That was my mother's era. In fact, I think she predated it somewhat.
I inherited some children's books, I have them somewhere, which have stories in them about girls with bobbed hair. One story is about how all the girls are talking about how unsuitable is the new head girl because she is the only one to have long hair in SUCH an unfashionable style, and EVERYONE knows that while she is so capable and suitable in every other way, it will create SUCH a bad impression on all the dignitaries etc she has to meet and greet in her role, when they see her very out of date look! Of course, the message is that just as the girls pluck up the courage to do the new head girl out of a particularly important social representation, they discover the truth at about the same time as the new head girl turns up looking fashionable with her hair bobbed at last. A sort of mixed message about being true to yourself and also fitting in...
Which I think dates my book to about 1925, no later. I think it belonged to my mother's younger sister.
I'm going to read it again to see how much more understanding I can glean from the book. It's so old it's got those thick almost feathery pages that sound like an owl's wings as you turn them.
I have some wonderful (but few) photos of my mother and her sister in their very daring bathing suits sometime after WWI. They're wearing bathing caps so I can't tell if their hair is bobbed, but I think my mother had it cut short by the time she had my oldest sister. Her younger sister had longer hair until she died during WWII, after the bob came into fashion although she never patronised it. She died of appendicitis, routine surgery that went wrong but there were no antibiotics available to the public at that stage. My mother and her sister were also singers and performers, but only under strict chaperonage of their father, and only until WWII began. But the occasional stage roles (opera mainly) required longer hair that could be adapted in style to various roles.
Marg
Although, her following remarks on Wynter being a freak didn't go over so well.
