“It’s just hair.” That’s the ultimate consolation people give each other after a bad haircut or even just a bad hair day. But in reality, that phrase does very little to make anyone feel better in such a vulnerable and embarrassing moment. Most of the time, it doesn’t even sound convincing.
As Phoebe Waller-Bridge brilliantly put it in Fleabag, when Claire is dealing with a haircut disaster of her own, “Hair is everything.” Honestly, that’s hardly an exaggeration.
“We wish it wasn’t so we could actually think about something else occasionally. But it is,” she tells the hairdresser Anthony. “It’s the difference between a good day and a bad day. We’re meant to think that it’s a symbol of power, that it’s a symbol of fertility. Some people are exploited for it [...]. Hair is everything.”
It’s probably one of the most iconic parts of the show, not just because it’s funny, but because it captures something a lot of people already know. Hair has carried a surprising amount of meaning throughout history and across cultures. For such an ordinary part of our appearance, hair can shape both our self-image and the way others see us.
For starters, hair is a very unique feature. It’s one of the defining characteristics of mammals and something that sets them apart from other animals.
On your scalp alone, you have around 100,000 hair follicles, according to Maksim Plikus, a cell biologist at the University of California, Irvine, who spoke to The New York Times. Each follicle functions like a tiny production site, creating a strand of hair along with the pigment that gives it color.
Beyond appearance, hair serves a protective function. Inside hair follicles is an entire microscopic ecosystem made up of bacteria, viruses, and fungi. Dr. Ralf Paus, a dermatologist at the University of Miami, told The New York Times that this hair microbiome helps keep harmful germs in check and lowers the risk of infection.
Hair follicles are involved in healing as well. When you get a scrape, cut, or another minor wound, your body can use stem cells from the follicles to help repair the skin. As Plikus explained, those cells move to the injured area, turn into skin cells, and then go back to growing hair once the wound has healed.
Still, hair matters for reasons that go far beyond biology. Culturally and symbolically, it carries a great deal of weight and plays an important role in our identity. It can mark different stages of life, too. Hair changes as we age: secondary hair develops during puberty, while thinning, graying, or balding often comes later.
In that sense, hairstyles can reveal a lot about social expectations. Across different cultures and time periods, they have reflected ideas about what is considered acceptable, attractive, or proper. That can include whether hair should be covered, how it should be worn, or even which parts of the body people are expected to remove it from.
Those ideas have changed over time. Short hair, like the bob that feels completely ordinary today, was once seen as scandalous. Before it became more widely accepted in the 1920s, it was often associated with promiscuity, along with behaviors many people considered inappropriate for women at the time, such as smoking, drinking, wearing makeup, and short skirts.
Anu Taranath, a professor at the University of Washington who specializes in global literature, identity, race, and equity, gave a presentation called Tangled: Why Your Hair Matters to Society, where she examined the many ways people express themselves through hair. She showed how those choices are often met with praise in some cases and judgment in others.
Taranath points to many powerful examples. “We just have to look at Michelle Obama’s trajectory,” she says. “How she groomed her hair said a lot, and how she was not able to groom her hair said a lot.” In other words, hair is never only about appearance.
