The New York Times has published an analysis arguing that women who walk the streets wearing hair rollers have become a symbol of South Korea's generational divide.
The Times ran the article, headlined "Hair Rollers in Public? It's Just How They Do Their Hair," on the 21st. In Seoul, the paper reported, young women with rollers clipped to their bangs can be seen everywhere — in cafes, restaurants, on public transit and on the street. Wearing rollers in public is more than a better way to keep a hairstyle in place, the paper said. It signals how independent younger Koreans have become, and how little they care about the gaze of strangers.
Jung, a 23-year-old university student, told the Times that what matters is how she looks when she arrives, not how she appears to people she passes on the way. "I need to look good for the people who matter to me," she said. Her mother had asked her to stop, saying rollers were inappropriate in public, she added, but she still wears them.
The Times noted that Korean women of earlier generations regarded it as embarrassing to let men see them in the middle of getting ready. They finished their makeup and hair at home before stepping out. For that reason, older Koreans still disapprove of rollers worn in public — and that, the paper concluded, is turning the rollers into a marker that separates the generations. The reading is that younger Koreans make their own choices more freely, without worrying about others. Wearing rollers in the bangs is now thoroughly commonplace in South Korea, the paper added, and not only on the street: celebrities post photos of themselves with rollers in their hair.