Getting a fringe is always a cry for help

Fringes have in recent years been considered attractive – Bettie Page, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Birkin, Kate Moss – so it is easy to forget the period we have been living through is something of an aberration. For most of history, cutting a fringe has tended to mark a woman out as odd, mad or suspicious. In the 1600s, conservative churches thought a fringe indicated you were on your way to committing a mortal sin. This was true even as late as the 1920s, which is why the fringe was key to the rebellious flapper bob. There are stories of parents suing hairdressers for giving their daughter this haircut in case it damaged her chances of marriage.

Those old fringe politics are back. Having a fringe nowadays says one of three things: break-up, breakdown or mutiny. You may not get a fringe in this spirit, but that does not matter. Haircuts simply reflect the culture around them. You cannot go about explaining your haircut to everyone you meet.

How did we get here? Here are some inflection points. Hannah Horvath’s self-cut fringe in Lena Dunham’s series Girls, which begins as an attempt to recreate Carey Mulligan’s pixie hairdo and ends with a Middle Ages bowlcut. Claire’s bob in Fleabag, which makes her look like a pencil. Michelle Obama’s 2013 ‘bangs’, which she later referred to as a midlife crisis: ‘I couldn’t get a sports car. They won’t let me bungee jump. So instead, I cut my bangs.’

Somewhere around 2018, the fringe officially became a symbol of emotional turbulence. It says: impulse. It says: kitchen scissors in front of the bathroom mirror. It says: self-sabotage. It says: no, I did not get therapy. In fact, in the US, the ‘therapy vs bangs’ meme is so well-established that last year magazines were running articles like ‘I got bangs but it’s not a cry for help’.