Seventies Hair



As we all know, the Hair Codifiers for The Eighties were the ladies. Well, the Hair Codifiers for The Seventies were the gentlemen.

Is it the sideburns? Is it the general shape, in which we, in hindsight, can recognize what would later become the mullet? In any case, the audience recognizes the era as soon as a manly mane of this sort is shown.

Yeah, it's the sideburns. They were undoubtedly the defining feature of Seventies male hair, in addition to hair that was worn naturally thick - straight at first, just like Sixties hair, but increasingly frizzy as the decade wore on, perhaps thanks to the influence of glitter rock, or possibly the Black Power movement. The other 'very 70s' hairstyle is the Afro, immensely popular in the 70s (though it started in the late Sixties)for most African-Americans, but even white guys with curly hair tried to have one.

Obviously not true of all Seventies males, especially if they spent most of their time in circles where sideburns would be inappropriate. (In the famous photo of the just-resigned President Nixon boarding a helicopter, for instance, he is flanked by a row of Marine Corps cadets all with the standard military buzzcut.)

Women's hair was "hippie-ish" (long and straight) for the first half of the decade and puffy and combed-over during the second half (a preview of Eighties Hair).

Compare Hotblooded Sideburns.

Anime and Manga

 * Mazinger Z: Other than Kouji's Hotblooded Sideburns, you also have Dr. Hell's sideburns and Beard of Evil.

Film

 * Hair, obviously, especially the title song (even though it came out in The Sixties).
 * Psycho for Hire Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men wears a Seventies hairstyle, which only adds to his creepiness.
 * Take an actor known for Seventies Hair, like Takuya Kimura, and cast him in a seventies throwback Live Action Adaptation, in this case the Uchuu Senkan Yamato movie. How could it not work?
 * Almost Famous. Lester and the members of Stillwater have this. William's an interesting case; he's too young to grow sideburns and his ear-covering mop was firmly tied to the period when the movie was made in 2000 but has come back in style since.
 * A lot of the Imperial officers in the first Star Wars movie (1977) have long Seventies sideburns. Even Grand Moff Tarkin has them, although to a much less exaggerated degree.
 * Ironically, the character most noticeably without sideburns is Luke Skywalker himself. He does wear the androgynous "bowl cut" popular during the '70s, but the inner, darker layer of hair is cut tastefully short (noticeable when Luke is briefly pulled under the sewer water by the tentacled monster and all of his hair gets plastered on top of his head).
 * There is also a lot of seventies hair in Revenge of the Sith as the style is meant to resemble that of the original trilogy, most prominent in Anakin. Obi-Wan previously sported one hell of a mullet in "Attack of the Clones".
 * Almost everyone in Enter the Dragon.
 * Completely averted in the movie Rudy; though set in the early 70s, none of the male actors have long hair or big sideburns, even though the title character in Real Life definitely sported seventies hair when he played in the big game depicted at the end of the movie. Possibly this was done to give the film a more timeless feel.
 * Shows up in The Last Picture Show, which is supposed to be set in 1950s Texas. While some men did have sideburns in 1951, they probably weren't that common.
 * Zulu. Well...the 1870s anyway. The long sideburns on the men wouldn't look out of place a century later.

Live Action TV

 * Mike ("Meathead") on All in The Family and a lot of his hippie friends.
 * That '70s Show, naturally. Especially Kelso's feathered 'do and Hyde's frizzy afro.
 * Frequently -- and anachronistically -- in M*A*S*H. B.J. Hunnicutt was a notable offender, especially in later seasons.
 * Not surprisingly, the TV show Emergency is a veritable time capsule of 70s hair: Sideburns, Afros, feathered mullets, and Pornstaches.

Music

 * Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies still have hair like this.
 * Brian May of Queen still has his hairstyle and much of its color from The Seventies, too.
 * Trevor Bolder of The Spiders from Mars had some of the most epic sideburns known to man.
 * The Bee Gees

Sports

 * It was rumored that pro baseball players were actually encouraged and given bonuses to wear their hair long, to attract - or at least not alienate - the younger crowd.
 * You'll have some difficulty finding a Formula One driver of the early 1970s who did not have his hair like this. Re: the page image.

Web Comics

 * The "Bulldog & Cooch" spoof of 1970s cop shows in Pv P. (Here, here, here and here.)
 * And, of course, the spoofee.