Imagine a time before blow dryers, curling irons, bobby pins or even shampoo.
“Starting to get a little nervous?” Janet Stephens, a hair historian and Baltimore hairdresser, asked the audience assembled Sunday at Walters Art Museum in the city?s Mount Vernon neighborhood.
Think of styling your tresses without the aid of elastic ties or hairspray, and you have stepped into the world of ancient Greek grooming through Stephens? lecture, “Ancient Greek Hairdressing: Reality from Myth.”
But after contrasting today?s dyed and processed ?dos to the simple ponytail (called the “Lampadion” for the flame-like puff) that was all the rage during the Hellenistic period, it becomes clear that more myths are perpetuated atop today?s heads than those in 250 B.C.
“We have a distorted view of hair” because so many people highlight, lowlight, straighten and perm; we rarely behold people?s real appearances, Stephens said after her presentation. “The ancient Greeks couldn?t do that. They had to work with what nature gave them.”
Examining the buns and head-coverings of goddesses gracing the centuries-old vases, plates and statues in the museum, Stephens deciphered the emotional states and rites of passage of ancient Greeks:
» Mourners often would cut off a lock to toss on the funeral pyre of a loved one to send a part of themselves to the underworld;
» Before Spartan girls would enter into the service of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, they cut their hair short and remained in service until it grew long;
» Brides got haircuts on their wedding nights;
» Warriors would brush out their manes before battle; and
» Well-groomed styles in ancient art signify rationality, but wild hair symbolizes insanity and religious ecstasy.
“Hair is a fascinating study,” said Stephens, who wrote a book about Roman coiffure. “Everybody loves hair. It?s sexy.”
