Curtain

Curtain (pronounced kur-tn)

(1) A hanging piece of fabric used to shut out the light from a window, adorn a room, increase privacy etc.

(2)  A movable or folding screen used for similar purposes (tends to be regionally specific).

(3) In a performance theatre, a set of hanging drapery for concealing all or part of the stage or set from the view of the audience; the act or time of raising or opening a curtain at the start of a performance; the end of a scene or act indicated by the closing or falling of a curtain; an effect, line, or plot solution at the conclusion of a performance.

(4) In broadcasting, music signaling the end of a radio or television performance (and used as a direction in a script of a play to indicate that a scene or act is concluded).

(5) Anything that shuts off, covers, or conceals.

(6) In military jargon, as curtain of artillery fire, a specific type of barrage.

(7) In architecture, a relatively flat or featureless extent of wall between two pavilions or the like.

(8) In military architecture, a fortification, the part of a wall or rampart connecting two bastions, towers, or the like.

(9) In slang (always in the plural as curtains), the end; death, especially by violence.

(10) In political shorthand (iron curtain, bamboo curtain, banana curtain), a descriptor for a politically defined geographical construct.

1250–1300: From the Middle English curteyn, corteyn, cortyn, cortine & curtine (hanging screen of textile fabric used to close an opening or shut out light, enclose a bed, or decorate an altar), from the Anglo-French & Old French courtine & cortine (curtain, tapestry, drape, blanket), from the Late Latin cōrtīna (enclosed place; curtain), probably equivalent to co(ho)rt- (stem of cohors (court; enclosure; courtyard)) + -īna or –ine, operating as a calque of the Ancient Greek aulaía (curtain), derivative of aulḗ (courtyard).  The Latin cōrtīna is sometimes imputed to the primitive Indo-European (s)ker- (to turn, bend) but etymologists think this dubious.  The evolution of curtain in Late (Ecclesiastical) Latin was influenced by resemblance of the curve of an amphitheater to a cauldron (kettle) and the sacred tripod of Apollo, metonymically for the curved seat or covering.

In Classical Latin cōrtīna meant "round vessel, cauldron," from cortem (cohortem was the older form) (enclosure, courtyard) and related to the modern cohort.  The meaning shift appears to have begins with cōrtīna being used as a loan-translation of Greek aulaia (curtain) in the Vulgate (to render Hebrew yeriah in the Book of Exodus).  The Ancient Greek was connected to aule (court), probably because the "door" that led to the courtyard of a Greek house was a hung cloth.

The figurative use (something that conceals or screens) was noted from the early fifteenth century and from the 1590s to mean a "large sheet used to conceal the stage in a theatre" with many figurative senses drawn from the stage: “Behind the curtain” is from the 1670s; “curtains” from 1912; “curtain call” (appearance of individual performers on stage at the end of a performance to be recognized by the audience) from 1884; “to draw the curtain” from circa 1500 (in opposite senses: "to conceal" & "to reveal".  The curtain-rod is attested from circa 1490. An Old English word for "curtain" was (fly-net), ancestor of the modern fly-screen.

The Iron Curtain

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic.

The term “iron curtain” was popularized by its use in a 1946 speech by Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) in Fulton, Missouri.  In saying the line “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”, the reference was to the political barrier the USSR had created between the satellite states in its sphere of influence and the West.  It created the sense of an impenetrable barrier between the blocs, with the not inaccurate implication of a form of imprisonment imposed on those “behind the iron curtain”.

The companion cold war term, “bamboo curtain” was adopted after the 1949 communist takeover of China to refer to the political demarcation between the communist and non-communist states in Asia, essentially a descriptor of the Chinese sphere of influence.  It was used less-frequently than iron curtain because, unlike the static line in Eastern Europe, the bamboo curtain, however defined, tended to shift and nothing as formal as the Warsaw Pact ever emerged.

Iron curtain appears first to have been used in 1794 as the name of a fire-protection device for theatres.  This was literally an iron curtain which dropped to protect the audience should fire break out on the stage, The Monthly Review (June 1794) noting the helpful advantage of the innovation being that should a fire erupt, the audience would remain safe and “…nothing can be burnt but the scenery and the actors.”  HG Wells (1866–1946) in The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904) used "iron curtain" in a psychological sense, a use adopted (and extended into the political) by the German-born Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians (1876–1965; Queen of the Belgians 1909-1934) when, writing of the poignant position in which she was place by the German invasion of Belgium in 1914, she said "between them (the Germans) and me there is now a bloody iron curtain which has descended forever."  The phrase caught on during the war years, US surgeon George Washington Crile (1864–1943) in A Mechanistic View of War and Peace (1917) describing the "iron curtain" which was now France's frontier with Germany and Vasily Rozanov (1856-1919) in Apokalipsis nashego vremeni (The Apocalypse of our Time (1917-1918)) applied the idea to the way the Bolshevik revolution was cutting off all in Russian history that was inconvenient for the telling of their narrative.  Ethel Snowden (1881–1951), who would flit across British history for three decades, may or may not have read Rozanov but in her book of observations of the early revolutionary state, Through Bolshevik Russia  (1920), she invoked "iron curtain" to convey the sense of sharp difference the place engendered as soon as the border was crossed.  No useful idiot, she was highly critical of what was still a pre-Stalinist state, noting that "Everyone I met in Russia outside the Communist Party goes in terror of his liberty or his life".  Plus ça change...           

Between then and 1946, the phrase had been used many times though rarely in a political context but it had been mentioned in 1920 in reference to the edge of the Soviet sphere of influence and Nazi propaganda minister Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; German propaganda minister 1933-1945 Minister) used (ein eiserner Vorhang) it in 1944 in the same sense as Churchill two years later.  So had one of the great survivors of the Third Reich, Count Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk (1887–1977) who was German finance minister (1932-1945) under both the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) and the Third Reich (1933-1945), before being appointed Chancellor in the bizarre coda that was the three week government formed in Flensburg under Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz (1891–1980; head of the German navy 1943-1945, German head of state April-May 1945).

In Australia, “banana curtain” made a comeback in the age of COVID-19, used mostly by those south of the border envious of Queensland’s relative success in suppressing the virus.  It was actually a myth bananas were grown only north of the border but a popular one and “banana curtain” was originally a disparaging reference to the state under the (mildly) repressive National Party (originally Country Party) régime (1968-1987) of Joh Bjelke-Petersen (1911-2005) and was used flippantly in the 1970s, Hugh Lunn’s (b 1941) book Behind the Banana Curtain published in 1980.  The term was reclaimed by Brisbane radio station 4ZZZ with the issue in 2000 of Behind the Banana Curtain, a two-CD compilation to mark twenty-five years of 4ZZZ broadcasting.  A similar collection, a compilation from the most recent decade, Beyond the Banana Curtain, was released in 2010.

Curtain reveal: Model Megan Fox (b 1986) in a cherry-red Jacquemus’ La Maille Pralù from the La Montagne autumn/winter 2021 collection, with La Jupe Valerie skirt, Femme LA sandals and Mietis bag, August 2021.

The engaging ”midriff-flossing” emerged in the northern summer of 2020 as a term to describe the strappy tops and dresses designed to display the abdomen.  The companion term of 2021 was “curtain reveal”, the imagery being a pair of curtains, draped to the centre of the window, joined by the flimsiest of cords.  In fashion, this translates to a tiny crop top, secured as dubiously as possible with a fastening at the sternum.  It’s a look which, depending on the number of links included, can be adjusted to reveal a little or a lot of the torso but can leave modesty or lawfulness hanging by a literal thread.  Some interpretations eschew fabric for the tie, relying instead on the industry's invaluable tool of last resort, the ever-dependable safety-pin, hence the use also of the phrase “pin-top”.

Lindsay Lohan in curtain reveal sheer frilly cardi-top, Teen Choice Awards, 2003.

Proscenium

Proscenium (pronounced proh-see-nee-uhm or pruh-see-nee-uhm)

(1) In a modern theatre, the stage area between the curtain and the orchestra or the arch that separates a stage from the auditorium together with the area immediately in front of the arch (also called the proscenium arch).

(2) In the theatre of antiquity, the stage area immediately in front of the scene building (probably a medieval misunderstanding).

(3) In the theatre of antiquity, the row of columns at the front the scene building, at first directly behind the circular orchestra but later upon a stage.

1608: From the Latin proscēnium and proscaenium (in front of the scenery) from the Ancient Greek προσκήνιον (proskḗnion), (entrance to a tent, porch, stage) which, in late Classical Greek had come to mean “stent; boothtage curtain”.  The construct in Greek was πρό (pró-) (before) + σκηνή (skēnḗ) (scene; building) + --ion (the neuter noun suffix).  The noun plural is proscenia, the relative rarity of the base word meaning prosceniums is seen less frequently still but both are acceptable.  The standard abbreviation in the industry and among architects is pros.  For purists, the alternative spelling is proscænium and other European forms include the French proscénium and the Italian proscenio, other languages borrowing these spellings.

The occasionally cited literal translation of the Greek "the space in front of the scenery" appears to be another of the medieval-era errors created by either a mistranslation or a misunderstanding.  The modern sense of "space between the curtain and the orchestra" is attested from 1807 although it had been used figurative to suggest “foreground or front” since the 1640s.

Architectural variations

Emerson Colonial Theatre, Boston, Massachusetts.

Although the term is not always applied correctly, technically, a proscenium stage must have an architectural frame (known to architects as the “proscenium arch” although these are not always in the shape of an arch).  Their stages tend to be deep (the scale of the arch usually dictating the extent) and to aid visibility, are sometimes raked, the surface rising in a gentle slope away from the audience.  Especially in more recent constructions, the front of the stage can extend beyond the proscenium into the auditorium; this called an apron or forestage.  Theatres with proscenium stages are known as “proscenium arch theatres” and often include an orchestra pit and a fly tower with one or more catwalks to facilitate the movement of scenery and the lighting apparatus.

Thrust stage, Shakespeare Festival Theatre, Stratford, Ontario.

There are other architectural designs for theatres.  The thrust stage projects (ie “thrusts”) the performance into the auditorium with the audience sitting on three sides in what’s called the “U” shape.  In diagrams and conceptual sketches, the thrust stage area is often represented as a square but they’ve been built in rectangles, as semi-circles, half-polygons, multi-pointed stars and a variety of other geometric shapes.  Architects can tailor a thrust stage to suit the dimensions of the available space but the usual rationale is to create an intimacy between actors and audience.

In the round: Circle in the Square Theatre, New York City.

The term theatre-in-the-round can be misleading because the arrangement of the performance areas, while central, is rarely executed as an actual circle, the reference instead being to the audience being seated “all around”.  Built typically in a square or polygonal formation, except in some one-act performances, the actors enter through aisles or vomitories between the seating and directors have them move as necessitated by the need to relate to an audience viewing from anywhere in the 360^o sweep, the scenery minimal and positioned avoid obstructions.  Because theatre-in-the-round inherently deconstructs the inherently two-dimensional nature of the classical stage, it was long a favorite of the avant-garde (there was a time when such a thing could be said to exist).  The arena theatre is theatre-in-the-round writ large, big auditoria with a central stage and like the sports stadia they resemble, typically rectangular and often a multi-purpose venue.  There’s a fine distinction between arena theatres and hippodromes which more recall circuses with a central circular (or oval) performance space surrounded by concentric tiered seating with deep pits or low screens often separating audience and performers.

Winter Talent Show stage, Mean Girls (2004).

The black-box (or studio or ad hoc) theatre is a flexible performance space.  At its most basic it can be a single empty room, painted black, the floor of the stage the same level as the first audience row from which there’s no separation.  To maximize the flexibility, some black-box theatres have no permanent fixtures and allow for the temporary setup of seating to suit the dynamics of the piece and the spaces have even been configured with no seating for an audience, the positional choices made by patrons influencing the performance.  The platform stage is the simplest setup, often not permanent and suited to multi-purpose venues.  Flexible thus but the lack of structure does tend to preclude more elaborate productions with the stage a raised and usually rectangular platform at one end of a room; the platform may be level or raked according to the size and shape of the space.  The will audience sit in rows and such is the simplicity that platform stages are often used without curtains, the industry term being “open stage or “end stage”, the latter perhaps unfortunate but then actors are used to “break a leg” and “died on stage”.

Open Air Theatre Festival, Paris.

The phrase open air theatre refers more to the performance than the physical setting.  It means simply something performed not under a roof (although sometimes parts of the stage or audience seating will be covered).  The attraction for a director is that stages so exposed can make use of natural light as it changes with the hour sunsets and stars especially offering dramatic possibilities; rain can be a problem.  Open air theatres are also an example of site-specific theatre (of which street theatre is probably best-known), a term with quite a bit of overlap with other descriptors although it’s applied usually to theatre is performed in a non-traditional environments such as a pubs, old prisons or warehouse, often reflecting the history of the place.  Promenade theatre (sometimes called peripatetic theatre) involves either the actors or the audience moving from place to place as the performance dictates.  Interactive theatre is rarely performed (at least by intent); it involves the actors interacting with the audience and is supposed to be substantially un-scripted but, like reality television, some of what’s presented as interactive theatre has been essentially fake.

Borrowed from antiquity, the proscenium arch theatre was for centuries a part of what defined the classical tradition of Western dramatic art but in the twentieth century playwrights and directors came to argue that modern audiences were longing for more intimate experiences although there’s scant evidence this view was the product of demand rather than supply.  That said, the novelty of immersive, site-specific performances gained much popularity and modern production techniques stimulated a revival of interest in older forms like theatre-in-the-round.

There were playwrights and directors however (some at whatever age self-styled enfants terribles), who preferred austerity, decrying the proscenium arch as a theatre based on a lavish illusion for which we either no longer had the taste or needed to have it beaten out of us.  It was thought to embody petit bourgeois social and cultural behaviors which normalized not only the style and content of theatre but also the rules of how theatre was to be watched: sitting quietly while well dressed, deferentially laughing or applauding at the right moments.  A interesting observation also was that the proscenium arch created a passive experience little different from television, a critique taken up more recently by those who thought long performances, typically with no more than one intermission (now dismissed as anyway existing only to serve wine and cheese) unsuitable for audiences with short attention spans and accustomed to interactivity.

Quite how true any of that was except in the minds of those who thought social realist theatre should be compulsory re-education for all is a mystery but the binge generation seems able easily to sustain their attention for epic-length sessions of the most lavishly illusionary stuff which can fit on a screen so there’s that.  The criticisms of the proscenium arch were more a condemnation of those who were thought its devoted adherents than any indication the form was unsuitable for anything but the most traditional delivery of drama.  Neither threatening other platforms nor rendered redundant by them, the style of theatre Plato metaphorically called “the cave” will continue, as it long has, peacefully to co-exist.

Fringe

Fringe (pronounced frinj)

(1) A decorative border of thread, cord, or the like, usually hanging loosely from a raveled edge or separate strip; an edging consisting of hanging threads, tassels etc.

(2) In architecture, engineering, gardening, interior decorating etc, anything resembling or suggesting this (sometimes used loosely).

(3) An outer edge; margin; the periphery.

(4) In political science, something regarded as peripheral, marginal, secondary, or extreme in relation to something else; Those members of a political party, or any social group, holding unorthodox views (famously as the “lunatic fringe”).

(5) In optical physics, one of the alternate light and dark bands produced by the diffraction or interference of light.

(6) In tax law, as “fringe benefit”, a non-cash element of earning treated as income for taxation purposes (sometimes at a concessional rate).

(7) To furnish with or as if with a fringe; to serve as a fringe for, or to be arranged around or along so as to suggest a fringe; to be a fringe.

(8) In hairdressing, a style in which hair sits vertically across the forehead (synonymous with “bangs”, the predominant US form although the latter describes a wider range of cuts and, under the influence of social media, is now widely used).

(9) In botany, the peristome or fringe-like appendage of the capsules of most mosses.

(10) In structured performance art, a series of events conducted in parallel with (though not formerly a part of) an established festival (Edinburgh Fringe; Adelaide Fringe etc).

1325–1375: From the Middle English frenge (ornamental bordering; material for a fringe), from the Old French frenge (thread, strand, fringe, hem, border) (which endures in Modern French as frange), from the Vulgar Latin frimbia (a metathetic variant of the Late Latin plural fimbria (fibers, threads, fringe)), from the Latin fimbriae (fringe) of uncertain origin.  It was related to the German Franse and Danish frynse and came to replace the native Middle English fnæd (fringe), byrd (fringe) & fasel (fringe) from the Old English fæs (fringe) & fnæs (fringe).  As a verb which described “to decorate with a fringe or fringes”, use emerged in the mid-fifteenth century.  The meaning “a border, a boundary, an edge” dates from the 1640s while the figurative sense of “an outer edge, the margin” didn’t come into use until the 1890s although fringe had been an adjective since 1809.  The use of the technical term “fringe benefits” was first recorded in 1952.  Fringe is a noun, verb & adjective, fringed & fringing are verbs and fringeless, fringelike & fringy are adjectives; the noun plural is fringes.

For those seeking an example of the fecundity of the human imagination, Urban Dictionary has a listing of their contributors' suggestions in which fringe is an element including: mini-fringe, fringe fries, Tetris fringe, stoner fringe, wannabe fringe, minge fringe, vagina fringe, fringe of wisdom, fringe sex, clunge fringe, stu fringe, fringed purse, fringe flicker, pube fringe, fringe binge, fanny fringe, block fringe, fringed unicorn, fringe wizzle, chocolate fringe, box fringe, fringe of darkness, fringe sleeper, fucking fringe & grunge fringe.  Especially in those with some anatomical reference, there may be some overlap in meaning but it remains an impressive list.

Slides from the research which identified the Beta-1,3-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase lunatic fringe gene (now called LFNG), an an essential mediator of somite segmentation and patterning.

In the science of genetics, “lunatic fringe” was too tempting to resist. As in many fields in science, the privilege of allocating a name for a gene is granted to whomever discovered it and those working on fruit flies and other creatures concocted, inter alia: Tinman (fruit flies with a mutated Tinman gene do not develop a heart); Casanova (Zebrafish with a mutation in the Casanova gene develops two hearts); INDY (I’m not dead yet (a reference to a line in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail) a mutation in the INDY gene prolongs the lifespan of fruit flies; Cheap Date (fruit flies with a mutation in the Cheap Date gene become highly sensitive to alcohol); Dracula (Zebrafish with a mutated Dracula gene are hyper-sensitive to light and soon die; Sonic Hedgehog (Fruit fly embryos with mutated Sonic hedgehog gene develop spikes that resembles a hedgehog); Pinhead (a fruit fly gene which resembled humans colloquially called "pinheads"); Groucho Marx (a gene in metazoa that induces excess facial bristles); Ken & Barbie (Mutations in Ken and Barbie result in fruit flies without external genitalia; Grim & Reaper (the genes Grim & Reaper regulate the death process (apoptosis) in fruit flies).  Even the names of some of genes discovered in fruit fly (and other non-human) research proved to be controversial because so many were shared with humans and accordingly the Human Genome Organization’s (HUGO) gene naming committee was petitioned to change them.   As part of this linguistic sanitization, three christened during the decoding of the human genome (Lunatic Fringe, Manic Fringe & Radical Fringe) were anonymized respectively as LFNG, MFNG & RFNG.

Lunatic Fringe, Canterbury, England.

In parts of the English-speaking world, it’s not uncommon to find a hairdressing salon called Lunatic Fringe but it’s less common in North America where the preferred term for what in the UK, Australia etc was traditionally called a fringe, is “bangs”.  Under the influence of social media and other cultural exports, the Americanism has spread and bangs is now commonly heard everywhere and it’s proved technically useful for professional hairdressers who often distinguish between the classic fringe and a variety of cuts called bangs (which might be considered partial fringes), typically a cut which involves some strands cut short in front of the face or longer, usually thicker strands at the sides to “frame the face”.  The origin of the use of “bangs” in this context is mysterious, some claiming it was a clipping of the hairdresser’s phrase “bang off” which meant to cut the hair in front of the face short, straight & even while others suggest a link with “bang tail”, a dressage cut done to horsetails for equestrian events where the tail hairs would be cut straight across.

Lindsay Lohan with fringe cut with the alluring “dangling in the eyes” look, known as early as 1875 as "the lunatic fringe" (left), in costume as Cleopatra in Liz & Dick (2012) with straight cut fringe (centre) and with curtain bangs which are layered but not quite a bottleneck (right).

There is art & science associated with bangs because not all variations suit all face shapes and certainly aren’t suitable (or even technically possible) with all types of hair.  Additionally, some really work only if complementary makeup is applied but the core base for the decision is almost always the shape of the face, particularly the curve of the jaw-line and essentially they pivot from four points: above the brows, at eye level, at cheekbone level and at the jaw-line.  As a general principle, the hairdresser’s four point rule for bangs is (1) square or heart-shaped faces look best with something wispier or feathered fringe to add softness, (2) oblong face shapes work well with blunt-cut bangs, (3) round faces can gain the effect of elongation with side-swept or curtain bangs and (4) oval-shaped faces will usually accommodate any bang.  In the jargon of professionals there are curtain bangs, bottleneck bangs, blunt bangs, curly bangs, side-swept bangs, layered bangs, choppy bangs, braided bangs, wispy bangs, wavy bangs, micro bangs, shaggy bangs, piecey bangs, JBF bangs & clip-in bangs.

Ali Lohan (b 1993) photographed with her pregnant sister wearing Sandal-Malvina Fringe Tank Dress (left).  The shoes are Alexandre Birmen Clarita Platforms although, as the pregnancy progresses, the Instagram feed can be expected increasingly to feature sensible and comfortable footwear such as Nike’s Air Vapormax Multicolor sneakers (right).

Fringe “festivals” (Edinburgh Fringe; Adelaide Fringe etc).are events which “piggy-back” on mainstream “official” events (Edinburgh Festival; Adelaide Festival etc).  They began as “pirate events” but often became so popular they really came to be considered part of the event and schedules of both came to be designed in conjunction.  The notion of them being “fringe” referenced (1) their components being exhibited or preformed not in the main performance spaces but in places on the periphery and (2) their content being (allegedly) avant-garde (“edgy” in arty talk) or too controversial to be staged in the main event.

Theodore Roosevelt in fringed jacket with Winchester Model 1876, customized with a half-round octagonal barrel, pistol grip, deluxe checkered wood, case-hardened receiver and a shotgun-style butt.

The “lunatic fringe” is really not a phrase from political science (although not a few academics seem to enjoy using it); and in this context it was coined by a politician and is a favorite in popular journalism.  Although many dictionaries early in the twentieth century are said to have described “lunatic fringe” as “a splendidly prejudicial British phrase, with its suggestion of hair dragged villainously low over the forehead or edging the circumference of the face in the way that magistrates disapprove of”, it seems first to have been used of political matters by Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919; US president 1901-1909) in a letter to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924) on 4 November 1913.   In the letter, he wrote: “I have got some very amusing letters from the lunatic fringe. . . . It is extraordinary how they take hold of people who are just a little mad themselves.”

Thereafter, the phrase became widely known and has since been used of extremist groups or individuals with radical or unconventional views.  It’s in a sense a successor to the way “ultra” was earlier used (ultimately as both noun and adjective) as a prefix (ultra-Tory, ultra-revolutionary etc) before emerging in its own right as a “curtailed word”.  In modern use, it’s handy in that it’s politically agnostic: Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) could say of his Democratic Party challenger, Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) that he was “…a candidate that will destroy this country and he may not do it himself. He will be run by a radical fringe group of lunatics that will destroy our country” as effortlessly as earlier Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) could describe the Republican Party’s Tea Party faction as “… a lunatic fringe which the Republican leadership should reign in or else the country would suffer.”  However, although President Roosevelt may have thought he was coining something original, some forty years earlier the phrase had some currency among hairdressers in West Virginia, the Wheeling Daily Register in July 1875 reporting “…lunatic fringe is the name given to the fashion of cropping the hair and letting the ends hang down over the forehead.”

Lindsay Lohan with "lunatic fringe" (left), a lion (centre) in China's Guangzhou Zoo with fringe-cut said to be induced by "high humidity" and a piece (right) by Miguel Castro Freitas from his first collection for Mugler, Paris Fashion Week, October, 2025.

In May 2022, a woman visiting Guangzhou Zoo in China was so taken by the sight of a lion’s mane she posted images to her Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) page.  Xiaohongshu is a Chinese social network and is most often compared with Instagram although the e-commerce focus does seem more overt.  Her posts of the impressively coiffed big cat wasn’t immediately deleted so it may be assumed the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) didn’t deem them a threat to national security.  The lion’s look was so obviously untypical the Xiaohongshu user must have assumed the zoo-keepers were student’s of Lindsay Lohan’s hair styles and speculated, possibly on the basis of her own experience, that “…cutting alone is not sufficient to achieve this look, which would need a combination of washing, cutting, and blow-drying to have this effect.”  Comments on her post mused either the lion was “very docile” or the zoo-keepers were “particularly gutsy”.  Noting the interest, the Guangdong media outlet Viral Press requested a comment from the zoo which issued a statement confirming “…the hairstyle was purely nature’s magic” and a product of “recent days of “high humidity in Guangzhou.”

A fragment from Fashion Feed’s take on Paris Fashion Week, 2025.

Miguel Castro Freitas’s (b 1980) first collection for Mugler was called “Stardust Aphrodite” and the designer described the pieces as “a trilogy of glorified clichés”, the three elements being (1) oversize and bulky, with big fluffy fabrics or shoulder pads, (2) severely tailored with extreme hourglass figures or (3) lightweight, sheer dresses; critics detected some overlap in the use of the motifs.  Although there were a number of nods to Mugler’s historic use of materials in bulk for dramatic effect, the collection otherwise tended to the “less”, one eye catching piece a gown with sparkly silver stars, its straps hung from bare-breasted nipple piercings.  To re-assure those whose toes had curled, critics noted that one was made from “a very lightweight fabric”.  The technique had be seen before, a “nipple grown” the best-remembered thing from the catwalk from one of Mugler’s shows in 1998 and this year’s model was an acknowledged homage but apart from that, it certainly was on-theme, Victoria’s Secret unlikely to see much business generated from those taken with Stardust Aphrodite.

Bang

Bang (pronounced bhang)

(1) A loud, sudden, explosive noise (such as the discharge of a firearm).

(2) A resounding stroke or blow.

(3) In informal, use, a sudden movement, show of energy or instance of something suggesting great value, energy, vitality or spirit (source of many idiomatic forms such as “started with a bang”, “went off with a bang”, “great bang for the buck” etc).

(4) Suddenly and loudly; abruptly or violently.

(5) In figurative use, precisely; directly; right (such as “bang on” or “bang in the middle” (ie exactly correct” or “bang to rights” (caught red-handed; guilty as sin).

(6) In informal use, a sudden or intense pleasure; thrill or excitement (now less common).

(7) In slang, various senses of precision such as “bang off” (instantly; right away) or “bang on” (marvelous; perfect; just right).

(8) In vulgar slang, the act or instance of sexual intercourse (with many variants, the most infamous the gangbang).

(9) In the jargon of mining, civil engineering etc, the physical explosive product.

(10) In the slang of drug users, an injection or other form of dose of a narcotic; a shot of heroin which proved lethal.

(11) In US criminal class clang, to participate in street gang criminal activity.

(12) In the slang of typology & the printing trade, an exclamation point, a variant being the interrobang (a punctuation mark (‽) which merges the question mark (?) and the exclamation mark (!) to indicate a query made as an interjection).

(13) In Irish slang, a strong smell (often used of halitosis (chronic bad breath)).

(14) In regional slang (limited apparently to the New England region in the US), an abrupt left-turn by a road-user (Boston, Massachusetts) or a left, right or U-turn (more generalized); the typical use is “bang a left/right/uey”. The equivalent use in Australia & New Zealand is “hang a left/right/uey” although there a U-turn is known also as a “U-bolt”.

(15) In regional slang (limited apparently to urban areas in Nigeria), to fail an exam.

(16) In mathematics, a factorial (on the basis the factorial of n is often written as n!)

(17) In the jargon of financial markets, rapidly or in high volumes suddenly to sell (an equity, commodity, currency etc), causing prices to fall.

(18) In the jargon of hairdressing, as bangs, a number of variants of the fringe.

(19) In reggae music, an offbeat figure played usually on guitar and piano.

(20) In vulgar slang, to have sexual intercourse with (sometimes with the implication of “without consent”.

(21) To strike or beat resoundingly; to pound; to strike violently or noisily.

(22) To hit or painfully to pump.

(23) To throw or set down roughly; to slam.

1540-1550: From the Middle English bangen, from the Old English bangian or borrowed from the Old Norse banga (to pound, hammer), both from the Proto-Germanic bangōną (to beat, pound), from the primitive Indo-European ben- (to beat, hit, injure).  It was cognate with Scots bang & bung (to strike, bang, hurl, thrash, offend), the Icelandic banga (to pound, hammer), the Old Swedish bånga (to hammer (from which modern Swedish gained banka (to knock, pound, bang), the Danish banke (to beat) & bengel (club), the Low German bangen, & bangeln (to strike, beat) (the German dialect banken may originally have been imitative), the West Frisian bingel & bongel, the Dutch bengel (bell; rascal) and the German Bengel (club) & bungen (to throb, pulsate).  Bang is a noun, verb & adverb, banged is a verb & adjective, banger is a noun, banging is a noun, verb & adjective; the noun plural is bangs.

Of the universe

The origin of the term “Big Bang Theory” (which describes a model accounting for the origin and most of the dynamics of the (present) universe during the last 14 billion years-odd) is traced to a chance remark by English astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) on BBC Radio in 1949 but it wasn’t until the late 1960s it came widely to be used in scientific circles and a few more years before it was part of the common public language.  Hoyle always denied he’d intended to be disparaging of what was then a theory some 30 years old and this most historians came to accept although certainly he was unconvinced of the idea’s soundness and for some decades clung to his preferred “steady state” model of the universe.  The steady state position is sometimes misunderstood as something like “twas ever thus” but is better understood as “constant process”, the crucial difference that while the steady staters held matter constantly was being created as the universe expands, the big bangers believed the distance between the matter which came into existence a fraction of a second after the big bang increased as the universe expanded from its one-time singularity.  Hoyle never quite became a big banger but as the evidence mounted, he modified his model to become what was dubbed “a quasi steady stater” although his increasingly convoluted explanations forcing observations to somehow fit his belief convinced few.  The criticism of Hoyle was he made cosmology into a kind of theology.

Noted golfer Paige Spiranac (b 1993) is active on Instagram and recently posted a “Life update” to her four million followers, advising “I have bangs now”.  Hopefully, she will keep us informed and there will be more to come.  For golfers, she has posted a set of invaluable short clips called Paige Quickies which are guides for both the experienced wishing to hone their techniques and those taking up the sport.  Being highly qualified, she filled one gap in the instructional market with a collection of tips for “busty golfers” (specific weight distribution a significant element as the body pivots when swinging a club).  On Instagram, in less than 24 hours, the clip garnered over 2.6 million views.

Hoyle's use of the term “big bang” while it did graphically emphasise the difference of opinion between the two schools of thought, was unfortunate as a contribution to public understanding because of the connotations of the words  “big” & “bang”, most imagining the origins of the universe as starting with a huge, noisy explosion whereas what was envisaged by the theorists was a sudden “cosmic inflation” (of space), a process which continues and was in the 1990s found to be accelerating although not everywhere equally.  The big bang theory is now the orthodoxy in the mainstream scientific community though some questions remain unanswered including the mystery of why, based on a number of calculations which explain many other things, over 90% of the universe’s matter is “missing” (or at least can’t be observed).  The fudge to “explain” that has been the twin concepts of “dark matter” and “dark energy” which are more “speculative concepts” than a theoretical model and best understood as an elegant way of saying “don’t know”.  There have been a number of suggestions to account for the “missing matter”, the most intriguing being the notion the calculated “matter number” might be too high because of “drag effect” created by the operation of time itself.  Time obviously is important otherwise everything would happen at the same time and who knows what else it does; recently, particle physicists reported having witnessed pinpricks of darkness moving faster than the speed of light without breaking the laws of relativity so there's much still to be understood.

Of cars

Big banger and old banger: John Greenwood (1945-2015) in “Spirit of ’76” Chevrolet Corvette, Le Mans 24 Hour, June 1976 (left) and a despondent Lindsay Lohan with Herbie while in “old banger” state, Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005), the Corvette an “8-banger” and the Beetle a “4-banger”.  The Corvette was powered by a 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) big-block V8 and although forced to retire after a failure in the fuel delivery system, while it was running, nothing in the field could match the mark of 222 mph (354 km/h) it set thundering down the then 6 km (3.7 mile) Mulsanne straight.  In 1976, Mulsanne had yet to be distorted by the silly chicanes added in 1990 at the behest of the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the International Automobile Federation, world sport's dopiest regulatory body)).

With cars, “banger” proved productive.  Because an ICE (internal combustion engine) always includes a “power stroke” (or its equivalence), in which the fuel-air mix explodes (the combustion causing “a bang” which sequentially is the sound from the exhaust system; to aficionados sometimes a pleasing tone, sometimes not), in slang, vehicles came to be described by the cylinder count thus (most frequently “4-banger”, “6-banger” or “8-banger”).  However, a car could also be a “big banger” (one with a large displacement ICE, usually a V8 with the appellation coming from the “big-block” era of the post-war years when Detroit mass-produced engines with pistons the size of paint cans) or an “old banger” (one old, worn out or battered”.  Old banger was synonymous with “clunker”, “beater”, “hooptie”, “jalopy”, “wreck”, “crock”, “shitbox”, “rustbucket” etc and the dubbing came either from the appearance (“banged up” in the sense of being dented or damaged) or the “banging” noise (backfiring, a damaged exhaust system etc) the dilapidated machines emanated.

Of sausages and such

Bangers & Mash by the Daring Gourmet.  Not everyone garnishes their B&M with chopped parsley.

Unrelated to ICEs, a banger could be (1) one who bangs (in any sense (sex, violence etc), (2) the penis (3) a sausage (the use reputedly based originally not on any resemblance to a penis but, dating from the time when they were produced by encasing the contents in the intestine casings of slaughtered animals (often sheep), the combination of excess water in the mix and the impervious skin making them susceptible to exploding if not punctured prior to being cooked), (4) the breasts of a female (and thus usually in the plural) and (5) in popular music a highly rated song (some of which would be enjoyed by (6) headbangers (that subset of music fans who “dance” by violently shaking their heads in time to the music)).

Rolling Stone magazine No.169, September 12, 1974.  Rolling Stone and Playboy magazine in the 1960s & 1970s attracted a large audience of the market segments attractive to advertisers and alongside the content with which both most were associated, they attracted respectable authors to write about politics and interview subjects such as celebrity philosophers and Nazi war criminals.

As well as being a noun plural “Bangs” is also a proper noun as a surname, the most noted being Lester Bangs (1948–1982) who in the late 1960s began to write reviews of popular music, prompted by an advertisement in Rolling Stone magazine inviting reader submissions.  He wouldn’t have thought what he criticized was “pop” and Rolling Stone magazine (first published in 1967) was one of a number of titles that created an ecosystem in which classifications proliferated with clear “hierarchies of respectability” evolving among those who regarded “pop” as a serious musical form and Bangs definitely was one of them; before the mid-1960s, popular music usually wasn’t written about with the tone of reverence afforded to jazz, opera, the avant-garde and such.  Bangs died a drug-related death although not the traditionally “messy” one associated with the field he critiqued.  Having contracted influenza, he was self-medicating with an opioid analgesic and a benzodiazepine; his overdose was ruled “accidental”.

Of hair

In hairdressing, the noun “bangs” is used to describe a number of variants of the fringe (or sections of hair) cut straight across the forehead, the derived verb used as “to bang the hair”.  Sometimes there are “left and right” bangs but even when a style wholly is a conventional fringe the convention is to speak of “bangs”, although hairdressers, especially when constructing something asymmetric, will refer to the “left” or “right” bang.  Although there are on the internet claims the use is based on the notion of a clipped hair “bursting out” (ie “explosively” in a figurative sense and thus based on “bang” in the sense of something sudden), verified evidence confirms “bangs” joined the rich jargon of hairdressing late in the nineteenth century as a clipping (get it?) of “bang-tail”, a term then used for decades in used in equestrian circles to described a horse’s tail being allowed to grow long and then cut (docked) straight across (the painless cut called a “bang-off”).  Apparently with origins in Scotland before spreading south and across the Atlantic, it joined “gee-up” as a phrase with equine roots enjoying a re-purposing for wider use.  The OED cites the first use of “bang” for the cutting of human hair to 1878 and within half-a-decade US newspapers and periodicals had adopted the plural form “bangs” when referring to a straight-across cut of hair on the forehead.  It was in the late 1880s the imaginative use “lunatic fringe” was coined (a century later to become a popular name for hairdressing salons) and “fringe” remained the dominate use in the UK and much of the Commonwealth while the US opted for the punchier “bangs”.  As a tool of US linguistic imperialism, the internet in the twenty-first century did its job and throughout the English-speaking world, bangs now peacefully co-exists with fringe with youth tending to the former.

Takes on Cleopatra with bangs long & short.

Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) in Cleopatra (1963, left) and Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) in Liz & Dick (2012).  Based on period sculptures, it seems likely the queen had curly hair but because of the prevalence of their appearance on women in surviving art from Ancient Egypt, bangs became entrenched in the public’s imagination of Cleopatra and film directors accordingly complied.  While it's true that the look (on men and women) does appear on much surviving imagery from Ancient Egypt it must be remembered that then, as now, public art was not necessarily representative of the appearance of the wider population although it probably did align with that of the elites.  Also, the as the archaeological records make clear, the consistency of style (straight-cut bangs (ie a horizontal fringe) across the forehead with hair apparently perfect (often shoulder-length and symmetrical) which appears dense, geometric, and highly regular was achieved with the use of wigs of human hair, wool, or plant fibres.  Carefully constructed and styled into clearly repeatable forms, the blunt bangs, at least among certain parts of society, must have been an enduring fashion statement.

The “bang” technique with origins in equine grooming is used with ponytails and is called the “straight blunt cut”; for this purpose the only substantive difference between a “pony's tail” and a “ponytail” is scale.

While, whether of human fringes or horses' tails, “bangs” might be a nineteenth century coining, the hair style is as ancient as humanity, the prehistoric origins doubtlessly a simple expedient to keep the hair from dangling in the eyes, the trim presumably a tiresome task in the era before scissors.  From that humble beginning evolved eventually the array of styles now available, at least some of which allegedly have been a political statements of group solidarity.  A fine “brief history of bangs” is maintained by Odele Beauty (their “Rinse Blog” an indispensable source of technical information) and there it’s claimed Cleopatra’s (Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (Κλεοπάτρα Θεά Φιλοπάτωρ (“Cleopatra father-loving goddess” in the Koine Greek); circa 69 BC–circa 10 BC, Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51-30 BC and the last active Hellenistic pharaoh) “famous fringe is apparently a myth” although on the basis of surviving art, it seems likely Ancient Egyptians “wore blunt-cut bang wigs as early as 3000 BC” and whether or not they were the “influencers”, the look spread north to the Greece and Rome of Antiquity, Odele Beauty noting Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (known also as Octavianus (Octavian)); 63 BC-14 AD, founder of the Roman Empire (27 BC-476 AD) and first Roman emperor 27 BC-14 AD) “wore his hair combed into a short, forehead-framing fringe, setting a new trend (later dubbed the “Caesar cut”) that future emperors would follow.”  

Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc, 1901), oil on canvas by Albert Lynch (1860–1950).  The short bangs were always present in older paintings of Joan of Arc but it wasn't unusual for modern artists to be influenced by contemporary trends.  Monsieur Lynch left no notes so it's not known if he had in mind the circa 1901 style what of what later would come to be known as a “bloshie young woman”.  Joan of Arc (circa 1412–1431) sometimes was depicted bangs blunt and not but artists had her variously blonde or brunette and with hair wild or coiffed and their images may reflect what male artists thought such a woman should look like.

Surviving European art from the Medieval to Modernity confirms bangs seem never to have gone away and the emergence of the word late in the 1800s suggests they must then have been a quite a thing.  By then, bangs had survived seventeenth century disapprobation of the church, priests finding fashion trends symbols of ungodly vanity and inappropriate for modest, pious women.  However what cemented bangs in their cultural place seems to have been the social ripples from World War I (1914-1918), the so called flappers of the “roaring twenties” taking to them as an adjunct to the other forms of fashion minimalism they adopted as earlier, restrictive conventions were shrugged-off.  Although it had earlier also enjoyed some less pleasing connotations, “flapper” in the sense of the “bright young things” of the era is thought a re-adaptation of the nineteenth century Northern English slang meaning “teen-age girl” and it referenced the hair not routinely being “put-up” in the adult manner and instead kept in plaits or braids, left to “flap about” as she moved.  The 1920s re-cycling of “flapper” retained the connection with “lively young girl” and had nothing to do with hair; bangs had been around for millennia before the flappers but they made them one of their signature looks.  Since the 1920s, trends have ebbed and flowed in the cyclical way fashion works and bangs variously have been softened, blunted, gained wispy curls (not to be confused with the dreaded “fly-away bits”), bulked up as “bumper bangs”, trimmed back to be the “baby bangs” of pixie cuts and evolved in the twin streams of the “curtain bangs” which seductively would drape over the eyes and the dramatic, “set piece installations” made famous by Farrah Fawcett (1947-2009) which for years provided hairdressers with a solid income stream as young ladies everywhere demanded the same thing.

Although it’s not uncommon to see headlines like “Bangs are back”, that’s misleading because they never went away; like hairdressers, headline writers have their own methods of operation.  It would be more accurate were the sites to headline which bangs are trending and that’s now a global thing because it matters not whether a trend is noted as happening in Seoul, Sydney, Seattle and Santiago because on the internet everything is happening at the same time and looks now wax, wane or die in global unison and while the imaginative can doubtless describe some variants, beyond than the basic, self-explanatory forms (short, straight, blunt), there are really five distinct bangs:

Air bangs (seen here in conjunction with long side bangs also favored by goths).

(1) Air bangs are characterized by being light and sparse.  First defined as an element of K-beauty (the aesthetic of South Korea which encompasses hair, clothes, cosmetics music) etc these are known also as “Korean bangs” but their alternative name (see-through bangs) better describes the look.  Despite the name, they are not ideally suited to those with thin or wispy hair and like just about every style, work best with thick locks which provide a better contrast and more scope for styling.  Professional stylists caution those at home crafting air bangs from a conventional fringe to do the process slowly because it's easy to over-estimate to much need to be cut (specialized tools are available).  One advantage of air bangs compare with a straight cut is that in using unequal-length strands, that aspect of precision is avoided but the look does work best if there's a perception of consistency in the spacing. 

Baby bangs: On Pinterest, this was described as a “statement cut” and on that the content provider didn't expand but one suggested statement might be: “admission of guilt”.  Still, the bangs do mean attention is drawn to her lovely sanpaku eyes so there's that.

(2) Baby bangs are short, straight or blunt-edged bangs which are used usually in coordination with the shorter flavours of bob, the reason for that being that if paired with more voluminous cuts, the bangs tend to “get lost” or worse, look like mistakes.  Micro bangs are also “bangs writ small” but differ in that the look is used with styles other than bobs and is identified by being ; not usually considered conventionally attractive, it appears more on catwalks and in photo-shoots than on the street although some do (unwisely) pick up the look.  Baby bangs really suit only a tiny sub-set of the population (most of whom are aged under 15) and should be thought the Pontiac Aztec (2001-2005) of hair-styles in that they're functional, offer good visibility and undeniably are distinctive but are ugly.  All that can be said for both is that on the inside, looking out, one doesn't have to see them. 

Lindsay Lohan with curtain bangs, done in the “twin-hemispheric” or “double polyspheric mode”.

(3) Curtain bangs are long bangs, parted in the centre (although there have been asymmetric interpretations) and designed to resemble a two-drape curtain tied at the side, partially to reveal the face.  The leading edges of the most artfully styled sit just at the point where the eye color is visible and devoted fashionistas wear them with a “curtain reveal top” in which the curve of the garment matches that of the bangs, something which can be as hard to achieve as it sounds.  With a change of as little as a half inch (12.5 mm), stylists can use curtain bangs to change the perception of the shape of a face, the most popular visual trick being elongation, making a “round” face appear something more sought (heart, diamond or inverted triangle).  Combined with skilfully applied makeup, the transformation can be dramatic. 

An emo selfie with classic emo bangs.  The expression is emoesque but the vibrancy of the colors on clothes and bandana is untypical, emos tending more to goth-flavored looks with black and gray although purple seems now less of an emo thing.

(4) Emo bangs are less concerned with shape and symmetry, the important thing being the sweep of hair from the forehead fully covering at least one eye and maybe partially obscuring the other.  Amateur psychiatrists and other students of the emo (a distinct sub-set of humanity) probably have their own thoughts on whether the emo’s goal is to limit what they see of the world or to limit how much others see of them.  Emos are however pragmatic and although their have the honor of an eponymous style, they're also sometimes seen with various bangs. 

There seems little to suggest bangs are a reliable marker of TERFdom and those wishing to assert where they stand on TERFness should probably don an appropriate T-shirt.

(5) Not all agree TERF bangs should be thought a distinct class but they are short, straight, blunt-edged bangs seen usually with shorter cuts (not necessarily bobs).  The term is said to have originated on the microblogging platform Tumblr (which vies with MySpace for as the social media site to have suffered the greatest loss between its high-valuation and most recent sale) when in 2014 a user posted the suggestion such bangs seemingly were exclusive to TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists).  That obviously was impressionistic and it was never clarified whether the suggestion was intended humorously but if not, it’s an example of a gaboso (pronounced gah-boh-so).  A gaboso (Generalized Association Based On Single Observation) (also as the verb gabosoed) is the act of taking one identifiable feature of someone or something and using it as the definitional reference for a group; it ties in with logical fallacies.  While it’s doubtful many professional hairdressers have TERF bangs in the lexicon, it seems novel enough to warrant a mention.