The mode a la garconne, 1900-1925: A social history of French women's haircuts.

A haircut is an artifact, brimming with information about the culture that produces it; and when it engenders controversy, that suggests some extraordinary social significance. Thus if was with the vogue for short hair that swept French women in the early 1920s. Short hair marked a radical break with the ''heavy'' hairstyles of the preceding era and was of a piece with other ''impertinent'' fashions of the ''Roaring Twenties''. But what did this revolution in style really signify : a demand for convenience ? a rejection of ''traditional'' femininity ? Did if in fact signify much at all ? Zdatny's study of the mode a la garconne argues that the meaning of this cultural episode lies more in its context than in its form. In particular, women's unprecedented urge to have their hair cut short was a seminal moment in the development of mass consumer society, when consumption was feminized and democratized Reflected in the fortunes of the hairdressing profession, the mode a la garconne depended on the reciprocal expansion of women's autonomy and of the commerce of fashionable hair. Zdatny arrives at the conclusion that shopping and emancipation might be more compatible than is often presumed.