Ask History

I’ve noticed that a lot of old things (roughly the late Victorian era to the early 1960’s) seem to imply that children, young boys namely, sometimes have one long strand of hair that just sticks up. It’s in movies, comics, dolls, illustrations, and even modern parodies of that time period would suggest it’s that time period by giving young boys “alfalfa hair”. It’s not universal, I call it “alfalfa hair” rather than “little rascal hair” since that one character was the only one in the show to have it, and it’s easy to miss if you don’t pay attention to this stuff. However, it’s noticeable enough that it seems like a standard trend. Why was it so common to be replicated in so many unrelated places but not so common to be more noticeable? Was it in the styling at the time? A class thing? Why did it stop after WWII?