The Story of Hair: Do your bangs stay bung?

Per the Oxford English Dictionary, "bangs" as a term for the fringe of hair lying over the forehead originated in the stables. Horses' tails were sometimes allowed to grow to a certain length, and then were cut off in an even, horizontal trim called a "bangtail." Racehorses were sometimes called bangtails. And Green's Dictionary of Slang suggests "bangtail" actually originated in Scotland, not the US. "Bangtail" was first applied to human hairstyles as early as 1844, but the OED cites the first use of "bang" as 1878. "Bang" meaning "abrupt or sudden" has been used in English since the late 18th century; more details here at Grammarphobia:

Q: Why does the word “bangs” refer to a fringe of hair cut straight across the forehead?
A: The use of “bangs” (or “bang”) for that short fringe of hair originated in the US in the 19th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
But the usage has its roots in “bangtail,” an equine term seen on both sides of the Atlantic. So let’s start our investigation in the stables.

The word “bangtail” is defined in the OED as “a (horse’s) tail, of which the hair is allowed to grow to a considerable length and then cut horizontally across so as to form a flat even tassel-like end.”

The dictionary notes that the term has also been used in Australia for cattle with tails cut that way, and in the US as slang for a horse, especially a race horse.

The earliest citation for “bangtail” in Green’s Dictionary of Slang is from a Scottish journal, suggesting that the term may have first reared its head in the British Isles.

Green’s cites an 1812 issue of the Edinburgh Review that mentions a stud horse named Bangtail, but the name surely came from an even earlier use of the term.

Through a Google search we found a comic British story about fox-hunting, published in 1851, in which “bang-tail” appears least seven times in reference to tails as well as horses.

The story, “Turning Out a Bagman,” by a writer signed “B.P.W.,” is about two London greenhorns who are on vacation and want to hire a pair of hunters.

​The showily groomed horses they hire are called “bang-tails,” and are described as having “such flowing bang-tails as at once stamped them in the eyes of our friends as ‘out-and-out’ thorough-breds.”

The story is chockfull of slang (like “bagman” to mean “fox”), which may explain the repeated use of “bang-tail” instead of “horse.”

Apparently it didn’t take long for “bang” to graduate from horse tails to human hair.
We found an 1844 travel book, Revelations of Russia by Charles Frederick Henningsen, that mentions a man’s hair cut “somewhat in the fashion of a thorough-bred’s ‘bang-tail.’ ”

In another travel book we came across an 1849 entry that describes a woman whose hair was braided in back and “cut in bang style” in front.

The OED’s earliest citation for the human usage is from a letter written in 1878 by Frances M. A. Roe, author of Army Letters From an Officer’s Wife: “It had a heavy bang of fiery red hair.” (The “bang” was on a face mask in a shop window in Helena, in the Montana Territory.)

Another American, William Dean Howells, also used the word in his book The Undiscovered Country (1880): “His hair cut in front like a young lady’s bang.”

A Google search turned up a plural reference in an 1883 article from the New York Times. A Catholic priest, lecturing Sunday school children, “condemned the fashion of wearing ‘bangs’ in severe terms.”

A matching adjective (as in “banged” hair) and verb (to “bang” or cut the front hair straight across) also emerged in the 1880s, according to citations in the OED.

Here are a couple of examples: “He was bareheaded, his hair banged even with his eyebrows in front” (from the Century Magazine, 1882), and “They wear their … hair ‘banged’ low over their foreheads” (from Harper’s Magazine, 1883).

So it would appear that the verb “bang” (to cut hair straight across) emerged after the hairstyle and not before, unless there are earlier verb references we haven’t found.

That still leaves us with a question: Why did “bang” mean bluntly cut?

Both Green’s and the OED indicate that since the late 1500s the verb “bang” has meant to hit or thump, and the noun “bang” has meant a blow or a thump.

And “bang” has been used adverbially since the late 18th century, the OED says, to mean “all of a sudden,” or “suddenly and abruptly, all at once, as in ‘to cut a thing bang off.’ ”

Since the bangs on a person’s forehead, like a horse’s banged tail, end abruptly—you might say with a  “bang!”—perhaps the word is simply a case of creative English.

A collection of humor pieces, Wit and Humor of the Age (1883), takes the creativity a step further. In a story by  Melville D. Landon, one chambermaid asks another “if she banged her hair.”
​
“Yes, Mary,” the first chambermaid says. “I bang my hair—keep a banging it, but it don’t stay bung!”

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​A Short, Uneven History of Bangs
From Cleopatra to Kate Moss, a journey through some of history's greatest bangs.

Bangs are great. They can change your look aggressively with relatively little work, hide a fivehead, and let your ex know via Instagram that you are completely over them and, actually, making a lot of fun new choices as a single person, for reference please see: bangs. But with bangs as with banging, there are hundreds of ways to do it. Join us on a journey through the history of the "French facelift."

30 B.C.E.: Not to start off on a total bummer, but Cleopatra's famously blunt bangs are a myth. In actuality, she would have worn a wig of tight curls over a shaved head, as was the fashion at the time. The popular image of Cleopatra with bangs comes from the 1934 film Cleopatra, which made use of actress Claudette Colbert's pre-existing bangs.
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1200s: Women's hair was mostly hidden under hats or tightly braided during the medieval period, but what is a wimple if not fabric bangs?

1800s: The regency period brought tightly curled, forehead-framing tendrils into fashion—not quite bangs exactly, but the early cousin of the limp tendril situation that swept proms in the mid-90s.

1910s: The turn of the century saw the Gibson Girl's pouf-y updos loosened and swept forward in parted bangs that look like the brushed out relative of regency ringlets.

1920s: The twenties were when bangs really got going. Women were officially experimenting with all kinds of looks—dark lipstick, shorter dresses, riding bicycles, can you imagine—and their hair was getting wild too. The most famous bangs of the period are the blunt, fringed cuts of flappers like Louise Brooks, but Josephine Baker's curled, slicked down fringe was an ahead-of-its-time take on the kind of swooped bangs that would come into popularity in the 30s and 40s.

1940s: Hair was generally kept off the face in the 40s, but dramatically so. Unwanted forehead hair was combed up into poufs and pompadours, or teased into "bumper bangs" which were suspended in the air above the forehead and often embellished with hats, pins or flowers. (If you were a teen with any interest at all in the ukulele, you have at one point attempted this kind of bang.) A sultry alternative was a Veronica Lake-style "peekaboo bang," a long, sideswept section of hair brushed over part of the face—very Jessica Rabbit, very inconvenient.

1950s: This decade was all about what's now known as baby bangs: Audrey Hepburn with her short, wispy, impulse fringe in Roman Holiday; Natalie Wood's child-like pageboy cut with gamine bangs, a throwback to her child star days with her trademark bangs and braids. But the most famous bangs of the period belong to Bettie Page, whose short, rounded pinup fringe is probably, I'm calling it here, the most influential set of bangs of all time? Page, whose mother was a hairdresser and who often did her own hair and makeup on pinup shoots, initially cut the bangs to minimize a high forehead but allow for light on her face in photographs. To date baby bangs have been associated with the riot grrrl movement, "rockabillies," and Beyonce's first-ever (only?) aesthetic mistake.

1960s: Bangs in the sixties were still fairly short, though generally sideswept and sprayed into place beneath beehives and other Aquanet-assisted updos. The end of this decade saw the pixie cut + barely-there bangs combo that became legendary as the reason Frank Sinatra left Mia Farrow. (She has corrected this rumour: she had cut her own mini-fringe and short crop earlier that year, and Sinatra loved it.)

1970s: The aesthetic was very long, loose, and flowing in the 70s, and bangs were no exception. Jane Birkin's delicate, piece-y fringe was just as iconic as the Hermés bag she inspired (and recently rejected). Farrah Fawcett's feathered hair was a high-volume approach to bangs that carried into the 80s, hard.

1980s: Bangs got bigger and weirder in the 80s. As feathered, brushed out bangs gave way to the Statement Bang, fringes were hairsprayed up and out into improbable hair-hats, or permed into oblivion a la Sarah Jessica Parker. Hair metal bands got men in on the bangs situation in an unprecedented way: 80s Bon Jovi and present-day me have the same haircut.

1990s: The 90s were a great time for weird girl bangs, with goth V and rounded Spock options popular among vampire chicks and vintage babes, respectively. Uma Thurman rocked some impressively blunt bangs to dance and do drugs and almost die in Pulp Fiction, and shiny, curled-under bangs worked with Drew Barrymore's girlish curls. But this was also the decade that gave us the Rachel, and with it, the sidebang. In the layering frenzy of the 90s a bang-like layer of swooped, face-framing hair was mandatory, leading to the aforementioned formal tendril situation: two perfect bits of hair, pulled out of an otherwise intense updo, lying limply on either side of the face.

2000s: The sidebang continued its terrible reign until Zooey Deschanel started a full, retro-bangs trend that hit pensive girls with poetry ambitions particularly hard and never looked back, becoming a shorthand for a particular kind of whimsical indie lady who owned vintage teacups and loved collage. In 2007 Kate Moss got blunt, thick, straight-across bangs and they became fully, properly cool. It is a scientific fact that between 2008 and 2009, 100% of women were at the very least considering getting bangs.

2010s: The heady days of the late aughts bang explosion are over. Bangs are being grown out right now, with the favoured hair a sort of middle parted, two days after a wash, slightly tousled that The Cut is calling "rich girl hair." However, just as ubiquitous is the "lobb" ("long bob," get it), a blunt, shoulder-length cut that often comes with bangs. (Think Taylor Swift, Emma Stone, and other small white celebrities.) It's a beautiful time to be thinking about bangs: they are so ubiquitous that they'll never be out of style, no matter what weird thing you try! Dry shampoo has solved the clean hair, greasy bangs dilemma! You can buy clip in bangs that just snap into your head and come off whenever you want! They're still the most fun you can have with scissors in a bathroom and a glass of wine! With every of bangs from history on offer, you just have to decide what kind of girl you want to be.