"It's short for ... Bob."*

Well, yesterday I interrupted my normally scheduled program of revising my dissertation for a couple of hours to go see my hair stylist at the Aveda salon (and a trip to the grocery).  I really, really like my stylist, and I completely trust her with color and scissors, and she rocked the hell out of my wedding updo, so I'll be grateful to her forever (or at least whenever I thumb through my wedding album).  When I went in, I told her that I either wanted to continue with the coppery highlights and get a sling bob, or to go brown and get a pixie.  I asked her opinion, and did mention that I'm not sure I'll have time to get my hair cut again before my defense, and she fell in with the majority of those who voted on my poll a couple of weeks ago.  So we went with the bob.

It was pretty windy when I got home, but my photographer managed to get a couple of good shots of my casual outfit for work and errands and my hair.¹

 1. Dress - BCBG (old)

Tights - We Love Colors

Cardi - August Silk (remixed)

Flats - Steve Madden (remixed)

I do feel like this style is more me -- part chic and part tomboy.  Interestingly, though, as I was flipping through some recent magazines while at the salon, I noticed that almost all the celebrities and models featured had long hair.  From 2005 (when I last cut long hair short) and up until this year, I've had very few female students with hair shorter than mine.  I could count them on one hand.  My favorite show LOST features no female characters with hair shorter than shoulder length.  Indeed, Sun's hair grew several inches during the first 50 days on the island....  It's refreshing to see more of a variety of hair styles among female style bloggers, but I can't help but wonder if most women don't still consider their hair their "crowning glory."

In the 1920s, women asked themselves the question of whether or not to bob their hair.  Trips to the barber (women's hairstylists were late to the cutting game) sometimes ended with angry parents, broken engagements, or divorces and wrecked homes, as women had their tresses clipped.  Of course, many of these women or "flappers" also drank, smoked, danced, drove cars, went to jazz clubs, and to petting parties. The term flapper itself was a derrogatory one, possibly originating from the word flap, a seventeenth-century English word for prostitute, or possibly refering to a young bird.  But let's get back to hair.²  Do you or do you know people who still associate short hair on women with subversion, sexual permissiveness, or even as a marker of sexuality?

2. Please note that I'm not a specialist in modern American history.  On flappers see, Angela Latham, Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers of the American 1920s (2000) and Liz Conor, The Spectacular Modern Woman: Feminine Visibility in the 1920s (2004).

* Black Adder II "Bells"  -- If you like Monty Python, I highly recommend the Black Adder series.  It's some funny shit.