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SMNTY Classics: A Brief History of the Bob · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I don't want some stuff.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Never told you, but if I heard you, And today
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: we were bringing back a fun classic.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: It's the History of the Bob, the haircut.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Bob because my friend, my friend Marissa kind of got
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: a haircut and we were talking. We were talking about
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: the history of the Bob and I've had a ball.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I got one right after.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: I think that's why we did this episode after the
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: pandemic where you could like go out again, and I
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: wanted to donate my hair, and it is when you
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: first get it, it's so uncomfortable because it's so short
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: and he feels so self conscious, or at least I did,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: because I was like, oh.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I think I've done this since I was
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: in high school. So it's just spills like yah, I'm here.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Again, back where I've belong, Bob Bob. But it's a
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: really interesting history, so please enjoy.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Hey, this is Sandy and Samantha and often to Stefan,
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: never told your production of iHeartRadio. So Samantha, have you
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: ever gotten what you would call a trendy haircut?
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: And follow up question, have you ever gotten a really
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: bad haircut?
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, I would say, I definitely got a trendy haircut.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: My trendy haircut would have been recent ones where I
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: get it pretty short to the point they have to
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: shave a little bit of the back of my neck
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: and it does the whole like one sided type of
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: little bit of asive metric, not completely type of style.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: I really love that Hairdoo, so that's gonna be what
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: I go back to. But again, yeah, so I feel
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: like it's quote unquote because I'm trying desperately not to
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: be a forty year old Asian mom look, which can
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: get real simple and easy when you get the Connie chunk.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: That's what I call it.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: No disrespect to Connie Chunk, but from like the late eighties,
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: early nineties, Hairdoo beautiful woman, wonderful, married a really bad
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: person whatever. Outside of that, her hair to me signified
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: Asian moms, and I try to stay far away from that. Okay,
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: But the really bad haircut, I would say my historical
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: bad haircut was because I was in the orphanage coming
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: into the US so much nice solution was give a
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: bowl cut. So really made my mother very sad because
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: in the pictures I had very, very very long hair
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: and I came into the US with a bob, not
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: even a bob. It was a literal bolfcut like it
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: definitely because my hair is also really think at the top,
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: so it even bushed.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Out a little more, right, Yeah, so.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: That was even better. And my mother, because Gendro was
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: very important to her, made sure I will wear I
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: was wearing bows and such to signify that I am, yes,
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: a female, even with a bull cut, so I wasn't.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: That's probably the worst haircut I've ever gotten.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's interesting you say that. Well, actually returned
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: to that point in a bit. I I definitely tried
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: to get haircuts that were trendy that I had no
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: business getting. So I was really into friends when I
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: was in elementary and middle school.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: He did the feather I tried to get to Rachel
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: did not look anything my kid.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I tried to get when Monica Courtney Cox had pretty
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: much a bob, I tried to do that. And my
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: hair is really thick, and I think the person who
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: cut it, and this is like no shade at all,
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: but I think that she wasn't used to dealing with
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: really thick hair like mine. But mine also poofed out
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: and it looked quite funny. I think that's the worst
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: haircut I've ever had.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: Oh, fifth grade, bad year to have a bad haircut too.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's before you know, I had like a
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: straightener or anything to do something with it.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: And most of the time we were so young we
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: didn't know what to do with it right exactly.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: So it did feel like because I didn't want to
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: upset the person who cut my hair's feelings.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: But I remember being like, don't cry, don't cry my
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: whole life.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: You paid the money, so it's kind of like, oh,
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: why am I sparing your feelings for my bad haircut?
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Only a couple of months of mockery.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: Yes, I think that was like I have good friends
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: who will just go to and not nothing wrong with
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: like the cheaper haircuts, but generally just like it's cheaper whatever,
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: not realizing a lot of times hair is not as
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: easy as you think. I think many people have learned
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: as they've tried to do the home haircuts, and they'd
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: be like, it grows out. But there's been a couple
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: of situations where they would say that that'd be like
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: are you sure, and then okay, I'm.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Gonna go fix it. Are you sure, Are you sure?
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: And yeah, I'm the same way because I don't feel
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: like my hair is hard to do, but it is
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: very straight and though it's thick but still fine. So
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: you can see any mess up right, like any off
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: kilter like one you know, snag, you can see it.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: So I definitely have.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: A little concerns of like when I at least need you
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: to be you know, straight, properly straight, whatever. And I
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: know many of friends who have very curly hair. It
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: is a nightmare trying to find a specialist. And we
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: also know, especially like black women who's trying to get
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: their hair done, it's a whole separate level and conversation.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I think it's good. There's a lot you
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: have to do about haircuts. Why did you have to
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: consider there are?
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: There are?
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I also went through a really big Mary
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Kate and Ashley face or whatever haircut they had. That's
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: the haircut I wanted. And eventually I'm glad I reached
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: the point. Well, well, people would tell me like, you
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: can't pull that off. I'm sorry, your hair is it
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: right for it? But it could do all these other
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: amazing things but not that. But I had one that
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: was like, yeah, the big flipping out like a layered
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: flipping out look, and it wasn't good here.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: I believe I had that hairdoo too, and I liked
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: it for the most part, except once again, it aged
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: me more than I wanted it to.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're talking about one of the trendiest haircuts
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: of all time for this and the reason we're talking
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: about it is, Yes, like the day I had my
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: two weeks out from vaccine fully vaccinated, I went and
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: got my haircut and I was donating it and I
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: needed ten inches and she was like, there's really only
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: one haircut you can do, and it's pretty much a
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: bob And everyone came over and they were all like pointing.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Out the hair like what are you gonna do about this?
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: So?
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: What are you gonna do about this? And I was
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: just like, oh gosh, please.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Because I've never had it this short before, and they did.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: I asked about the have you seen a lot of
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: people coming in with their self haircuts?
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: And she said, yeah, it's a lot of disasters we've
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: had to try to rectify. But I do like it.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: I do keep like feeling at it and or trying
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: to put it up and I'm like, oh, yeah, there's
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: no no hair back there anymore.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: But it's so fun to wash. It tries so quickly.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I did like having long hair as well, but
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: this is a nice.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: I feel like, I'm pretty sure you've at least used
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: on two separate occasions the excuse of washing your hair
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: as to not being able to do something previously before
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: this new haircut.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Of course, that's a legit excuse. It's like a whole thing.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: People would laugh at me because I would be like,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: I have to take my long shower today and they'd
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: be like what does that mean, and like, well, it's
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: ten minutes in the shower, but then it's like hours.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Doing with wet hair.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: But yes, for this Monday Minnie, we thought we would
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: do a really quick brief history of the Bob haircut.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: I think way back in twenty thirteen, the host Kristen
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Caroline did an episode on short hair women with short hair,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: because there are a bunch of stereotypes that come along
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: with that historically that are still around, maybe not as strong,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: but still around, right, So if you want to hear
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: more about that, you can check it out.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: And yes, long hair has long.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Been associated with fertility, youth, and femininity. In May of
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: nineteen twenty, s Scott Fitzgerald published a short story called
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Bernice Bobs her Hair in This Saturday Evening Post. It
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: told the tale of Bernice, who is sort of this
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: hapless and gullible person and how her cousin convinced her
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: to chop off all of her hair and the fallout
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: was just enormous. She's uninvited from events, she's shunned by men,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: and worried about bringing scandal to her family or her haircut. Right.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: So, while the bob is primarily associated with the flapper
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: look of the twenties, one of the most famous examples
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: made headlines in nineteen fifteen when trendsetter and dancer Irene
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: Castle cut her hair short so it would be easier
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: to deal with. The look was called the Castle bob.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: However, in the early days, if a woman wanted to
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: get this look, hairdressers at salons might refuse to give
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: it to them. To be fair, sometimes they still will
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: because it was seen as controversial and scandalous. Not necessarily
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: because it was scandalous. People will refuse it because they're
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: just scared that you're making a mistake because we know
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: they also talk about the whole boyfriend ex boyfriend, you know,
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: drama stuff and cutting your hair. Yeah, and I know
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: I've seen stylist say no, just wait, just sleep on it,
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: or they may not know how to do it because
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: it was so new, or have the proper tools, so
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: women might go to barber's instead. Again, women still do this,
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: and for the most part, barber's complied.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: That's all I had considered until we were talking about it.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: Just now how odd it might be to have a
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: haircut named after you, and you just have to hope
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: that it was a good haircut.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: Look, so did we do we talk about.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: The why is called the bob Yes, hairdressers realized that
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: they had better get on board or they were just
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: going to get left behind, and so they got on board.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: It turned out to be a financially wise decision. Newspapers
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: even wrote about it. The Washington Post publish a piece
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: called Economics of Bobbing in nineteen twenty five detailing the
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: monetary impact of this hairstyle, reporting that from nineteen twenty
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: to nineteen twenty four, the number of hairdressing shops in
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: the US arose from five to twenty one thousand, and
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: this didn't take into account.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: Barbershops, right, And I can imagine the upkeep because when
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: you have short hair, you have to go more often.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: That's true if you want to upkeep. So that's costly.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Is costly.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: It was so popular and so widespread in the twenties.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: That was pretty much the stand for the Sears Melt
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: ordered catalog. Oh, those Sears catalogs, and several variations developed,
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: the Marcel the finger wave, which I've desperately wanted to try,
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: but I can't do it with my hair. Oh, the
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: shingle bob and the eaten crop, and accessies like bobby
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: pins were created to style these haircuts, and there were
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: still concerns, including something called the shingle headache, describing as
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: a type of neurogia caused by the abrupt removal of
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: hair exposing the sensitive back of their necks.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I didn't know that about bobby pins. That's
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: where the name comes from. And going back to what
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: you were saying earlier, Samantha, about your mom putting you know,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: the bows and all these kind of gender indicators in
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: your hair.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Some of these were like the headband.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: And then we get the Bobby Pins that that was
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: kind of the same idea, right, And yes, the name
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: for Bob comes from a seventeenth century word meaning short hair.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: So pretty okay, okay, that's pretty straightforward. Yeah, yeah, the
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Castle Bob.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I highly recommend there's a really great infographic of
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: all the types of these haircuts and what they looked like.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: And yes, I think the like.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Shingle one is being oh dangerous, is gonna give you pain.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: And then it's just interesting because a lot of the
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: historians where I was reading these articles and they would
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: wrap it up with something like there's never been a
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: haircut quite like this one, or it's so it's pretty
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: rare that this was such a trend and it was
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: so different than what had been before, and yeah, just
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: like jump start the hairstyling industry and to have all
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: these accessories come out along with it, and to be
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: so like everybody wanted.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: One, right, I mean definitely that Bob, that shortcut, the
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: finger wave. We know what that era is automatically, everyone knows.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: Everyone knows. We know different hairstyles like the Faarah faucet,
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: but we don't really attribute that to.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: A whole generation.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: We don't see that as iconic, even though that is
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: an iconic Haredo, right, it's because of fair faucet making
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: an iconic hare do suggest the Rachel. I do remember
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: kind of an hour era outside of the Rachel was
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: a haircut that happened because of Dawson's Creek. Michelle Williams
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: and Carry Russell during that like early two thousands cut
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: off their hair to the pixie cut almost and people
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: lost their minds. I remember the amount of vitrol that
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: they went through for cutting off their hair, and it's
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: such a like to me, that's kind of alf of
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: that iconic, But it's still never going to be as big,
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: right as the Bob was. That We definitely can associate
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: pixie haircut to like the early two thousands, late nineties
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: because of them, but it still will not be on
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: par as what happened with the Bob for sure.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man, how wild that must have been, where it's
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: kind of like everyone has long hair, then all of
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: a sudden everyone's same cut off.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Cut it off again.
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: To have be the first person to do this and
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: then just being chastised and then later on be like, oh,
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: well that's that's cute.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: We liked it. Never mind.
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sorry, all right, it's fashionable now, okay, get
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: you a hat.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's a different conversation, perhaps not for this
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: mini That was just a brief history, but there was
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: a lot of and still is talk of like the
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: feminism of certain haircuts, and the bob does come up
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: in that one a lot. But that's that's more than
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: what we're going into you in this one. In the meantime,
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: if there are any other haircut styles we should look
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: into but I doesn't know, you can email us at
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: stuff MEDIAU mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: find us on Twitter at mom stuff Podcasts or on
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Instagram at stuff I've Never Told You.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Thanks. It's always to our super producer, Christina.
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Christina.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Thanks to you for listening Stuff I Never Told You
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: the production of iHeartRadio more podcast from iHeartRadio with that
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where you listen to
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: your favorite shows.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah,