Hairstyle
Post-war years

After the war, women started to wear their hair in softer, more natural styles. In the early 1950s women's hair was generally curled and worn in a variety of styles and lengths. In the later 1950s, high bouffant and beehive styles, sometimes nicknamed B-52s for their similarity to the bulbous noses of the B-52 Stratofortress bomber, became popular. During this period many women washed and set their hair only once a week, and kept it in place by wearing curlers every night and reteasing and respraying it every morning. In the 1960s, many women began to wear their hair in short modern cuts such as the pixie cut, while in the 1970s, hair tended to be longer and looser. In both the 1960s and 1970s many men and women wore their hair very long and straight. Long, natural hair was also worn due to the emergence of counterculture movements such as the Hippies who used such styles to symbolize their opposition to the norm. From the 1950s onward, various groups have pushed the norms for hairstyles as symbols of their unique ideology or identity. The Skinheads, who opposed the Hippies, shaved off much of their hair. The Punks of the later 1970s, meanwhile, wanted to cause outrage, styling their hair in unique ways (such as the mohawk) and dyeing it in unnatural shades. Women straightened their hair through chemical straightening processes, by ironing their hair at home with a clothes iron, or by rolling it up with large empty soda cans while wet.

Since the 1960s and 1970s, women have worn their hair in a wide variety of styles. Part of this came from the "Black is Beautiful" movement which promoted the natural beauty of the Black population as opposed to what some considered a Eurocentric model. Some critics argue that straightening or relaxing African hair is trying to conform to a white standard of beauty. However, there are those that disagree with this belief. Nevertheless, Malcolm X advised against Black people straightening their hair for such reasons. Black hair then became not only an act of beauty but an act of revolution. The Afro, specifically, was both fashionable and political in the 1960s onward. However, the Afro, or "the natural", as it was first called, was not originally a political choice, but a style favored by both artistic and intellectual Black communities in the 1940s and 1950s.
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