1920 Many claim to have started it; everyone wants it. The "bob" appears on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1920s. In place of long, piled Victorian hair, the short and sassy look of actress Louise Brooks marks the liberated woman. By 1925, 2,000 American women submit to the barber's chair daily. The haircut is crucial to the social success of F. Scott Fitzgerald's heroine in the 1920 short story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair": "'I want to be a society vampire, you see,'she announced coolly, and went on to inform him that bobbed hair was the necessary prelude."