“BOBBING PARLOURS.”

Shannon News, 27 January 1925, Page 1

“BOBBING PARLOURS.”

THE BARBER AND THE BOBBED. MAN MAY CUT, BUT TIME ‘MUST GROW. A barber recently interveiwed —not an ordinary barber, but a man especi-* ally cunning in his craft and said also to have been the first to "bob” a feminine head —believes that women with lonj hair will soon be noticeably exceptional. The predictioi& suggests a possibilty, lor things as strange have happened; and in this light what might otherwise seem too trivial for serious consideration becomes an r opportunity to observe in progress one of those changes that appear so remarkable when recorded in history. So we know, for example, that in one age men went daintily curled and in another neatly pigtailed, says a leader writer in the Christian Science Monitor. Women, as it seems by a cursory examination of the antiquarian’s reports, whatever else they have done with their hair, have never before had it materially shortened.

But what seemed yesterday a temper, ary and departing fad has returned as a widening fashion threatening to become a universal habit.

One is surprised to find that Professor Teufelsdrockh has nothing to say about heads and barbers, for, although “bobbing” was unknown when Carlyle wrote “Sartor Besartus,” heads are'dnseparable from bodies, and a Philosophy of Clothes would seem to need at least a chapter on the philosophy of head-dressing to make it complete. Head and body, so to speak, have gone hand in hand in pursuit of new fashions; and women by wearing their hair long had always more material to work with and. could on occasion produce more startling effects than men. But it is an essential quality of a fashion that it can be easily changed; and whoever comes bobbed from the bobbing- parlour has given up a superiority in this matter and accepted a physical fact and man-like handicap. The barber might hang up a motto:

Man may cut; but Time must grow. ■ Man is quick;but Time is slow. If your hair is bobbed to-day. Short for long it, has to stay. In return, says the eminent barber, the bobbed gain a new freedom —and in his own establishment 3500 of them a week, he says, are enjoying this happiness. Already, lie tells the interviewer, 90 per cent, of the young women of our time, and .50 per cent, of their elders are bobbed. His enthusiasm may exaggerate, but the average man, looking about him as he goes to his toil, will be surprised at the number of bobbed heads actually visible. He may even be surprised to find that he is not surprised;that he has, without knowing it, been getting used to a new era. He may even remember an Aunt Eliza w T ho was considered eccentric •though otherwise an admirable women, because she wore her hair short. And however he feels about it, ; nothing will be changed by his personal emotions. The change (to use a figure which seems absurd though ■correct) is on foot; it marches; the Goddess of Liberty, delineated by an artist in 1954, will perhaps have short hair. And if that happens, hardly anybody in 1954, will care a rap. People will consider the long hair of the past as quaint. And one may express this conviction without in the least taking sides in the present controversy- as to whether bobbed hair is desirable.