How has queer hair shaped identity and culture throughout history? From the Eton Crop of the 1920s to trans hair as gender-affirming care today, this is a century of resistance told through hairstyles.
At Hairstory we believe one of the most emotional parts of your identity is your hair. The industry dialogue is dense with hair styling and maintenance, but we rarely talk about the identity of hair. We rarely talk about what textures and types we inherited and how to naturally wear them. For the next five minutes, we're talking about the history of hair.
The 1920s: Androgyny, the Eton Crop, and the Pansy Craze
Josephine Baker, a famous French and American singer, dancer and actress popularized the "Eton Crop" in the 1920s. The haircut was inspired by short cuts of male students at the Eton College of England. She wore a short, slick down cut held back by Brillatine, a pomade originally created for male grooming. While she used to help hold her hair in place during performances, using a male grooming product was an act of resistance. She coined the Eton Crop hairstyle for the flapper era and later made her own pomade called Bakerfix.
Baker helped invent androgyny unintentionally by means of practicality during her performances. She created perfectly round strands, or kiss curls, that were pasted around the hairline like vines. This spilled into the jazz era as flapper girls found this hairstyle especially practical for wearing their cloche hats.
Around the same time Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness explored the short-haired masculine-presenting women as gender transgression. While the Eton Crop set the precedent for bobs, movements around queer women were surfacing, coining terms like the "Boston marriage" cuts which codified a long-term lasting relationship between two women, some of the earliest representations of how hair was a language for the queer community.
Once hair became a language, queer communities realized wigs were an entry point to theater and burlesque. That insertion became grammar for drag. And then they were queens.
The roaring twenties kicked off the celebration of a new identity: men in wigs. Harlem was home to many men who performed in drag balls, predominantly at the Hamilton Lodge which kicked off the Pansy Craze. LGBTQIA+ folks started taking their wigs and performance to other corners of the city like Greenwich Village and Times Square. Their performances as drag queens were like a cheat code to self-expression. While being gay wasn't socially accepted, drag and cabaret performances were widely attended.
One of the first openly gay performers during the Jazz age was Jean Malin. Malin helped create the Pansy Craze as he took the stage in many performances both as a gay man and as a drag queen. He was one of the highest paid performers on Broadway in the 30s and performed at Greenwich Village nightclubs. He'd dress in full drag and in effeminate tuxedos with short blonde Eton cropped styled hair, incorporating finger waves and feminizing popular male-presenting looks on television and the stage. He earned his title as the Queen of the pansies, so when he suddenly died, the pansy-culture went with it.
During the late 1930s, feminist, activist and painter Frida Kahlo's art emerged. Her cultural aesthetic turned heads with elaborate updos and signature flowers in her hair. She also wore colorful ribbons and a unibrow. Her hair was deeply connected to her personal identity and resistance to conformity. Her unibrow was tied to her Mexican heritage as unibrows are often viewed as a symbol of beauty and power. The same way her self-portraits were a work of art, her hair became a self-portrait itself. Her signature braided updos represented the talent of nonconformists.
The 1950s: Butch, Femme, and Hair as a Sexuality Signifier
As the postwar atmosphere pushed queer life underground, subcultures were forming rebellions through butch and femme culture. Hair became a sexuality signifier in working-class lesbian bars as women wore "duck's ass" cuts, a popular greased-hairstyle in the 50s that greasers were wearing, but now women were. Hair, in this example, was a behavior code as it was essentially a badge of their sexuality.
Writers like Joan Nestle and Leslie Feinberg were using their writing to document how butch hairstyles were acts of political defiance. Hair was becoming a reaction to police criminalizing queer folk through anti-masquerade law, requiring individuals to wear a minimum amount of gender-appropriate clothing.
During the 1960s and 1970s, gay liberation and the Black power movement overlapped into how natural-textured hair is understood and received. Through this bridge, activism was championed through an intersectional approach. The Afro was a point of contention against industry standards of eurocentric chemically and product-heavy styled hair. It was a visual rejection of societal norms, a civil rights movement and a declaration of self-love in the face of white supremacy.
The Stonewall Inn became centric to the city's revolution of sexuality and identity, and after the violent riot in 1969, communities were empowered to advocate for gay rights. These efforts were led by figures like Marsha P. Johnson, and artfully demonstrated through androgynous figures like David Bowie, and Prince.
You could spot Johnson's elaborate flower crowns, direct rejections of societal norms in the face of homophobia and transphobia as she was a strong advocate for transgender individuals. She wore voluminous curly afros and wigs in blonde and brunette colors. Her flower crowns were statements of joy and pride, similar to the floral aesthetic of Frida Kahlo.
Icons like David Bowie achieved their alter egos and personas through hairstyles like his flame-colored spiky mullet, long haired 70s shags and bleach blond hair. He encouraged hair to be an extension of your person and your creativity, and made sexuality and identity a universal concept through flamboyant expressions. Prince was very much inspired by the universality of creativity, especially during his purple rain era in 1984.
Similar to Bowie, he explored his identity in an unapologetic and fashionable way. He used his hair as an exhibit to prove that identity and sexuality is an evolution of itself. He wore facial hair, permed hair, and natural afro hair. His hairstylist Kim Berry talked about how he wore hairstyles no women ever wore and how she had a lot of liberty with his looks. He blurred gender lines through statements of artful and curated hair.
The 1980s: Punk, Drag, and the AIDS Crisis
In the 1980s, punk mohawks and drag performances grew in visibility.
The AIDS crisis activated punk communities in the US, and music became a language of activism and unity in the face of government inaction. Figures like Freddie Mercury whose masculine, yet distinct schoolboy cut and chevron mustache wasn't a labored or flagrant look. It was his true self. He wasn't asking anyone to assume his queerness through his appearance, which for queer people watching was a huge moment. He spread a message that resonated with many while performing for the Live Aid concert: you don't have to perform your identity through your appearance.
This reclaimed visibility through hair created legible queer codes. Rupaul Andre Charles, the queen of drag, brought drag to a whole new level after finding his way to Manhattan from his underground punk and club scene performances in Atlanta. He reshaped and opened up the space of modern drag through his competition series, Rupaul's Drag Race where artists can explore elaborate self-expressions of art with hair, fashion and makeup. He brought drag to pop culture.
Then there was Riot grrrl, the emergence of queer zine culture, which was a blend of punk rock and political activism. Before shows, band members got ready "the same way a man would," because they didn't have time to constantly upkeep their hair, embracing the DIY ethics of hair with vibrant, unnatural dye jobs. They reclaimed girlish tropes and dug into autonomy by wearing their hair like "kinderwhores" in pig tails and space buns and home dye, asymmetry, and refusal of salon professionalism.
Salon culture has since shifted with queer-affirming salons that emerged as a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community. Trans hair culture is increasingly visible and discussed for gender-affirming care as hormones help to expand the meaning of sexuality and haircuts as milestones in transitions. Every year, Hairstory partners with The Dresscode Project, a global alliance of gender-affirming salons, to host the Gender Free Haircut Club where queer folk can get free haircuts and connect with their communities.
All of which is to say that hair is a statement of evolving identity. The norms in which identity and self-expression first exist have historically become movements and revolutions for marginalized groups. It's a behavior code, a selfhood and ultimately, a visual representation of who you are. Take pride in your hair and your identity. There's always a space for you at Hairstory.
Keep Reading
- Gender-Affirming Salon Tips for Hairdressers
- Color, Curl and Culture
- Accept (and Celebrate) the Hair Nature Gave You
The information in this article is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult a board-certified dermatologist or qualified healthcare provider if you have concerns about your hair or scalp health.
