"why worry so much about the bob?"

BANDITS- - -BOBBED.

By Ruth Brownlow.

When girls took to bobbed hair they started more trouble than any one ever dreamed could be caused by a few hairs being worn short or not so short.

As long as they kept off the front page it was not so bad. But when the young lady with the bobbed hair does something she shouldn’t she beomes variously

The Bob-Haired Bandit,
The Bobbed Hair Girl Bandit,
And the Bobbed Haired Girl Bandit.

You may see them all, most any day in the headlines of the various New York papers, and if you read into the story you may find that the bandit who in the head was was “bob-haired” becomes “bobbed-haired in the lead and “bobbed hair” in the body of the story.

It is a problem, this question of the correct spelling of the term which has been neglected as long as the term appeared only occasionally or in fashion notes. Mr. Webster seems not to have realized the importance of the bob. He says a bob is a short jerking action. The only thing in his dictionary that one could connect with the present bob of the hair is the bobtail, which is, he says, a tail cut short.

But even Webster would not have ignored the style if in his day bandits such as now bother the Police Commissioner and the headline writers of the New York papers daily had been at large.

But, after all, why worry so much about the bob? It seems to be the smallest of the bandits attractions. She has other and more taking ways by which she attracts front page space.

If one must designate her style of hair dress, why not say shingled or boyishly bobbed? That’s what the hairdressers are saying.

But with the fashion for short hair several years and more old, the surprise is not that the bandit has bobbed hair, but that the public is so surprised that she has it.

The flapper with her shorn locks has been accused of being and doing almost everything. She has gone to the dogs innumerable times. She has been hopeless over and over. She has been the despair of the mothers and fathers and reformers and future husbands. She has been denounced from pulpits; she has been preached over, prayed over, denounced and reviled.

And yet when a girl turns out in Brooklyn and robs a few stores her and there the city is astounded at the thought of her having bobbed hair, and the copy readers juggle the tiny “ed’s” to suit themselves.

[New York Telegram and Evening Mail, February 13, 1924, p.13]