How Hair Ran the Roman Empire

When a man is asked what it was that he first noticed about his wife, the answer is often the same. Often, to stray away from perversion, he is not bold enough to say it was her rear end or her bosom. Also, to not sound cliché, he will not say it was her eyes, the windows to her soul, that captured him in the first glance. The husband, in order to maintain his sound demeanor, says he noticed her beautiful hair. If his wife is present, he may even mention the style of her hair to make her blush. This often gives the questioner a good idea of the attraction between the pair. For example, if the husband says that upon meeting his wife, her beautiful, shimmering red hair dangled in long curls over one shoulder, one can assume two things. First, the wife thought she was attractive with curls, or at least that curls were her style of choice at that time. Secondly, one can assume that the husband was attracted to the curls and possibly that this style stood out to him among many others worn by other women who were present. The style of a woman’s hair can give insight into several aspects of her life and a good idea of what her spouse and the men by whom she would be seen find attractive. Perhaps Rome, a society with a grounding in art and aesthetics, a mixture of cultures, and a variety of women’s hairstyles, can give clear definitions of the cycle of attraction which seems to still be a part of today. The hairstyles of Ancient Roman women greatly impacted attraction and the standard of beauty that is still seen two millennia later.

To properly argue the influence of women’s hairstyles on the cycle of attraction on which Roman society thrived, one must define women’s roles in human attraction, social influence of hair, and the female standard of beauty and aesthetics. These points provide scientific, cultural, and artistic grounds that both support and oppose the idea of women’s hairstyles being so impactful.

In a study conducted by Norman P. Li, Jose C. Yong, William Tov, Oliver Sng, Garth J. O. Fletcher, Katherine A. Valentine, Yun F. Jiang, and Daniel Balliet, “Mate Preferences Do Predict Attraction and Choices in the Early Stages of Mate Selection,” where attraction and long-term mate selection were tested, the findings were that men held physical attraction and visual stimuli to be more appealing than women did. Women held social status to a greater standard than men. Although this study was conducted with the use of speed dating via social media which is a 21st century concept, the results are based on thousands of years of information ingrained in humans. From an evolutionary perspective, the article points out that these differences in attraction are due to the reproductive value of a possible mate. An attractive woman equates to a good mate for a man, and a man who can provide necessities is an attractive mate to women. From this basic human instinct, one can infer that the same principles of attraction that applied in this study can also be applied to the Ancient Romans.

How, though, does this prove that hair was the pivotal attribute that determines attractiveness in Ancient Rome? Based on the attraction for both men and women, one can consider the research presented in Jerry Toner’s “Barbers, Barbershops and Searching for Roman Popular Culture,” where Toner concludes that barbering, a profession at the time providing more than just haircuts, had been popularized by 129 BCE, when men would completely shave their beards or be viewed as dirty or in lower social standing. Toner goes on to say that a long beard could even signal illness, with the exception of philosophers, who sported long beards to show age and therefore wisdom. However, in “Hair and the Artifice of Roman Female Adornment,” Elizabeth Bartman explains that caring so much about one’s appearance, even in Ancient Rome, was seen as feminine, and therefore should have been done only occasionally, so as not to negatively impact societal perceptions. Nevertheless, social standing takes priority over physical appearance among men because even though appearance was of importance, it was made so because it reflected social status, the attractor of the opposite sex. Interestingly, going great lengths and spending much time on physical upkeep was something done by women, with emphasis on their hair. This is likely to stem from the same principle of attraction. If a man spent too much time on his physical appearance and not his societal role, he is equated with the woman, or with one who would take such actions to attract men. This perspective can be viewed as opposition to the argument by proposing that because men are the ones for whom women spent more time styling their hair, men are the ones who control the appearance of women and hair alone does not hold the power of attraction but rather men who view the hairstyles. However, if this is the case, one may argue that men must seek roles in society only for the attraction of women and not due to their own ambitions. In the same way, one must view the importance of hair to women personally. Therefore, the influence of women’s hair is not solely over sexual attraction, in the same way that men’s hair is not entirely for the purpose of displaying social status.

The style in which a woman’s hair was worn was a staple in her image, playing such an important role that women would be portrayed with hair styled while gazing into a mirror in their tomb reliefs. This indicates that women found the upkeep of their appearance so important that they wanted to be remembered not only as having been beautiful, but also as admiring their own beauty and maintaining it. The styles in which women formed their hair in Ancient Rome can be seen in their busts, reliefs, and sculptural portraits. The hairstyles are so extravagant that some argue the portrayals could not have been created with actual hair. Janet Stephens, a published hairdressing archaeologist, is able to recreate these hairstyles using similar techniques that would have been used by those who styled the hair of Ancient Roman women.

The hair atop the head of a Roman woman held greater value than any other element in her physical appearance. Based on findings explained in Rhiannon Ysabel-Marie Orizaga’s “Self-Presentation and Identity in the Roman Empire, ca. 30 BCE to 225 CE,” self-presentation was not made important by religious, cultural, or even sexual influences. This leaves hair, and therefore beauty, to be important only for representing social status as well as self-presentation. One can argue that the elements excluded from Orizaga’s reasons for the importance of hairstyles are overlooked because they are underlying influences and that social status and self-presentation are results of these elements. Religion and culture would impact which styles are chosen leaving women inspiration and guidelines by which they could fashion themselves. Sexuality acts as motivation to continue styling hair and attract a mate. From this a woman’s hairstyle and identity are formed, a means by which she can then attract a man in good social standing and better maintain her appearance, forming the illusion that hair was a show of social status when it was the point of attraction, which led to that status being obtained or better maintained.

From the evidence presented, one can begin to infer that the hairstyles of Roman women were more than an adornment. Roman women sporting unique hairstyles played a key role in the structure of societal standards. By utilizing beauty as a means of not only attracting males but also causing males to want to attract them by raising social status, Roman women have undoubtedly influenced the cycle of attraction two millennia later.