Why I Bobbed My Hair
A. Write a well-developed paragraph in which you use
ideas from Why I Bobbed My Hair to establish a
controlling idea about freedom. Develop your controlling
idea using specific examples and details from the passage.
The New Woman of the 1920s: Debating Bobbed-Hair
The “new woman” of the 1910s and 1920s rejected the pieties (and often the politics) of the older
generation, smoked and drank in public, celebrated the sexual revolution, and embraced consumer culture..
In this magazine article, singer Mary Garden, and describes her decision to adopt, or not adopt, the new
style.
Why I Bobbed My Hair
by Mary Garden
Why did I bob my hair? For several reasons. I did it because I wanted to, for one thing; because I found it
easier to take care of; because I thought it more becoming; and because I felt freer without long, entangling
tresses. But above and beyond these and several other reasons I had my hair cut short because, to me, it
typified a progressive step, in keeping with the inner spirit that animates my whole existence.
In one way, whether I wear my hair short or not is of little importance. But viewed in another way, bobbed
hair is not just a trivial, independent act of hair-dressing separate and apart from my life itself. It is part and
parcel of life—one of the myriad things which by themselves may apparently mean nothing, but which in
the aggregate help to form that particular complexity of expression which is myself.
This sounds a bit cryptic; but let me elucidate a little. Whether we know it or not, every single thing we do
has a relationship to our lives as a whole, for the simple reason that what we do is the expression of what
we think—consciously or unconsciously. You may say that it matters very little whether a woman wears
her hair long or has it cut short, but that is really not true.
Bobbed hair is a state of mind and not merely a new manner of dressing my head. It typifies growth,
alertness, up-to-dateness, and is part of the expression of the élan vital! [spirit] It is not just a fad of the
moment, either like mah jong or cross-word puzzles. At least I don’t think it is. I consider getting rid of our
long hair one of the many little shackles that women have cast aside in their passage to freedom. Whatever
helps their emancipation, however small it may seen, is well worth while.
Bobbing the hair is one of those things that show us whether or not we are abreast of the age in which we
find ourselves. For instance, can you imagine any woman with a vivid consciousness of being alive,
walking along the street in 1927 with skirts trailing on the ground, wearing elastic-side shoes, a shawl, and
also a mid-Victorian bonnet? If you saw such a sight you would instantly put her down as one who had
ceased to grow, as one who was passé [out of style] and very far from being an up-to-date woman.
Well, I carry that thought a little further in my whole scheme of things. I do my best to be constantly on the
alert and up to the moment. On my toes, as the boys say. I could no more imaging myself wearing a long,
trailing skirt in 1927 when all the world was wearing short skirts than I could wear long, trailing tresses
when all the world (or nearly all of it) had wisely come to the conclusion that bobbed hair was more
youthful, more chic, and, if I may say so, much more sanitary.
This attention to what is of the living present has a special application, I think, to those of us who are what
the world designates as creative artists. We, of all people, must be very careful not to allow ourselves to
stagnate in any manner whatsoever—mentally, artistically, or physically. To be an artist means to grow. An
artist can not afford to do anything else. To stand still means, paradoxically enough, to go backward, and
for an artist that is fatal. To keep on growing means the constant necessity for getting a correct perspective
of ourselves. We must stand off, so to speak, and look at ourselves through very critical glasses. If we once
lose our perspective we lose all.
Life itself is growth, and the minute we allow ourselves to stop growing we really stop being vitally alive.
And it is so fatally easy for people to get into a rut, to bask in the noonday sun of self-satisfaction[,] to
cease to grow. Take my own profession, for instance. In the realm of grand opera, ignoring precedent and
striking out into new paths is one of the hardest things to achieve. How easy it is for the producers of opera
to be content with age old traditions, to go on going the easy thing. The antiquated thing that has become so
much a matter of habit that thinking about it becomes unnecessary!
And how deadening and monotonous a thing to the singer a continual round of roles of the old order can
become! Did I say “Deadening and monotonous”? Stagnating rather, I would sooner pass into oblivion than
to cease progressing and growing while I possessed the impetus to live and to work. And if I didn’t look at
myself every now and then in perspective I too would stop growing.
As a concrete example of what I mean, last summer I paid a visit to the Opera House in Paris for the first
time since I left it in 1906. I asked for this one and that one of my old associates, and in more instances than
I care to think of they had all retired from active work. Not from old age either, be it said. They had simply
stopped growing, and the inevitable sliding backward had taken place, until the positions they had once
held were no longer theirs.
You may wonder what all this has to do with my having bobbed my hair, but as I said above, every
seemingly single act we perform is really a small square in the whole mosaic of life, and when all the little
pieces are put together they form the complete pattern of existence. Many of the trivial daily happenings of
life are so subtle and so deceiving in their significance that very frequently we do not catch their meaning
until long after they have occurred. Then, too late alas! We find that these petty affairs, so infinitesimal by
themselves, have by accumulation assumed a most important influence in our lives.
When I consider the achievements of women in the past few years in the field of athletics I find it
impossible to do so without taking into account the tremendous freedom-giving changes in fashion that
have accompanied them. And enjoying the blessings of short hair is a necessary part of those fashion
changes. To my way of thinking, long hair belongs to the age of general feminine helplessness. Bobbed
hair belongs to the age of freedom, frankness, and progressiveness.
This is my view of the situation, but I should like to state most emphatically that I have no desire to lay
down any fixed arbitrary rule for any one else to follow. Whether a woman wears her hair long or short, is
her individual affair. I only know which I prefer. I can see nothing but what is progressive or beneficial in
bobbed hair for women, altho I must admit there is one very tragic situation that is the direct result of
women bobbing their hair, and that is, of course, the sorry plight of the hairpin manufacturers.