After naming the blunt bob "Official Haircut of 2017," the popular fashion blog Fashionista recently posted a history of “feminism’s ultimate style statement.”
And, while many associate bobbed hair with the flapper fashions of the 1920s, Fashionista writer Sara Idacavage found a New York Times article from the era that points to an earlier origin at a certain school in suburban Philadelphia.
From the article:
“Bryn Mawr graduates recall how two Chicago girls, Eleanor Mason and Louise Marshall, sophomores, breezed onto the basketball field in 1903 with their hair cut short. They caused a sensation.”
Quoted in the article is “Miss Helen Criswell,” a 1904 graduate of Bryn Mawr who had recently left a teaching job in Long Island. She is described as having been “consumed with a desire to bob her hair, but she did not attempt it until she resigned.”
“I could hardly wait to come to Manhattan and have it done,” she tells the Times.
A blog post about The Mad Hatter Tearoom in Greenwich Village, originally run by sculptor Edith Unger, offers details about Criswell. Preferring the nickname Jimmie (or James or Jim), Criswell took to wearing smocks and sandals (suit and tie for special events) and continued to keep her hair bobbed.
Still today, Bryn Mawr students continue to reach for the scissors. Angela Motte ’17 explains a common practice around campus: the Bryn Mawr Chop. “The Bryn Mawr Chop is seen as a rite of passage. It’s a thing that students do for many reasons, but I think the main one is that it’s symbolic of shedding long 'girlish' hair for something more modern and business like. Students praise other students when they do the Bryn Mawr Chop because it’s something of a milestone within a Bryn Mawr career.”
Angela came to BMC with torso-length hair, which she chopped to shoulder length in the winter of her freshman year and into a pixie cut in the fall of her junior year.
“In addition to being a rite of passage for undergraduates, it can also be seen as a way of coming out. If you have a queer student who had long hair previously, the best way to indicate that you are now ‘out’ is to cut your hair incredibly short (think pixie). So the Bryn Mawr Chop has a history of both queerness and maturing.”
Long live short hair!