"BOBBING PARLOURS"

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 154, 27 December 1924, Page 5

"BOBBING PARLOURS"

THE BARBER AND THE BOBBED

MAN MAY CUT, BUT TIME' MUST

GROW.

A barber recently interviewed—not an ordinary barber, but a man especially cunning in his craft and said also to have been the first to "bob" a feminine head—believes that women with long hair will soon bo noticeably exceptional. The prediction suggests a possibility, for things as strange have happened; and in this light what might otherwise seem too trivial for serious consideration becomes an: opportunity to observe in progress ons 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 antiquarians' reports, whatever else they have done with their hair, have never before had it materially shortened. But what seemed yesterday a temporary 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 «ay about heads and barberß, for, although " bobbing " was unknown when Carlyle wrote " Sartor Resartus," heads are inseparable from bodies, and a Philosophy of Clothes would seem to need, at least a chapter on the philosophy of headdressing to make it complete. Head and body,'so-to speak, have gone hand m 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 i« 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 manlike handicap. The barber might hang up a motto:

. Man may cut; but Time mu6t grow. ..- Man is quick; but Time i» slow. II *°u. r 6air i 8 bobbed to-day • Short for long it hat to stay. -^In_ return, gays the eminent barber, the bobbed gain a new freedom—and in his own establishment 3500 of them a week, he «ays, are enjoying this happiness. Already, he tells the interviewer, 90 per cent: of the.young women of our tvn «> 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' daily 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 h« has, without knowing it, been getting used to a new era. He may even remember an Aunt Eliza who was considered eccentric, though otherwise an admirable woman, because she wore her hair'short. And ■ however he feefc, 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,■ delineatedby an artist m 1954, will perhaps have short hair. ."■•-■•■ ; ■■■; • :

• AS^4 if M? at haPPeM» 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 withput in the least taking sides in the present controversy as to whether bobbed hair is desirable. :'.<■■