Barbers also typically made and repaired wigs. High-end barbers labored long hours and mastered a range of skills from shaving, cutting, and styling to making and marketing hair and body products. Not surprisingly, it was open almost exclusively to men.īarbering was hard work. One of the few jobs that presented even faint hopes for prosperity was barbering. Thus, thousands of former slaves-many with experience as valets, manservants, and barbers-were foisted upon a market that offered them little in the way of employment, apart from dangerous jobs in manual labor and demanding positions in household service. At the same time, the Revolution caused many Americans to rethink the morality of slavery, which led to emancipation in the Northern states and waves of manumission in the South. In a new country that prized personal independence, service work seemed abhorrent to many white citizens. "A Barber's Shop at Richmond, Virginia," from The Illustrated London News, March 9, 1861Īfter the Revolution, a different set of factors compelled African-Americans to work as barbers. And it concludes with the advent of the beard-a fashion born out of desperation but transformed into a symbol of masculine authority and white supremacy. It begins with white Americans at the time of the Revolution who derided barbering as the work of “inferiors.” It continues with black entrepreneurs who turned it into a source of wealth and prestige. Like countless other histories, it is rife with contradictions. What follows is the lost story of American facial hair. But one characteristic distinguishes this revival from previous ones: Today’s facial-hair enthusiasts share an affection for the ornate practices of the 1800s-the exuberant beards and ostentatious moustaches, as well as the elegance and “manliness” of the shops where those styles were cultivated. The 1960s bristled with sideburns and beards-pared down, in the 1970s, to the decade’s iconic mustache. This is not the first time in recent memory that American men have sprouted facial hair in great numbers. And the online craft marketplace Etsy now sells a limitless variety of wares imprinted with images of mustaches, from wine glasses to electrical outlets. In dens of hipsterdom, one can hardly throw a PBR without hitting a waxed moustache. From flamboyant beards to the proliferation of “old-fashioned” shops, evidence of the trend abounds, embracing groups as diverse as the Boston Red Sox, the men of Movember, and the Robertsons of Duck Dynasty. Let me declare what many already know: 2013 was a landmark year for men’s facial hair.
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