Hair not only covers a person's head, but also expresses what is inside it, and the image that he wants to give of himself, as each style of it has its connotations, whether it is long or short, styled, dyed, or left as it is, according to what an exhibition in Paris shows.

Fashion historian and curator of the "Woper's Hair" exhibition, which opened Wednesday at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, Denis Bruna, said that humans have been cutting, styling, shaving, and so on... in order to tame the animal and brutal side within.

Through more than 600 objects - including photographs, wigs, tools, hair clothing or advertising campaigns - the exhibition examines the history of hairdressing and its expressions of ideas of femininity, masculinity or neglect.

In the Middle Ages, women were required to wear the veil until the fifteenth century, in accordance with the commandment of St. Paul. Little by little, they dispensed with it in favor of extravagant hairstyles, despite their diversity according to the time and place.

There is a text, for example, that deals with an English woman who kept her hairstyle in the eighties of the eighteenth century for nine weeks, as she slept sitting up to avoid ruining it as much as possible. When she undoed her hairdo, all kinds of insects and lice were nesting in her hair.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, women did not leave their homes uncovered, that is, without a hat, especially if their hair was loose, as leaving hair in this way was confined to very special places and cases, as evidenced by a drawing of the Empress of Austria Sisi in which she appears with loose hair, It was reserved exclusively for the personal office of the Emperor.

As for taking care of the cleanliness of the hair, it is a very recent phenomenon. In the fifties of the twentieth century, shampoo was distributed to boys in France, to teach them how to use it to wash their hair.

And he began urging people to use concealing the grayness of their hair a hundred years ago with a campaign for the company "L'Oreal", in which it described itself as the only line of defense against the "spectre of aging". For example, a poster dating back to the 1920s read, "She's very old. She's barely 35, but her hair is already turning grey."

However, hair dyeing did not spread until decades later. However, it is the famous women who in recent years have been claiming the right not to continue dyeing their hair. French writer and journalist Sophie Fontanelle has released a book about her transition to white hair, while actresses Andie MacDowell and Jodie Foster proudly showed off their white hair on the red carpet at Cannes in 2021.

Actress Helen Mirren, 77, has become the standard bearer for a new battle to keep her hair long (and white) into old age.

"The fashion for long hair dates back to the 1960s and has become synonymous with protest, freedom and youth," Donny Bruna explained.

The exhibition also raises the veil on how men and women arrange their body hair, which is a semi-taboo subject and there is not enough information about it due to the lack of visual and written testimonies.

Bruna explained that hair and body hair in Western culture "had a very bad meaning, as until the end of the eighteenth century, there was a conviction that they were a kind of secretions such as sweat and urine."

In contrast to English or German, there are two words in the Romance languages to distinguish hair, which is exclusive to humans, from the hair of animals.

In 1766, the Duke of Orleans shaved his entire body before his marriage so as not to frighten his young wife...

Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, there were public baths in Paris in which women could wash themselves and remove their body hair, so did they?