"You got the part! Don't cut your hair!"
As we all know, the
Hair Codifiers for
The Eighties were
the ladies. Well, the Hair Codifiers for
The Seventies were
the gentlemen.
Is it the sideburns? Is it the general shape, in which we, in hindsight, can recognize what would later become the mullet? In any case, the audience recognizes the era as soon as a manly mane of this sort is shown.
Yeah, it's the sideburns. They were undoubtedly the defining feature of Seventies male hair, in addition to hair that was worn naturally thick - straight at first, just like
Sixties hair, but increasingly frizzy as the decade wore on, perhaps thanks to the influence of glitter rock, or possibly the Black Power movement. The other 'very 70s' hairstyle is the Afro, immensely popular in the 70s (though it started in the late
Sixties)for most African-Americans, but even white guys with curly hair tried to have one.
Obviously not true of
all Seventies males, especially if they spent most of their time in circles where sideburns would be inappropriate. Just like not all women had 80s hair between 1983 and 1992. (In the famous photo of the just-resigned
President Nixon boarding a helicopter, for instance, he is flanked by a row of Marine Corps cadets all with the standard military buzzcut.)
Women's hair was "hippie-ish" (long and straight) for the first half of the decade (since the early seventies was really
The Sixties part II) and puffy and combed-over during the second half (a preview of
'80s Hair). Outside of this wiki, when referring to '70s hair, people usually mean that sexy feathered hairstyle associated with
Farrah Fawcett and
Kristy Mc Nichol. Usually when referring to what's called '70s hair on this wiki, terms like "
Disco hair" are used.
Compare
Hot-Blooded Sideburns.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
Film
- Hair, obviously, especially the title song
(even though it came out in The Sixties).
- Psycho for Hire Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men wears a Seventies hairstyle, which only adds to his creepiness.
- Take an actor known for '70s Hair, like Takuya Kimura, and cast him in a seventies throwback Live-Action Adaptation, in this case the Uchuu Senkan Yamato movie. How could it not work?
- Almost Famous. Lester and the members of Stillwater have this. William's an interesting case; he's too young to grow sideburns and his ear-covering mop was firmly tied to the period when the movie was made in 2000 but has come back in style since.
- A lot of the Imperial officers in the first Star Wars movie (1977) have long Seventies sideburns. Even Grand Moff Tarkin has them, although to a much less exaggerated degree.
- Ironically, the character most noticeably without sideburns is Luke Skywalker himself. He does wear the androgynous "bowl cut" popular during the '70s, but the inner, darker layer of hair is cut tastefully short (noticeable when Luke is briefly pulled under the sewer water by the tentacled monster and all of his hair gets plastered on top of his head).
- There is also a lot of seventies hair in Revenge of the Sith as the style is meant to resemble that of the original trilogy, most prominent in Anakin. Obi-Wan previously sported one hell of a mullet in "Attack of the Clones".
- Almost everyone in Enter the Dragon.
- Completely averted in the movie Rudy; though set in the early 70s, none of the male actors have long hair or big sideburns, even though the title character in Real Life definitely sported seventies hair◊ when he played in the big game depicted at the end of the movie. Possibly this was done to give the film a more timeless feel.
- Shows up in The Last Picture Show, which is supposed to be set in 1950s Texas. While some men did have sideburns in 1951, they probably weren't that common.
- Zulu. Well...the 1870s anyway. The long sideburns on the men wouldn't look out of place a century later.
Live-Action TV
- Mike ("Meathead") on All in the Family and a lot of his hippie friends.
- That '70s Show, naturally. Especially Kelso's feathered 'do and Hyde's frizzy afro.
- Frequently — and anachronistically — in M*A*S*H. B.J. Hunnicutt was a notable offender, especially in later seasons.
- Not surprisingly, the TV show Emergency! is a veritable time capsule of 70s hair: Sideburns, Afros, feathered mullets, and Pornstaches.
- Jason King.
- Charlie's Angels had the feathery female variant and is often credited with starting the hairstyle trend in women seen from the mid-70s through the early 80s.
Music
Sports
- It was rumored that pro baseball players were actually encouraged and given bonuses to wear their hair long, to attract - or at least not alienate - the younger crowd.
- The Oakland Athletics were this Up to Eleven, often overlapping with Badass Mustache or Badass Beard. Although they could possibly be seen as a subversion since many of the players took their inspiration from the styles that ballplayers wore in the 19th century.
- You'll have some difficulty finding a Formula One driver of the early 1970s who did not have his hair like this. Re: the page image.
Webcomics
Western Animation
