Hair has been a hot topic forever. Hair care has its own unique history, just like hair loss. No culture or society seems immune to this fascination with hair. Along the way, hair played a starring role in the attraction of the opposite sex and attractiveness to potential mates. Of course, that makes thinning hair and baldness even more important.

Prehistoric cave drawings suggest that men dragged the woman that they chose home by her hair. That may be a myth, but do you suppose that having no hair made it harder for prehistoric women to get a suitable mate? Of course, being dragged around by your hair could lead to early baldness. So, hair was probably a Catch 22 for the women of that era.

Hair Care Practices

Did we develop hair care practices as part of the mating ritual? If not, where do society’s hair practices come from? Early Christians and Muslims shared the philosophy of making women cover their hair. This practice lost popularity in one religion. However, the Catholic church still frowns on uncovered heads, apparently for women only. The nuns also cover their hair to this day, but the priests get to display their crowning glory for all to see.

Hair Styling History

Some hairstyles have been popular during specific eras in history. A few finally died a well-deserved death. The beehive and the 1920s permanent wave immediately come to mind. Both these hairstyles were made possible by the invention of technologies that helped women torture their tresses with heat, chemicals and tension, sometimes all three, at one setting.

Hair care may have taken a turn for the worse when “colorists” started using peroxide and ammonia to bleach women’s hair at the end of the 19th century. When Charles Nessler invented a permanent wave machine at the beginning of the 20th century and the hairstyling industry took a great leap forward.Synthetic hair came on the scene in 1908. Interestingly, it was made from cotton and corn, along with some other available grain products. Could it be that these new technologies used to attack (women’s) hair spurred the need for synthetic hair, wigs and other hair replacements?

Buddhist monks and ascetics often shave their heads. Are they always smiling because they know a secret? Or perhaps they are happy because they have been relieved of our historical fixation on hair as an object of beauty.