If you are into celebrity watching, then you will know that 1940's hairstyles are making a comeback. People like Gwen Stefani have now adopted a hairstyle that was a favorite with 1940's movie stars. Fashion is a funny thing because trends in clothing and in hairstyles often reflect a change in social attitudes.

It was during the 1940's, and particularly after the Second World War, that the housewife role became popularized for women.

If you look at the movies of that time and bill board advertisements they often represented women as ultra feminine. Women, people believed should spend their days looking after the family and keeping house and then making sure they looked their best when their husbands came home. Many women wore their hair like Veronica Lake because their husbands liked it that way. 1940's hairstyles were very much a reflection of how men envisaged women.

Economic changes in the 1950's and 60's meant that one wage was not always enough to support a family and so an increasing number of women went out to work after having children. In the beginning much of this work was part time but as the 1960's progressed more women worked full time.

Once women gained financial independence they started to want other independences and this was reflected in the hair styles that women adopted.

Gone were the Veronica Lake look-alikes. Modern women did not have time to stand with a curling iron every day so they adopted shorter, easy to manage styles. With the rise of feminism in the late sixties and early seventies short hair styles were often so severe as to be mannish. Women were striving for equality and wanted to look the part.

Nowadays rising divorce figures and delinquent children are seen by many as the result of women's desire for equality. From many quarters there has been a backlash against the feminist movement and a call for women to look and behave as God intended. Interestingly, there has also been a move back to loose waves and braids which are reminiscent of 1940's hairstyles.