Post #430967 by Cammo on Tue, Jan 27, 2009 7:42 AM

Thanks for posting this, bud. I like how the family is simply too poor to actually have done it on their own, and won the contest through pluck, hard work and keeping their sense of humor!

It also makes we wonder about something that was so prevalent that it just went unquestioned in those days - extremely short hair.

We think of it now as the hairstyle of uptight 1950s engineers and had been for as long as clipping shears existed. But it wasn't a popular style in the 1920s; page boys and longish center parts were the thing then. Sometime between 1929 and 1961 super short stubble-cut doo's were introduced as a fad.

Why? Was it a depression era thing to combat (as it was here) the high price of a barbershop? And was the close-sheared look therefore defended later because admitting that you wore short hair out of poverty was just plain embarassing?

Or was it a WW2 thing, the army cut carried into your civilian life?

We should ask the Barstows.