A row of British women sitting under hairdryers in a Paris salon

A Short History of Hairdryers

The beauty parlor became a place of sociability for women in the twentieth century, partly aided by modern technology of hair drying.
Idealized Portrait of a Woman (allegedly Simonetta Vespucci) by Sandro Botticelli

The Renaissance Lets Its Hair Down

The notion that everybody was going to be hairless in Heaven may not have sat well with Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli.
Kuan Yin and Attendants, 1368

Hair Embroidery as Women’s Buddhist Practice

In late imperial China, it was a devotional art using hairs plucked from devotees' own heads.
A man with well-groomed hair

Why Some Men Go to Salons for Haircuts

The difference between a clipper cut at the barber shop and "pampering" at the salon has roots in gender ideology and class structure.
Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia by Michiel Jansz. van Miereveldt

The Afterlife of Royal Hair

Whether worn as a lovelock or set in elaborate jewelry, the clipped-off hair of Kings and Queens outlived the monarchs themselves.
A woman with natural hair

How Natural Black Hair at Work Became a Civil Rights Issue

On the 55th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, U.S. courts are still divided about African Americans’ right to wear their natural hair in the workplace.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Memorial_jewellery_made_from_human_hair_in_a_case.jpg

Why Victorians Loved Hair Relics

Victorians were mesmerized by the hair of the dead -- which reveals something about about how they saw life.
Beatles hair 1963

The High School Hair Wars of the 1960s

Following the introduction of the mop top by the Beatles, the battle over how long school boys could wear their hair in the 1960s and 1970s went to the courts again and again.
Rev. Cotton Mather

A Puritan War on Wigs

In colonial New England, moral quandaries were everywhere. A surprisingly big one in the 17th and 18th century was whether it was okay to wear a wig.
Presidential facial hair

The Meaning of a Mustache

To shave or not to shave? At the start of the twentieth century, a trend away from facial hair reflected dramatic social and economic shifts.