NEWSLETTER

BY LORD WHIMSY
ILLUSTRATIONS BY LAURA PARK

Imagine if, when you were a kid, your parents used elaborate and painful methods to force your head or feet into bizarre and permanent shapes. Or imagine if the surest way to get a decent job was to stand perfectly still while your friend hacked the side of your face with a cutlass. Now imagine never washing your hair until it became a hardened crust or being completely covered in mites and lice for your entire life. Or imagine living in permanent fear that your neighbors might at any moment decide to hunt you for the fur on top of your head.

Of course this isn’t fantasy: It’s history. Over the centuries, human beings have practically turned themselves inside out—and on occasion happily turned others inside out—for the sake of status and style. Let’s take a wee stroll down memory lane.

GROW YOUR OWN HELMET Some fashions were the result of indifference. A good example of this is the Polish plait, which was a crusty, oily mass of filthy, matted hair. Often as hard as a helmet, it was a tangled mess held together by dried blood, dirt, dead lice, and pus. Generally, Polish plaits were the result of neglect, but they could also be brought on by particularly nasty lice infestations, in which spent eggs would act as a kind of mortar. This condition was believed to have been especially common among the Polish peasantry, who superstitiously believed it brought good health. Peasants would actually spread fat on their prized scabby crowns, which they lovingly tucked under woolen hats. Polish plaits became even more fashionable when King Christian IV of Denmark developed one. He trained it into the shape of a pigtail down the left side of his head, adorning it with ribbons as a kind of lovelock. Naturally, it soon became de rigueur in his court to follow suit. In fact, a kind of connoisseurship developed around Polish plaits, and an entire vocabulary developed around the endless shapes they assumed.

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