Powdered Wigs

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Recommended: Fashion history 18th 20th century

To many people, style is everything. Style is what creates your image. You can tell a lot about someone by the clothes they wear to the type of haircut they get. Fashion may be indispensable to some and others might care less. In the 1700s the trend was hair. Hair was important because it was how you were viewed in society. Wigs, as simple as they may be, had an important role in colonial society.
In colonial times, the hair style that was put to shame was bald. People did not want to become bald. The people who were already bald felt embarrassed. Wigs were the solution to this predicament. Being bald was like wearing a dunce cap on you head all the time. If you wanted to be respected and treated as such, you could not be bald. Although male pattern baldness is natural, disease had a role into the wig fib as well. Syphilis also caused the need for wigs. Back then, STDs were very common among men and women. Syphilis caused baldness. To cover up the fact that one was bald, a wig would be needed. Personal hygiene was another reason for wigs. Personal hygiene was not a normal thing for people back then. They rarely, if ever, showered. This caused lice to infect their natural growing hair. The lice would begin to eat away at their hair and scalp. Wigs were needed once more to, again, hide baldness. These reasons lead to a jump start in the world of wig making.
Wigs were not popular at first. They were viewed like a kid being embarrassed about his teddy bear. The little kid cannot sleep without it but he does not want his friends to find out that he sleeps with a teddy bear. It was not until 1655, when Louis XIV wore a wig, that wigs were thought of as a sign of high class rather than a symbol of embarrassment. At the age of 17 King...

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...just fashion statement, wigs were like a visual sign of who a person was and what social class they were in. Due to diseases and lack of personal hygiene, many suffered hairloss. Wigs were used to hide the social embarrassment of having no hair. Wigs back then and now will remain to do what they were originally made to do; allow people with no hair to have hair, whether the reason is for image and respect or simply not having hair.

Works Cited

"History.org: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's Official History and Citizenship Website." Wigmaker : The Colonial Williamsburg Official History & Citizenship Site. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.
Reilly, Lucas. "Why Did People Wear Powdered Wigs?" Mental Floss. Mental Floss, n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.
"Wigs and Hair : Colonial Williamslburg Kids." Wigs and Hair : Colonial Williamslburg Kids. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2013.

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