Big Hair, Don’t Care

When hairspray and gel were staples of life

The Queen of Big Hair, Dolly Parton in the 1980s. She may have started the big hair trend a decade earlier but was in popular company in the following years.

On Beehives, Bouffants and Blow Drying

In more recent times, the term “Big Hair” has been attributed to the 1980s when gel, hairspray and an active imagination were the only limits to one’s coiffure.

But did you know that the original “big hair” style was said to have been created for none other than French Queen, Marie Antoinette? The last queen of France before the French revolution was said to have perpetually thinning hair, a fact that tempered her vanity and led her stylist to create a customized “do” that hid this embarrassing fact.

The main features of said do? Well, let’s just say that it included a very, very high and full bounty of hair on the top part of the head, usually rounded about the crown. The key to this hairstyle is height, which naturally draws the eyes upward, making not only the hair seem fuller, but the face longer as well. When Marie Antoinette implored the peasants to eat cake, she likely did so with not only a full stomach (after all, she was nobility), but with a seemingly full head of hair too. It was an illusion of fullness but did the proletariat really need to know?