History
Liberty spikes trace their origins to the Ancient Britons. Warriors washed their long dark hair in lime water, which also bleached it blond. This hairstyle was highly symbolic as a badge of honor and manhood: Celts were not allowed to spike or cut their hair until they had killed an enemy. After the subjugation of Britain spiked hair fell out of use in favor of short Roman haircuts. In the silent film era some actors, like comedian Harold Lloyd, experimented with spiked hair to stand out from the crowd, although this trend did not catch on with ordinary people. This changed in the 1970s when the emerging British punk subculture chose messy, choppy hair in reaction to the long smooth styles worn by hippies and disco fans. Originally the spikes were small, as worn by modern-day metrosexuals and pop-punk fans, but by the 1980s this had evolved to tall liberty spikes, sometimes over a foot in length. Liberty spikes were also worn by the Goth subculture, although in this case they were dyed black instead of the bright unnatural colors favored by punk rockers.
Read more about this topic: Liberty Spikes
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)