/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/49498221/GettyImages-528253400.0.0.jpg)
Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.
Kate Middleton's hair, the bouncy blowout perfected and repeated ad infinitum by an army of royal stylists, is as synonymous with Kate Middleton as are matching skirt suits and playing sports while wearing heels. Over the course of her five years as a royal thus far, she's made only minor tweaks to the cut, adding longish bangs here and there or trimming it juuuust enough to creep into Mom Cut territory. But evidently, that's precisely what's offending people.
Which people, exactly? For one, a certain member of the British press, who wrote a Telegraph editorial this morning whose thesis boils down to this: Kate Middleton's hair is lame. In her story, the author laments a few things; firstly, Kate's unwillingness to branch out from her trusted stylist Amanda Tucker, whom she used for her recent Vogue portraits.
She also blames Kate's middle-class upbringing for her hairstyle, writing, "She yearned to be a princess and a princess needs princess hair. Miss Middleton may have been merely middle-class, but in this respect, at least, she made sure she was qualified for the job."
But it's not just the author that finds Kate's hair offensive. Who else hates Kate's hair? Hair professionals, apparently. "Hairdressers, notoriously, detest it, longing to take their scissors to it," the author claims, and according to one anonymous hairdresser, Vogue hates it, too. "No wonder Vogue covered it with a hat," he reportedly said. Another person who hates Kate's hair: the Queen, who "is rumored to favor a pruning."
But as the editorial continues, it becomes clear that the author's real problem is with long hair in general, as evidenced in this rather confounding paragraph:
Long hair remains the preserve of little girls, youth, a maidenhood just beginning to spell sex. It is the stuff of fairy tale; the accessory that every heroine must boast. She will unleash it to ensnare her prince a la Rapunzel, or use it to bewitch in the manner of Keats' Belle Dame Sans Merci. When Pelléas caresses Mélisande's luxuriant locks in Debussy's opera, it is the transgression that marks their undoing; Renaissance brides let their hair fall untrammelled, a symbol of youth, sex and fertility.
Okay! *Takes five showers.* Instead of reading the rest of said editorial, a better way to spend one's time is to Google "Kate Middleton hair tutorial," which is where you can find me for the next three to five hours.
Loading comments...