Newly-born infants are shaven; but as they grow up, a little circle
at the crown is left untouched. At first the circle is small, but it
grows larger with years; and at six or seven, boys let all their hair
grow and crop them when too long, just like their elders. Girls,
before they leave this “poppy-head” stage as it is called, have little
queues on the crown, tied less closely than men’s in the old days.
Next, at ten or more, they have their hair done in a more complicated
manner; sometimes the tresses are tied together at the crown and made
into bows, and sometimes the hair is gathered at the top and
parted into two tresses, right and left, which are made into vertical
loops, joined together at the side, the joint being covered with a
piece of ornamental paper. It has of late become an almost universal
custom with school-girls to tie their hair with a ribbon and let it
down loose or plaited on their backs.
[Illustration: YOUNG GIRLS’ HAIR.]
From fifteen to well over forty, the favourite style is that known as
“inverted maidenhair.” The hair is in this coiffure first combed into
one bundle, except a triangular tuft over the forehead. It is tied at
the root and divided into two equal tresses, right and left, which are
then looped, the end of either tress being combed into the root of the
other; and the two loops are turned down and brought behind the crown,
and kept in place by being tied together to the first knot. The hair
at the sides and the back is swollen out by a dexterous jerk of a comb
or hairpin from underneath when it is first gathered. That at the
sides is further combed with a rough comb, while the hair at the back
is held in place by a spring hairpin. This is the lightest coiffure as
false hair is not generally required; but it is not the formal way of
dressing the hair.
[Illustration: THE “INVERTED MAIDENHAIR.”]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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