Nevertheless, She Wore It by Ann Shen

Author:Ann Shen [Shen, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 2020-09-02T16:00:00+00:00

After the popularity of bobs faded in the 1920s, interest resurged in 1953 when Audrey Hepburn cropped off her long royal hair as Princess Ann in Roman Holiday. In the scene where Ann scandalizes a hairdresser by asking for shorter and shorter hair, the pixie cut was born. Soon, Leslie Caron followed suit in An American in Paris—a scandalous choice by the actor, who cropped off her own hair when her stylist refused to do it. In 1957, actor Jean Seberg cut her hair super short to play Joan of Arc and grew it out just a touch for the French New Wave classic Breathless. Mia Farrow surprised everyone on her show Peyton Place with a home-cropped pixie, and it sent the studio into a mad frenzy. Farrow wrote: “I didn’t ask for permission because I knew I wouldn’t get it,” and had to publicly apologize for her choice. She later became famous for her pixie cut in Rosemary’s Baby.

Finally, in the early 1960s, Vidal Sassoon invented the five-point cut—a short women’s style that models like Twiggy and Edie Sedgwick made all the rage for trendy young girls. Even after the hairstyle was embraced by the fashion world and normalized in society, pixie cuts remained a statement of independence that often garnered unsolicited public reaction. Look to Keri Russell’s infamous cut on season 2 of Felicity, which became a cautionary tale—many correlated her unpopular short hair with a major ratings drop the show never recovered from.

The controversy of short hair on women continues to this day, and it’s because long hair is seen as a symbol of fertility and femininity—the two roles that society is most comfortable with women playing. In 2009, Elle magazine ran an article about how pixie cuts affect a woman’s ability to find love because men prefer princess hair (who cares?!). In 2017, Katy Perry had to make a public statement about her newly bleached-blond pixie, saying that she not only wanted to shed the old Katy but also to “feel so liberated from all the things that don’t serve me.”

Every time a woman gets a pixie cut, she’s reclaiming her power and reminding society that we hold our own liberation through our choices.

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