Greek Boys Hair Styles



Figure 1.--Note the close-cropped hair in this 1925 portrait. Click on the image for more information about this painting.

HBC notes many historic paintings and photographs of Greek boys in the 19th and early 20th century with short hair cuts or closse-cropped hair. We do not yet have any information about boys with long hair as was common in many European countries and America in the late 19th abd early 20th century, but Greek readers tell us that some boys from affluet families did have long hair. We note that boys in several other countries often appear with extrenmely short hair or actuall shave heads (Austria, Germany, Russsia, Turkey, and other countries). We are not sure about the origins of this style in Greece. Presumably both fashion and hygine were factors. We are unsure how other factors such as Ottoman rule and the German and Danish royal dynasties were an influence here. Short hair appaers to have beern very common until after World War II. A HBC reader reports, "The haircuts were short in 19th century because of fashion but they were required in school after 1940s. and up until the 70s."

Chronology

19th century

HBC notes many historic paintings and photographs of Greek boys in the 19th and early 20th century with short hair cuts or closse-cropped hair. We note that boys in several other countries often appear with extrenmely short hair or actuall shave heads (Austria, Germany, Russsia, Turkey, and other countries). We are not sure about the origins of this style in Greece. Literaure and old pictures describe and show boys in the 19th and early 20 centuries with quite long and often curly hair. This was the case innmany European countries, especially in the late 19th century. I assume that mothers from affluent families liked their little boys to have long curly hair. But I also assume that in the cases where fathers tooks responsibilities in their sons dressing and hair styles prefered them in short haircuts. I think that when fathers were able to choose a haircut for their sons, they would go for a short haircut because they saw it as more masculine and appropriate for boys. But that is for afluent families. For working class families short hair for boys was more a questin of hygine to prevent lice. Children in kindengarden still have problems with that and parents like to keep their haircuts short. Imagine how things were 100 or even 50 years ago. There was a serious problem. It was a matter of hygiene.

20th century

There is a great contrast in how Greek boys wore their hair in the first and second halves of the 20th century. Greek boys for the first half of the 20th century wore very short hair. There was little change in the style until well after the end of World War II. While close-cropped or shaved heads were not uncommon in Europe during the eraly 20th-century, they became much less common in most countries after World War I (1914-18). Boys' hair styles in Greece, however, did not change much in Greece. Often their hair was shaved at school. During the 40s and the 50s it was mandatory in (most) schools for the boys to have a buzz cut. In some cases the barber visited schools on their first day and gave all the boys a buzz cut with clippers. After the 1950s, the short cropped hair has become unfashionable. This was in part due to economic conditions. Greek boys began wearing their hair like boys in the rest of Europe without any destinguishable national style. Strange enough, the hated buzz-cuts actually became quite fashionable in the 1990s.








Christopher Wagner






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Created: April 27, 2002
Last updated: May 28, 2002