80s Hairstyles Punk – What we look like is always much more than the absurd reputation of caring about one’s appearance usually allows. This is how we present ourselves to the world. It shows how the world reacts to us.
The way you wear your hair, the makeup you choose can be a badge of honor. A way to convey everything from your taste in music to your political views, sexual orientation or sports allegiance to the world. It can be a passport to the scene or an expression of pure individualism. Makeup and hairstyles can act as an outlet, a canvas to express our deepest feelings, something tangible we can control when the world around us feels overwhelming or an ultimate rejection of society’s expectations.
80s Hairstyles Punk
In the late 70s, a disenfranchised generation of working-class youth shaved their heads as a way to express their frustration amid social chaos and depression. When Margaret Thatcher and the Tories came to power in 1979, they brought with them an era of privatisation, labor strikes, welfare cuts, recession and high unemployment.
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Out of this heavy political and social scene emerged a lean, second-wave subculture that took cues from the punk scene as well as previous iterations of the 1960s trend. Along with the uniform of Doc Martens, bomber jackets, suits and bleached jeans, the young skinners wore their hair in their signature style. However, for the women on stage, known alternatively as ‘skinettes’, ‘skin birds’ or just skinnies, the look had a little more room to define.
The girls then started with the same colors as the boys and then made variations of the look. Chelsea practiced shaving or trimming the crown and back of the head, but the sides of the head around the ears and sometimes the hair. A similar style, the Feathercut, saw hair on the crown with a left side, long sides around the ears known as dog ears and a long fringed section at the back. Lol and Kelly think about it
“Starting with the same look as the boys, the girls then created variations of the look. Chelsea practiced shaving or trimming the crown and nape, but left some hair on the sides of the head around the ears and sometimes.
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Photographer Derek Ridgers captured many of the faces on stage. In the 70s and 80s, Ridgers found himself at the forefront of the subcultures that emerged at the time, armed with a camera, collecting the definitive record of the children who define the aesthetic of the movement.
The two children were Susan Newman and Amanda Betterton photographed by the Ridgers in Chelsea in 1981. Young at the time, the two girls were thin and can be seen in the photo with their hair up with thin bangs and side parts. , equally defiant and curious expressions in their matching denim jackets. Almost 40 years later, two women reflect on what style and culture mean to them.
In 1979-80. I was in my last year of high school, so I was 15 or 16 years old. My best friend and her boyfriend (who were both punks) asked me if I wanted to go with them to a concert at the Lyceum. I’d never heard of The Specials before, and being the die-hard Soul Girl I am I thought I’d go, just for one night. However, I can honestly say that this night completely blew me away and completely changed my thoughts and ideas about who I am and who I want to be. The whole place was packed with skinny and bad boys, with an atmosphere that was definitely buzzing with all the dancing and music. I finally found something that really excited me; I felt like I belonged. Being the third child, with two older sisters with very strong outgoing characters, I didn’t know who I was and which way I wanted to go, and this new opportunity gave me the opportunity to express myself; I can be a completely different person than everyone expected me to be.
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After I went to The Specials, I knew pretty quickly that I wanted to cut my long, blonde hair to clearly define my new identity. However, there were no other skinny girls in my town at the time and no hairdressers to wash my hair, so I went for a very short pixie cut first, which horrified my family, especially my mother who actually cried. Little did she know that she would become even shorter and whiter! When I started college a few months later, there were two thin girls studying and they both had my exact body shape; ribbed top with long sides and back. I asked one of them if she would take me to the hairdresser and that’s how my new style started. It finally nailed the look I was going for. I liked that it defined who I was at the time and what I was doing.
Many people told me I was crazy to keep my long and beautiful hair, others said I was stupid for wanting to follow this culture. When I walk around town, most people just stare at me, mostly because I’m the only skinny girl and people find it shocking. People generally didn’t believe that a girl would do that to herself; to spoil their beauty so completely – my parents were ashamed of me. But then a few other people slowly got thin which allowed me to meet like minded people and not feel so isolated.
After a few years, I started to feel like I was falling out of the scene and didn’t really want to be a part of it anymore; for me it served the purpose of giving me an identity that was different from everyone else my age.
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“Ultimately, being different from what was expected of me gave me a sense of belonging to a cool, minority group that rebelled against ‘normality.’ It gave me the confidence to be someone else, to hide and stand out from the crowd – it represented a ‘new me’ and opened up a completely different life of play, boys and music” – Susan Newman
In retrospect, the hairstyle was different from what was expected of me, it made me feel like I belonged to a cold, minority group that rebelled against ‘normality’ – something I would never have lived in his small town. It gave me the confidence to be someone else, to hide and stand out from the crowd – it represented the ‘new me’ and opened up a completely different life of acting, boys and music. For a long time, in my twenties, I was ashamed of my thin skin, because it was seen as unpleasant and derogatory. However, I now look back on that time with absolute satisfaction and experience like no other. I am grateful for the outlet it gave me to escape the boring teenage life I was living and the great experiences it gave me. I’ve seen so many pictures of myself lately (that I didn’t even know existed) and I’ve been complimented on how beautiful I look – amused at how tables have changed over time and the look is now considered iconic.
I was probably 16 when I first noticed the emergence of tanneries in my town, it was around 1979-80. There was an explosion of two-tone music and shortly after the release of Quadrophenia which had a message about finding your tribe and a sense of belonging that appealed to me. Punk had been around for a while, but it always looked a bit shabby, while skinners had a sharper, cleaner look with their polished shoes and tighter Ben Sherman shirts. It was a look that called to me.
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I remember seeing some skinny girls at that time. I think for me it represented the ultimate rebellion against society, plus a bit of courage for a girl to burn her hair! They had an element of menace about them and certainly turned heads – something that attracted a bored 16-year-old boy in an Essex town. Now that I think about it, part of the appeal was that you were treated equally as a woman, which was almost non-existent in the late 80s, early 90s. I’ve always thought of myself as a tanner, not a bird.
From the age of 15, my hair gradually got shorter and shorter. My mom was a hairdresser, so she gave me my first crop, a sort of haircut. But still it was
