashionable and political in the 1960s onward.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Walker |first=Susannah |title=Style and Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920–1975 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |year=2007 |location=Lexington |page=179}}</ref> However, the Afro, or "the natural", as it was first called, was not originally a political choice, but a style favored by both artistic and intellectual Black communities in the 1940s and 1950s.<ref name=":3" />

===Contemporary hairstyles===
[[File:Ramon nomar.jpg|thumb|upright|Man with styled hair, 2011]]

The challenges to social norms for hair in the 1960s onward alongside the more accessible hair dyes allowed for a variation in hairstyles to emerge.<ref name=":0" />  In the contemporary world, women and men can choose from a broad range of hairstyles. But they are still expected to wear their hair in ways that conform to gender norms: in much of the world, men with long hair and women whose hair does not appear carefully groomed may face various forms of discrimination, including harassment, social shaming or workplace discrimination.<ref>{{cite book |last=Weitz |first=Rose |url=https://archive.org/details/rapunzelsdaughte00weit |title=Rapunzel's Daughters: What Women's Hair Tells Us About Women's Lives |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-374-24082-0}}</ref> This is somewhat less true of African-American men, who wear their hair in a variety of styles that overlap with those of African-American women, including [[box braids]] and [[cornrows]] fastened with rubber bands and dreadlocks.<ref>{{cite book |last=Banks |first=Ingrid |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780814713372 |title=Hair matters: beauty, power, and Black women's consciousness |publisher=NYU Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-8147-1337-2 |location=New York}}</ref>

In the 1980s, women pulled back their hair with [[scrunchie]]s, stretchy ponytail holders made from cloth over fabric bands. Women also often wear glittery ornaments today, as well as claw-style [[Hair clip|barrettes]] used to secure [[ponytail]]s and other upswept or partially upswept hairstyles.<ref name="sherrow2" />

The 1980s in America also were a time of noted turmoil between hair choices. Tensions arose particularly between hair choices from women of color, and the workplace as noted by court cases such as ''[[Rogers v. American Airlines (1981)|Rogers v. American Airlines]]'' which upheld employers rights to ban certain hairstyles in the workplace, notably braided hairstyles. Additional instances of USPS, hotel chains, police departments and another industries banning hairstyles common within the Black American community such as braids, colored hair, and dreadlocks from the workplace during this period.<ref name=":2" />