From here.
I have nothing to add, except that I always wondered what Mamma looked like! Thanks, Sampiro! She’s a piece of rebar in a cute package!
In the early 20th Century, if you had your hair bobbed, you had it cut short, but that was in comparison to how long it had been previously which was often down to the waist. So the meaning has been a little slippery through the years. I wore my hair in what my hairdresser called a bob for about seven years. He would agree with gigi and twixter’s.
lissener, a “pageboy” always turned under some so that the wearer looked like a British pageboy in 1950s movies. A bob can be a pageboy, but not all bobs are.
I disagree with some of the photos that are labeled bobs where the hair is curly, but back then – in the thirties – they may very well have been called that.
And keep in mind that not every hairstyle had a name. We just pointed to a style in the book or magazine or on a celebrity and said, “Do that!”
Gina Lollobrigida had hair?