Long hair & communism: the politics of appearance
There is a badge which echoes a US ‘redneck’ protest of the late 1960s that proclaims ‘long hair is communism’.
This may have come as a surprise to those associated with many Communist organisations (Stalinist variants of certainly pre-1968) where a smart dress sense including short hair for men was generally regarded as the norm. After all if the appeal was to industrial workers in heavy industry many of necessity had short hair. Long hair in a mine or steel works was probably not the best idea.
In the old Eastern Europe long hair post-1945 was considered a sign of youth rebellion against official society and ‘hairies’ were sometimes persecuted and prosecuted by the State. The US rednecks may have been more like Communists than they thought..
The UK did not escape the trend. After the editors of OZ magazine were found guilty at an obscenity trial in 1970s they were jailed (released on appeal) and promptly had their long hair cut on arrival at jail.
The Beard Liberation Front, which campaigns on all matters hirsute has long kept a careful eye on the politics of appearance and that is one reason why a founding principle is that people should be able to dress and appear as they want. That may be a statement in the case of some, or it may not, but in either case, so what?
Oh dear, quite a few hairies I know personally are hardly communists. And (in)famous people like Ted Nugent are hardly so.