First Lady Michelle Obama has them, little girls covet them so much that they have wielded scissors initiating their own do-it-yourself style and black girls used to roll them in pink foam rollers. Bangs are a staple of femininity, bringing beauty or terror. Professionals chime in on the enduring tradition of bangs.
Carolyn Cox, who serves as Director of Education at Bella Beauty College in Austin indicated that bangs just tend to change in direction or flair, but she said she recalls that America had at least one other first lady with a particular bang. Cox pointed out that Mamie Eisenhower’s super short and tightly curled bangs carried her name and gained popularity when she wore them. The director said the coiffed bang style was dubbed the Mamie Eisenhower bangs. She also pointed out that the diminutive character actress Linda Hunt of NCIS wears that vintage variety of bang.
Cox, along with instructors Zulema Jaimes and Michelle Castaneda, shared their cumulative knowledge about bangs, and some interesting details, uh, cropped up.
Face Frame Bangs
With all of the hype over Obama’s bang, with surveys, polls and pictures, the buzz is reaching fever pitch. On Friday, January 18 th, while I was riding a Capital Metro bus I wondered if this bang will one day be called The Michelle Obama bang. Some online articles refer to them as Michelle Obama’s bangs, which indicates that they are the ones who belong to her. Time will tell whether that apostrophe will drop universally, signaling a signature style which will go down in history.
It was hard to tell whether this bang carried another name before it became eponymous to the first lady of that day. A Sarasota Journal archive article dated January 20, 1953 was titled Mamie Eisenhower’s Bangs Are Boon to Beauty Salons. It mentioned, among other things, that “falsie” bangs were available to anyone wanting to copycat the first lady without cutting their hair.
China Bangs
The Bella Beauty College director stated that this style has a couple of variations. “A lot of times they are cut straight across. It’s more popular now to make them curve.” Jessica Hegger, who I met while walking from a Capital Metro bus station, said she had China Bangs in 2012. She said her hair stylist told her not to do it again. “Because I looking like Dora (The Explorer),” she explained. “My face is chubby,” added Hegger.
Erica Ayala, who I met on a Capital Metro bus, said she also had China Bangs and then a Swoop in 2012. She found bangs, in general, too hard to deal with. She discovered that she often had to pin them back, blow dry them, curl them under or try to tame their wave pattern. She also remembers that strands of hair would fall out, especially if she had a pony tail. Now her bangs are all grown out. When I asked her if she’d ever try bangs again, she replied, “I don’t know. I’ve been debating it.”
Swoop or Side Sweep
The beauty school team agreed that this bang are very trendy now. Jaimes shared her take on the popular bang style that many women are rocking these days with their hair swept either to the left or right. In reference to this type she said, “I think this is more popular right now.” Cox said it’s the style which became First Lady Obama’s trademark during the first term.
Other bang fashions that have gone in and out of vogue were mentioned by Cox. She described one as a spiky bang that was gelled to lift off the forehead in multi-directional spikes of hair. There was also one which she described as poofed up and forward. I believe the later one is called a pompadour.
According to an OMG daily blog dated August 10, 2010, Elvis rocked about three bang styles. The site has instructions on how to duplicate his bang which was lifted upward and back from the face and held with gel. Images on the same site also show Elvis with an uneven swoop bang. A final one shows an apostrophe-like cowlick curl of hair on his forehead. Cox stated that for the most part one should never refer to a weft of hair draped over a man’s face as bangs.
“Bangs kind of come and go,”she summarized.
“Leave them longer than you want them,” advised Castenada. She said they will dry and appear to shrink, so trimming them below the desired length will save hair disasters and woes.
