Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Why is it that for most of the 20th century men had short hair, while in the 19th, Oscar Wilde had long hair?

This has been bugging me for a while.


Anyone have any ideas?Why is it that for most of the 20th century men had short hair, while in the 19th, Oscar Wilde had long hair?
Well, Oscar Wilde was always involved in counter-culture and contrarianism, and you can't rely on him in order to make assumptions of Victorian culture. In the centuries immediately prior to the 19th, men, especially those of higher birth, were the ones with long hair and who tended to dress up in very elaborate outfits involving stockings, mantles and whatnot. The change occurred with the transformation of society for one based on agriculture to one based on industrialism during the 19th century due to the graduate improvement in production efficiency.





Now, this might not seem to have much to do with it, but it does indeed! The industrialisation of society facilitated the movement of people from the country into the city, and as the men began to work long hours, it fell upon the women to do the food shopping for the family while the husband worked. The women became the consumers, while the men became the producers, and so fashion changed, from the elaborate outfits of enlightenment, to the suits of the 19th and 20th centuries. The short hair, more practical in working conditions, soon became the norm among males of both the working classes and the higher classes, while the women, who in the centuries prior would have stayed at home, began to shop and care more for their appearance.





So where does Mr. Wilde fit into this?





Naturally, Oscar Wilde was one who wouldn't be so ready to conform to such changes, being a man of the arts, a man who believed in 'l'art pour l'art', a man who enjoyed nothing more than ridiculing the practicality and the sexual conservatism of the Victorian English. His long hair just happens to be a symptom of his personality. He was in the minority, long hair on men was out of style in society at large, and no society was so gaudy as the Victorians, whose gaudiness persisted into the post-modern period and continues to do so even today.





Though, some could claim some sort of aesthetic pleasure from short hair, by and large, men have short hair because it is more acceptable than long hair precisely due to this changeover during the 19th century. Of course, all of this has been blurred since the counter-cultures of the 1960s.





Oscar Wilde was, in many respects, ahead of his time, both intellectually, aesthetically and, most importantly, culturally.

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