Quote:
Originally Posted by Kptlt. Neuerburg
(Post 2761668)
I always thought the "hair battles" was a cultural thing i.e. "look at those foreigners with their crazy hair" was really silly and stupid especially when lots of American bands started doing the same thing starting from about the mid-'60s up to the '80s and '90s.
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The "hair battles" were really more than just about tonsorial fashion(s); it became emblematic of other issues bubbling up in US society; postwar USA was an ongoing homage to the ideal of "The Average", as in the Average family, the Average home, the Average job, etc.; you could measure your 'averageness' by the TV shows of the 50s to early 60s: if your life, look, and outlook wasn't like
Father Knows Best,
Ozzie & Harriet, or
Leave It To Beaver, well, you musta been some kinda outcast oddball, probably one of them Commies; even before the advent of The Beatles, a standard solution for dealing with 'oddballs' by straight, white males was to physically punish those outside the white-bread norm, and that animus accelerated after the young men in the mid-60s started to let their hair grow beyond the "high and tight' military-inspired" styles of the postwar; I experienced, along with other of my friends some very scary moments when confronted by packs of 'short hairs' who thought they would 'teach us a lesson' (oddly, when trying to attack a lone longhair, they always approached as a team of t least two or more; maybe they thought the combined length of their short hair cuts would compensate for the fearsome power of the mighty longhair style :haha: ); longhairs even experienced situations where they were denied service in restaurants, stores, and such, which caused a good many of them to feel solidarity with the Black struggle, thus adding more support to the Civil Rights cause; nowadays, the whole thing may seem silly, but then it could have real ramifications...
One particular situation has remained in my memory over the years; in the late 60s-early 70s, I knew two extremely attractive young ladies as good friends; they were what is referred to as "lipstick lesbians", gay women who are very attractive, bucking the usual image of 'butch dykes'; I met them when I was at a rock club and they came up to me at the bar and sat on either side of me and became very familiar, wrapping their arms around me; they told me a couple of guys were pestering them and asked if I would play along in a effort to shoo away the pests; I'm sitting there thinking I've just hit the jackpot and they stayed with me for the rest of the evening, and at the end, they a bit sheepishly told me they were lesbians and partners and apologized for leading me on; I wasn't offended and tol them it didn't matter since they were obviously both smart, funny, and very good company; we became friends over the follow time and I found there were benefits to being seen with them around the scene; very few people at the time knew they were gay (the very acknowledgement of that could even get you arrested in some parts of LA), so I found that an awful lot of straight women became very interested in a guy with two beauties hanging around him, and the girls, themselves, would often introduce me to their own straight lady friends they thought I might find interesting...
One day, I ran into the girls in Hollywood while walking down the street, and we decided to get a bite to eat; one of them needed to get cigarettes, so they ducked into a liquor store while I waited outside for them to return; moments after they had gone in, a car-full of short-haired jock types pulled up to the curb and began taunting me with the usual "look at all that hair!", "Is it a boy or a girl?", etc., type of nonsense; I ignored them, but I sensed they might have been about to get out of the car and get violent; just as I thought that; the store door opened and out strutted the girls; the guys in the car fell silent stunned at the sight of them; the girls were quick to assess the situation and made a bit of show in fawning over me; one of the girls feigned suddenly seeing the car-full of guys and asked me if they were fiends of mine; I said "No" and she said "Pity, you know how much we like your friends"; the other girl walked over nearer to the car, looked in an commented "Oh look they're all guys! Well, I guess they're all out out to have fun...", adding, pointedly, "...with
each other. Well, never mind, we don't hold your lifestyle against you"...
There was a sudden look of horror on the guys faces as the words sunk in and they peeled rubber getting away from the curb and down the street...
One of the most successful Broadway musicals of all times was inspired by the "hair battles" of the 60s titled simply
Hair; several hit songs resulted from the score for the musical and the clip below os of the title song, sung by the real family pop group, The Cowsills, who, in turn, were the real life inspiration for the TV series,
The Partridge Family; I think this was one of their two #1 US singles...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt_yKPNORLM
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