汤唯的"丑短发",先别急着骂

Tang Wei appeared on the cover of VOGUE's April issue, but unfortunately many people didn't buy the new short hair style.

Cover of the April issue of VOGUE

The comments were disturbing. Most of the points of everyone's anger revolve around the "shattering" of the image of the goddess of the atmosphere. They feel that under the "dog-gnawing bangs and short hair", Tang Wei's beauty is actually old and damaged. Why is the fashion power of the top magazine so bad?

Although VOGUE said that this was a visual breakthrough attempt, and some bloggers in the fashion field thought it was "quite normal", due to the unsatisfactory and not beautiful shape, there was still a wind of "refusing to give the actress a short haircut" on the noisy social media.

汤唯短发造型。 图源VOGUE

It is true that today's aesthetics are diverse, and everyone has their own standards for dividing beauty and ugliness. The audience's anxiety about "ruining beauty" is also caused by a variety of reasons, including the desire for beauty, and the anger at the decline of domestic entertainment's makeup skills in the past few years.

However, if we blindly and rudely reject the emergence of new looks, divide the success of shapes according to the "degree of beauty", and silence everything other than beauty, then fashion will only be transformed into a restriction on "beauty" in inertia.

Elizabeth 2: The Golden Age

Over the years, sensitivity seems to have become a hysteria of Internet aesthetics. The judgment of the quality of the actor's new appearance is no longer based on the standard of whether it is brilliant or not, but if it does not match the image filter of the past, is not "beautiful" and not pleasing enough to the eye, it is easy to be judged as a rollover, and they are required to "rebuild".

Aesthetics have also begun to ossify. When Zhou Dongyu went to VOGUE, he was questioned about "whether he has a grudge against the photographer". Zhou Xun's celebrity-style short ear-length hair has also squeezed into the ranks of a blogger's "Spicy Eye Magazine Cover". Actresses who are frightened by controversy are also used to going around in circles in beautiful frames in order to be stable. In their eyes, new attempts inevitably lead to criticism that does not fall into good terms.

Zhou Dongyu VOGUE cover (top) and Zhou Xun VOGUE cover (bottom)

When Ni Hongjie attended the pajama party before, she was questioned as "cheesy" because she was in her 40s and still wore a fishbone see-through suit. Whether it is an actress or an audience, the avoidance of abnormal styling has actually invisibly consolidated the power of mainstream aesthetics.

Ni Hongjie fishbone see-through outfit

Styling is like a game, like a tool for self-exploration. At the beginning of its birth, women's trousers were once considered ugly, but the first women to wear them may not only be for beauty, but to create "beautiful possibilities".

In fact, on the other hand, most of the fashion icon shapes and items in history, most of them were not created because they were beautiful, but as a provocation to break through the authority of mainstream aesthetics. Their birth, most of them wandering outside the mainstream, also has "strange eyes" to face.

"Escape by Yourself"

The short haircut, which has to be re-fashioned every summer, used to be an ugly style that "everyone shouted and beaten". Before the 20s of the 20th century, long hair was a symbol of femininity and beauty, short hair was considered a sign of rebellion, non-conformance to secular etiquette, infertility, and a woman would not cut her hair short so as not to offend the men in her life.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there was an uproar when French fashion designer Paul Poiret cut a short Bob hair for a female model at a Paris fashion show. In the eyes of those people, short hair was a right only for men. At that time, there were almost no hairdressers for women, and it was not easy for women to cut their hair short.

Costume designed by Paul Poiret in 1921. Image source: VOGUE

Short haircuts are considered a blasphemy against feminine charm. In order to discourage girls from cutting their hair short, it is said that there are also pamphlets that advertise that cutting their hair short will cause women to grow mustaches.

In 1920, the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote "Bernice Cut", which tells the story of Bernice, a conformist lady, who is tricked into a barbershop by a friend to cut off her long hair, and her family thinks she is a disgrace to the family.

But the more short hair is regarded as "ugly", the more it has become a weapon for girls to fight back against discipline. When new fashions appear, they are often accompanied by negative reviews of "ugly". But "ugly" is not the point, just a cover to attract attention, the point is that they break the mold.

"This Killer Is Not Too Cold"

The era when Bob's short haircuts were all the rage was also the time when women began to roar. After the war, young girls who were tired of bondage began to cut their long hair, hoping to get rid of the old-fashioned demands of their elders, and the most effective way was to cut the "ugly short hair" that they hated the most.

In the 60s of the 20th century, Twiggy, a 16-year-old model with her iconic angular short English hair and triple false eyelashes, became a pop icon of that period. Vogue describes her as "the heroine of the '60s", with young people loving her makeup and imitating her outfits.

Twiggy

Her popularity is inseparable from her "favoritism" in her image. Neutral looks, rebellious short hair, and thin girl-like limbs perfectly combined to become the favorite elements of that generation of young people. The young people got from her the emotional projection of "getting rid of traditional religious etiquette". And Twiggy, who "violates" the sexy and elegant characteristics of ancient models, is undoubtedly a sweet and sweet in the eyes of the fashion circle.

Twiggy

But the funny thing is that Twiggy, who is loved by so many people, is extremely disgusted by his appearance. She doesn't like her "straight little boy" figure, "always having to stuff her bodice with tissues to make a little curve". The fashion supermodel even once said "I hate the way I look, so I think everyone is crazy".

Twiggy

It can be said that Twiggy herself and the image she created form a kind of separation between the old and the new, and this is precisely the confrontation between the original mainstream and the new aesthetic. It's just that Twiggy himself, standing behind the screen, seems to be the more traditional side.

As if to say goodbye to the past, only four years after his debut, 20-year-old Twiggy chose to retire bravely, changing his career from modeling to acting in dramas and movies, and also kept his short hair into long hair. And her short hair and big eyes left on the screen are still the image of fashionable people who are keen on COS.

Twiggy long hair style

With the rise of the avant-garde movement in the fashion industry, not only girls cut their hair short, but boys also grew long hair. In the 80s of the 20th century, neorealism rediscovered the remnants of the industrial world, and the new wave people at that time were eager to reassemble everything that was old, and they renovated the old things, aiming to break all the orthodox order with the "ugly things" that were not mainstream at that time.

Today, freckles have become a retro culture. Imagine a cool California girl with bronzed skin, shiny gel lips, surfboards, sun hats, and summer freckles.

However, at the beginning of the 20th century, freckles were also considered "the most important blemishes to be removed from the face". To prove how ugly it is, some potion commercials even put up slogans stating that freckles are ugly and shameful.

1914-1928 Advertisement for Othine freckle cream

When we see freckled girls, how much aesthetic enjoyment comes from decades of subtle consciousness?

Freckles really started to be accepted after the 50s. At that time, the upper class began to be popular with vacations, and healthy, wheat-colored skin was associated with a life of money and leisure, and freckles began to be seen as a lovely creation of sun kisses. Around the turn of the millennium, Chanel and Lancôme, who were among the first to launch freckle pens, both said that freckles were a fun, free, natural symbol of skin.

Lancôme 1995 advertisement (left) and Topshop freckle pen Photo source: APDNews (right)

If you want to talk about the fashion industry, there are indeed many "ugly things" in the past, which have finally become the mainstream of aesthetics. The earthy brown and avocado greens that luxury fashion houses are obsessed with today were initially ridiculed as extremely earthy. At that time, it was the elegant, sexy mystery girl who was popular, mixed with an earthy marble palette that was the exclusive color of women's kitchen aprons in the 60s.

The first to put an ugly color on the runway was Miuccia Prada. For the Prada Spring/Summer 1996 collection, she combined briefs and checks with ginger and earthy brown. These patterns and colors, in the past shows, are almost "unsightly", they are exclusive to housewives.

1996 Prada春夏系列

Miuccia Prada's manipulation may have been a bit off-the-beaten, and many magazines at the time commented that the designs were "quite radical", reminiscent of junk textiles such as curtains and tablecloths, cheap and outdated. But then she responded: "People think my designs are quirky, but I'm trying to subvert the concept of luxury by introducing ordinary elements in the public perception." ”

Today's trends seem to once again verify that the line between ugliness and beauty is sometimes extremely blurred. Fashion does not necessarily mean beauty, but can not be beautiful. Barbie's favorite Birkenstock slippers, which were once considered the ugliest women's shoes, and the clothes of Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo, who were ridiculed for their tattered aesthetics, were once aesthetic fringes at a time when elegance was still popular.

山本耀司AUTUMN WINTER2021 COLLECTION（左）；川久保玲1997春夏（右）

But without their first steps, how much less interesting would the fashion circle have? Perhaps this generation of young people would not have imagined that the silhouette of slippers does not have to be sharp and narrow, and women can also wear slippers to go out, and women's wide, irregular, black and white clothes can also form the street landscape.

Aesthetics, a certain part of which comes with the development of fashion. Iconic fashion may turn into a "failure" at some stage. The frighteningly wide women's suit of the past is no longer considered anachronistic to people today.

The fashion industry is still making a lot of "ugly things" that surprise people, such as Chanel's leather fake bangs and JW Anderson's frog-shaped slippers, which have also been included in Taobao's list of the 40 most popular ugly things in 2023.

Chanel's leather bangs (left) and JW Anderson's frog-shaped slippers (right)

Many people can't figure out how they came to market through a lot of scrutiny. But sometimes when you think about it, maybe it's this chaotic, confusing and occasionally "eye-catching" piece that is the magic of fashion.

I don't know, those "ugly things" and "ugly shapes" in the past, if you look at it now, will it make you more acceptable?

Pulp Fiction

Content Editor: Nico