Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!


Take a moment. Wherever you are - sipping your oat-milk skinny latte in a high street café, squashed up and perspiring in a crowded train, tram or bus, staggering round a supermarket with a loaded trolley, sitting studiously in a library…….. wherever you are, take a moment to glance around and check how many women are sporting short hairstyles. And if you spot a carefully trimmed bob or pixie-cut, is the proud owner a younger woman? Probably not.


What’s going on? Have the iconic styles of Audrey Hepburn, Mary Quant and Tilda Swinton all disappeared? Is there a new and secret ponytail mandate that is being communicated through a clandestine social media platform? Or is it simply that hardly any one under 50 can afford to get a haircut these days?


It creeps up on you, this realisation that long hair is now a la mode. And it’s only when you see a large group of young women together that you notice it. To be fair, teachers, sports coaches and nightclub managers have probably been aware for some time, but for the rest of us, it takes a major event to open our eyes to this interesting phenomenon. The major event happening in July is, of course, the football – yes, the women’s football, the Euro 25 championships, where the ponytail reigns supreme, and where the manufacturers of elastic bands and scrunchies dare to dream about vast profits. We will return to the ponytail craze later but first let’s consider long hair in some kind of context.

Myths and legends

The mystical, magical and alluring nature of long hair goes back for ever. The flowing locks of goddesses, sirens, she-devils, and heroines haunt myths and legends. Harionago is a beautiful but terrifying Japanese woman whose long black hair is tipped with barbs with which she traps men. Sif, the golden-haired wife of Thor is linked with fertility and abundance, and Mami Wata, the African water goddess, symbolises wealth. Aphrodite is associated with lust, love and passion. Nearer home, we have an affection for mermaids, each clutching her mirror and comb as hair cascades over her breasts towards her fishy tail.

Long hair is a common feature in fairytales. In The Little Goose Girl, for example:
‘when they came to the meadow, she sat down and unbound her hair which was of pure gold.’ 
Snow White, who has ‘hair as black as ebony’ is handed a poisoned comb by the wicked queen, and as for Goldilocks’, well, the clue is in her name.

The tales from the brothers Grimm are generally a bit weird and often gruesome. Rapunzel is no exception. It has been sanitised and Disneyfied over the years, but the powerful image of the young woman imprisoned in a tower by a sorceress, who calls ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your hair’ before climbing up it, is unforgettable. Interestingly, Anne Sexton (a friend and rival of Sylvia Plath) produced a compelling poem, also titled Rapunzel, focusing on obsessive love and the terrible disruption caused by the arrival of the handsome prince: ‘Like a chameleon he hid himself among the trees / And watched the witch ascend the swinging hair’ .

The Rapunzel story brings together two images – long hair and a woman locked in a tower- images that recur in history, myth, literature and art. Arthurian legend is packed with long haired women like Guinevere and Morgan Le Fay. In Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shallot, the lady escapes from her tower and dies as she floats down the river towards Camelot, (some feminist readings see this as an act of female empowerment!) The poem generated several paintings, particularly by the PreRaphaelites, who were always partial to long hair, especially if it was red.

Cleopatra? The Sutherland Sisters? Frieda Kahlo?

Long hair has always been a source of fascination. Images of Cleopatra suggest that she possessed a number of wigs to maintain her iconic look. In fact you can easily buy one for yourself on the internet for a few quid. Books, articles and videos give detailed information about hair fashions like the pompadour, the frontange and the chignon, as well as handy hints on the use of lappets and feronniéres, should you be in any doubt about what they actually are. If you wish to adopt papillotte curls, Frieda Kahlo braids or Princess Leia space buns, you can be sure that there is a practical tutorial waiting for you somewhere.

There are intriguing descriptions of women who never had their hair trimmed. The Seven Sutherland Sisters, a 19th Century American singing group, all had hair that touched the ground- or so it appears from the photographs of them appearing in Barnum and Baileys ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ and when advertising their patent hairgrowth products.

As paintings and photographs show us, different ways of keeping hair back from the face have been ingenious and varied. Wimples, veils, topknots, French pleats, cornrows, plaits and many others have all been on trend at one time or another. Of course there are situations – practical, religious, sanitary, and so on – where hair may be required to be tied back and kept off the face. And we should also never forget that in some places, covering of the hair (and even the face) is brutally enforced – in Afghanistan for example.

Once you start looking at the history of hairstyles, a hundred little rabbit holes appear, all tempting you to explore them. However, we should probably return to the event that started all this – the Women’s Euro 25 Championships and the popularity of the ponytail.

Ponytails reign supreme

There is an interesting article by Emmie Cosgrave in The London Runway.
 
She relates the history of the ponytail and how it has been a feature for both men and women in different cultures over hundreds of years. We often associate the rise of the ponytail with the dirndl skirts and bobbysox of 1950s America, but it has a longer and more distinguished history than that.
 
Today the ponytail is particularly popular with sportswomen. Is this simply a matter of being practical, or is it because most young women today don’t favour short hair? Perhaps it’s both. We are currently noticing its dominance in the Euro 25 women’s football, but a quick look at women’s rugby and cricket teams reveals the same thing. There are very few examples of short hair.

But in the end, who cares? It’s always intriguing to look at trends in fashion, but they come and go. We should really be concentrating on the football. Everything might be completely different by the time the next championships come around, so perhaps we should look at the team managers to predict the next style. These are remarkable women, women to be reckoned with, and they both have long hair. Who will prevail - Montse Tomé with her black topknot and serious, focused face, or Sarina Wiegman with her blonde ponytail and piercing, gritty stare?
 
Whatever happens we can celebrate – for doesn’t it feel good when stereotypes are being smashed in front of us by these clever, resilient women?

Let’s hope we are seeing the end of those golden-haired princesses locked away in towers!


JULY UPDATE ON THE MK FAWCETT CAMPAIGN FOR A SAFER, HEALTHIER, FAIRER MILTON KEYNES

  • The update of background papers with baseline evidence of the need for making MK Safer, Healthier and Fairer, will be ready to disseminate in the Autumn.
  • We are planning to meet with our three Milton Keynes MPs again in October; they have all shown support for the manifesto 
  • All political parties who may stand candidates in next year’s local elections have been reminded of the importance of seeking, and supporting, women candidates
  • We continue to engage with MKCC officers over the draft Domestic Abuse strategy
  • In September we will be attending a meeting at the Centre for Protecting Women Online (CPWO) to discuss the opportunities to develop a SafeCity project in Milton Keynes, led by the Red Dot Foundation 
  • We will also represent MK Fawcett at the first annual conference of the CPWO in September at the Open University campus 
  • We have met with the Deputy Head of Communications and Engagement at MK Hospital for an update on the new build Women and Children’s ward
  • We are now regularly attending and reporting on the stakeholder events arranged by the BLMK Women’s Health Network to better understand what advances in service provision are being made to address inequality in women’s health
  • MKF now has a Linkedin presence as well as BlueSky (@fawcettmk.bsky.social). Please follow us on these platforms as well as at www.fawcettmk.org.uk
  • We were thrilled to welcome Penny East, the new CEO of the Fawcett Society to a recent group meeting for a constructive discussion on support for our local work
  • We will continue to promote the manifesto campaign and encourage people to become more involved with the political process.


Location: Milton Keynes, UK

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