Bobbed Hair Essay
The New Woman of the 1920s: Debating Bobbed-Hair
I Bobbed My Hair and Then— by Irene Castle Treman
There has been so much controversy over the bobbed-hair craze that I feel I ought to put some of the world right, as to my side of it at least. I do not claim to be the first person to wear bobbed hair; in fact, I believe there are a number of people who, like myself, picture Joan of Arc with shorn locks! There have been several periods in history when women wore short hair. It is easier to be the first person to do a thing than the first to introduce it, and I believe I am largely blamed for the homes wrecked and engagements broken because of clipped tresses. I do not wish to take the blame, because in a great number of case I find the responsibility …show more content…
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
I Bobbed My Hair and Then— by Irene Castle Treman
There has been so much controversy over the bobbed-hair craze that I feel I ought to put some of the world right, as to my side of it at least. I do not claim to be the first person to wear bobbed hair; in fact, I believe there are a number of people who, like myself, picture Joan of Arc with shorn locks! There have been several periods in history when women wore short hair. It is easier to be the first person to do a thing than the first to introduce it, and I believe I am largely blamed for the homes wrecked and engagements broken because of clipped tresses. I do not wish to take the blame, because in a great number of case I find the responsibility …show more content…
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