Cut Due to Illness or Fashion? Whatever Reasons, Here Are 20 Photos of Victorian Women With Sho

Until the first years of the 20th century, women had long hair. Waist-length tresses were not uncommon, and longer hair was the norm due to the fact that cutting women’s hair was something done only as a necessity, as in extreme sickness. Long hair was considered a mark of femininity.

Young women and girls wore their long tresses in braids, or cascading ringlet curls in the 19th century. Older women usually wore their hair braided and coiled atop their heads or in French-style twists pinned loosely along the nape and crown.

But in the late 19th and early 20 centuries, Western women who wore short hair, and/or garments usually tailored for men, had to be pretty badass to go so visibly outside the usual gender norms, whatever their reasons. And their reasons were many.

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