History’s Awash in Tales of <i> Really </i> Bad Hair Days

Bad Hair Days have been around since the beginning of recorded time. You just have to trip through the footnotes of history to find them. Here is a Bad Hair Day Historical Sampler.

* Ancient Times: According to Roman superstition, a bad haircut could cause storms, so cautious Romans supposedly put off trips to the hairdresser until a storm was already raging. That way, the bad hair couldn’t be blamed for the bad weather.

* Middle Ages: The entire 14th Century--with the Black Death, schism in the Church, brigandage, skulduggery, high taxes--was like one long Bad Hair Day. There’s a logical reason. The century began with a big chill: The Baltic Sea froze twice, and years of freezing storms and rain followed. And we know what that can do to your hair.

* Louis XIV: In his younger years, the French king was famous for his splendid locks. About 1670, however, he started going bald, usually the ultimate in Bad Hair Days for men. But Louis didn’t want to jeopardize the flowering of European culture just because of bad (or no) hair, so he started wearing wigs-- big wigs with powdered shoulder-length curls that soon became the rage. Louis, of course, went down in history as not only the greatest patron of French culture, but also as the true father of fashion.

* French Revolution: By the time the Bastille fell, French aristocratic hairstyles had gone through the roof. Literally. Hair was swooped up, molded with plaster into mountains of curls, and poked with feathers and lace. Nobody ever did Marie Antoinette the courtesy of pulling her aside and saying: “Hey, it’s ugly.” In fact, the worse her hair got, the less popular she became. But before long, she never had to worry about bad hair again.

* The ‘60s: This was the decade that tried to glorify Bad Hair Days. If your hair frizzed because of the fog, groovy--take the day off, go to the beach and watch it really frizz. The sentiment, of course, was immortalized in the musical “Hair.”