Great Hair of the 20th Century

The 20th Century was not the Great Age of Hair, but it did include the widespread use of the camera, so it can be thought of as the Great Age of Recorded Hair. This was a age of Wildroot Creme Oil, Brylcreme, and, ultimately, Dippety Doo, the father of mousse. King C. Gillette invented the safety razor and men no longer had to worry about lopping off a nose or a cheekbone while shaving, so the early part of the century was a notably clean-shaven age. And by the end of the century hair transplants, Rogaine and Hair Club for Men allowed people to put it on, while Nair and electrolysis allowed them to take it off. Truly this was the Age of Plenty!
 
After the horrors of the First World War people just wanted to have fun. The Twenties were the Jazz Age. It was a time of boot-leg hootch, racoon coats, saxophones, the Model T, boop-boop-a-doop and grand adventure. The epitome of the age was the Flapper, with her bobbed hair and her mischievous smile.

Gents affected the Lounge Lizard look, with hair neatly trimmed and slicked back. Hair wasn't expected to move, not even after a vigorous Charleston.
All that changed with the 30s, after the market crashed. There were breadlines and Hoovervilles to contend with. Where the flapper would use a dab of pomade to add sheen to her hair, during the Great Depression that precious commodity was unavailable except to the rich. Others had to make due with mayonnaise. And some were so poor they couldn't afford any hair at all.
Things weren't much better for the gents in the 1940s. With the nation at war there wasn't any time for such fripperies as hair styling. Cut it short, a dab of Wildroot Creme Oil, and off to battle.

The ladies, on the other hand, were left with nothing to do but build B-17s and Sherman tanks. With the economy in war production mode, they had the disposable income to dispense with mayonnaise and invest in some real hair care products. And with the nastiness and uncertainty of the world around them at war, there was a desire for real glamour.
The lovely and talented Elvis set the tone of the Hair of the Fifties. A becoming pompadour (named after the Madame of the same name), slicked back severely on the sides with liberal applications of Brylcreme, this confection terminated at the nape of the neck in a becoming V-shape known as a Ducktail (named, of course, after Fernando Ducktail). In his earlier years, the King added the embellishment of long burnsides sideburns, named after the civil war general of almost the same name.

For the ladies there were a variety of styles, including the bee-hive, named after the structure of the same shape and general texture. Held in place with heavy applications of hair spray, wax or shellac, the beehive was both a symbol of femininity and a formidable weapon.
The Sixties were the era of long hair.As long as the hippies were wearing their hair long and bein' against war and stuff, Black people decided they wanted to do it, too. Hippy hair hung down, Black people's hair went in every direction. This was known as the Afro.

This looked so neat that white people started getting perms so they could have Afros, too. But then Michael Jackson turned white, so Black people decided maybe they'd do corn rows instead.
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