The History of the Bobby Pin: How the Bob Named a Hairpin

Somewhere in almost every home there is a bobby pin, probably several, lost under furniture or tucked into a drawer. It is one of the cheapest and most ordinary objects in the history of hair. It is also one of the most revealing, because the bobby pin is named after a haircut, and that haircut marked one of the biggest shifts in how women in the Western world wore their hair.

Hairpins before the bobby pin

People have used pins to hold hair for thousands of years. Hairpins have been made of bone, wood, ivory, metal and precious materials, and they appear in archaeological finds and works of art from many ancient cultures ^[2]. In some societies, elaborate hairpins were signs of rank or marital status, and in others they were works of jewellery in their own right. Ancient Roman women, for example, used long pins to secure complex arrangements of braids and curls, and East Asian hairpins could be richly decorated and symbolically important ^[2].

A classic hairpin is a single straight pin or a simple U-shaped pin with two prongs. It holds hair by friction and by being pushed through a coil or bun. It works best with long hair, where there is plenty of hair to anchor into.

Long hair and many pins

Until the early twentieth century, adult women in Europe and North America generally wore their hair long and put it up in public. Styles such as the Gibson Girl pompadour of the 1890s and 1900s required long hair piled over pads and secured with many pins ^[4]. A woman's hair routine involved brushing, coiling and pinning long lengths every day, and a dish of hairpins on the dressing table was an everyday sight.

The bob changes everything

In the 1920s many women cut their hair short into a bob, a style that ended around the jaw or neck ^[3]. Bobbing was controversial. For some it was a symbol of freedom and modern life; for others it was shocking. But it also created a practical problem. Short hair could not be coiled and pinned like long hair, and traditional hairpins slid out of it easily. Women needed something that could grip short strands and hold them close to the head, especially at the sides and nape, or under hats.

The answer was a small, sprung pin with two flat prongs pressed tightly together. Slid into the hair, it opened slightly and then clamped back, gripping the hair between its prongs. Because it was designed for bobbed hair, it became known as the bobby pin ^[1]. Bobby pins became popular in the United States during the 1920s precisely to hold the new bobbed hairstyles in place ^[1].

Who invented the first bobby pin is less clear than the reason for its name. Various manufacturers produced sprung hair grips in the period, and popular articles sometimes credit specific individuals or companies. We have not found a primary source that settles the question, so we do not name a single inventor here.

Many names for one pin

The object goes by different names in different parts of the English-speaking world. In the United States it is a bobby pin. In the United Kingdom it is often called a kirby grip, kirbigrip or simply a hair grip ^[1]. The name kirby grip is linked to the British manufacturer Kirby, Beard and Company, which made the grips, and in some places the brand name became the everyday word for the object. The same thing happened with many household products, from hoovers to biros.

How the bobby pin is built

A standard bobby pin is a length of thin wire, usually metal and sometimes coated, bent into two prongs. One prong is straight and the other is wavy or ridged. The tips are often coated with small plastic or rubber balls so that they do not scratch the scalp. The prongs are pressed together so that they spring closed after being opened ^[1].

There is a long-running debate about which way up a bobby pin should go. The usual professional advice is that the wavy side should face down, against the scalp, because the ridges grip the hair underneath while the straight side lies flat on top. The common description of pushing the pin in with the straight side up says the same thing in a different way ^[1]. Placing pins in crisscross pairs, forming an X, gives a much firmer hold than a single pin.

Uses beyond hair

The bobby pin's simple design has made it famously versatile. It is used to hold headbands, bandanas and head coverings such as yarmulkes in place ^[1]. It can serve as a bookmark, a bag clip or a tool for threading laces, and in fiction it is the classic improvised lock pick ^[1]. Bobby pins are also used to create pin curls: damp sections of hair are wound into flat coils and held with crossed pins until dry, producing waves when released ^[1]. Pin curls were the foundation of many 1930s and 1940s hairstyles and are still used for vintage looks.

From necessity to decoration

The bobby pin was designed to disappear. Most are plain and coloured to blend into hair, in black, brown, blonde and silver tones ^[1]. But decorative pins, set with pearls, crystals or enamel, have also had many fashionable moments, and in recent years visible, stacked or patterned bobby pins have become an accessory in their own right ^[1]. That is a pleasing reversal: a tool invented to hide the mechanics of a hairstyle has become a way to show them off.

Bobby pins and the scalp

Bobby pins are generally harmless, but their use is part of a wider question about tension. Hairstyles pulled very tight and held firmly in the same place day after day can stress the hair follicles, especially at the hairline and temples. Varying styles, avoiding very tight pinning and removing pins gently all help. Readers who want to understand how tension and styling affect hair growth can find educational resources from the trichology community at https://trichology.com.

A small object, a big story

The bobby pin is a reminder that technology in hair history is often small. It was not a dramatic invention like the electric perm machine or the hair dryer. But it solved a practical problem created by a social revolution. When women cut their hair in the 1920s, the hairpin had to change too, and the new pin carried the haircut's name.

Pins in other hair traditions

It is worth remembering that the Western bobby pin is only one chapter in a much larger story of hair fastenings. Across Africa, Asia and the Americas, people have secured hair with combs, sticks, cords, wraps and ornaments for many centuries, often with deep cultural meaning ^[2]. The sprung wire grip is simply a twentieth-century industrial answer to a problem people everywhere have solved in their own ways: how to keep hair where you want it. Seen in that light, the bobby pin is less a single invention than the latest member of a very old family of tools, and one that happens to carry the name of the haircut that made it necessary.