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The Hairy Gender Gap
However hair is styled, it says something about gender. Let’s take a look at recent Western history.
Men and women both have long hair, but…
In the 18th-century men and women both kept their hair long — but women’s stylings were more elaborate and ornate, as with King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (as played by Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman, pictured here):
Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI
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Vain, Fashion-Obsessed Women
Women are silly creatures who worry their pretty little heads over fashion and vainly adorn themselves in color, lace and ruffles.
But maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe fashion, lace and ruffles are thought trivial because they are associated with women.
In fact, men were once fashionistas, too.
Many of our serious and revered Founding Fathers wore color, lace, ruffles, embroidered vests, and silk stockings with decorative garters. They also donned wigs, curled their hair and hired tutors to instruct them in the elegance of sitting, standing and gesturing.
Thomas Jefferson was particularly fastidious, his fashion sense costing him a pretty penny. Or, as historians Barbara Clark Smith and Kathy Peiss explain, Read the rest of this entry
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