Raymond Bessone, Mister Teasie-Weasie

British hair guru Raymond Bessone became the first celebrity hair stylist by leveraging the post-war desire for glamour and his own innate skill at marketing. His larger-than-life persona and skill with shears made his coiffures the pinnacle of style.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Pollie Fry and I'm Tracy. So alrighty. If you
were in the hair industry, you may have heard of
today's podcast subject. But if you are not in the

(00:22):
hair industry, I suspect he will be a new discovery. Tracy,
did you know about this person before we started talking
about him? I did not. I mean, all right, some
of the names of people that he mentored, yeah, definitely
get heard of. Not him, though. And I've been thinking
about this topic for a little while, in part because
I have always loved him as a figure in hair history. Um.

(00:45):
I think I've mentioned on the podcast before that there
was a time in my life where I was doing
administrative work in hair salon, so you know, kind of
have some of that history under my belt. Uh, And
we'll talk about it in the course of his life story.
But for example of sort of why he was an
interesting character, he was doing purple and pink and blue
and green hair decades before kids like me started fuxing

(01:05):
around with Manning Panic in the late seventies and early eighties,
and he was really larger than life. He was the
first celebrity hairstylist, and his influence still echoes in the industry.
And there are also some aspects of his persona that
bring up some very real questions about identity and cultural appropriation, uh,
that are worth discussing, and we're going to get to

(01:26):
all of that. Uh. We're talking about Raymond Bessone, who
was also known as Mr Tazy Wheezy. But before we
even get into it, I want to acknowledge upfront, just
as a heads up to you guys, this is about
a dude who did white ladies hair. We we really
want to do an episode in the future on sort
of black hair care through history, because that's got its

(01:49):
own whole fascinating history to it. But that's one of
those things that I think we need to bring in
an expert on because even though I worked in the
salon industry in salons that had, you know, a significant
proportion of our business that was black clientele, and I
knew the stylists, I still feel like I do not
have a strong enough grip on all of those workings
in that history to really speak with any sort of authority. Yeah,

(02:12):
I need we need an insider for that. I don't
think the world really needs a podcast on black haircare
from two white ladies who read it in a book. Correct.
That would be awkward and weird. So today we are
getting Mr Tezy Wheezy. I saw not a single woman
of color looking at a lot of films of him
through the years, So uh, as I said, this is

(02:33):
pretty much gonna be kind of affluent white women's hair
duice that we're talking about. But we're going to jump
right into his life story. So he was born in
London's Brixton district in nineteen eleven and his name at
birth was Raymondo Pietro Carlo Besson and later he had
it legally changed to a more anglicized form, Peter Carlo
bess On. Raymond and his father ran a barbershop and

(02:56):
it was there that Raymond, as he preferred to be
called later in life, he kind of shifted that that pronunciation,
learned all about hair and he was tasked with, among
other things there at the shop, creating false facial hairpieces
for men, so he was making beards and mustaches from
human hair. He opened his first salt in Mayfair in

(03:16):
West London and it became really popular. This was really opulent, decadent,
and just the utmost in style for wealthy ladies. There
were rumors that even during the austere times of World
War Two, he was rinsing his client's hair there with champagne. Yeah,
and this is also you know, uh, following World War

(03:37):
Two there was still a lot of austerity and and
it wasn't like the economy immediately picked back up. We're
going to talk about that in a minute, but yeah,
not really a time when you would be like, you know,
what I want to do is indulged by rinsing my
hair with champagne. I actually think that was probably just
a rumor, but it's fascinating and it indicates kind of

(03:57):
what sort of character he was that those are the
kinds of plausible rumors that would pop up around him,
like how rinsing your hair and beer is supposed to
be good for it? Maybe shampy too. Yeah, I think
that's just one of those things that is uh indulgent,
you know, It's like I can waste woo. Uh. And

(04:18):
it was also at the Mayfair Salon that Raymond took
on young Vidal sas soon as an assistant. Uh, Sassoon,
who started his first salon in nineteen fifty four after
working under Raymond's Raymond Besson went on to world renowned,
of course, but he credited Besson with giving him the
skills that really made him famous. As you possibly know

(04:38):
if you have paid any attention. Uh. Vidalsas soon really
became famous for his amazing haircuts and later in his life.
Uh he said of Raymond, quote, he really taught me
how to cut hair. I'd never have achieved what I
have without him. So Holly recently talked to fashion historian
April Callahan on show about how style and fashion during

(04:59):
World War Two was driven in part by limitations placed
on certain materials, and while that particular interview was about France,
all the countries involved in the war effort felt the
financial pinch of the conflict. But as the nineteen forties
came to a close and economies were starting to recover,
one of the offshoots was this sort of return to

(05:20):
uh and re embracing of glamour. And one of the
industries that really experienced a massive growth during this time
was the hair industry. Salon visits became not just a
luxury as they had been in harder financial times, but
a necessity for many women. The rituals surrounding hair care
became a natural part of the average white woman's weekly routine.

(05:41):
You would visit the hairdresser for a shampoo in a set,
and then you would maintain the look at home for
the rest of the week, using dry shampoo and rejuvenating
curls with curlers and rollers and setting your hair overnight
with pins. This reminds me of my grandmother. Yeah, I
mean when I was working in a hair salon, even
though that would have been in the nineties. Uh, we

(06:02):
had a number of older ladies who still adhered to
that schedule and came every single week like clockwork. We
probably have listeners or members of their families that still
do the same thing. It hasn't entirely gone away, but
at this point in time, that was pretty much how
you did your hair. Yeah. When I remember when I
was a child and I would visit my grandparents for
a week in the summertime, there was always a day

(06:22):
when when my Grandma Jenny took me to the hair
salon with her. And the timing of the world being
financially ready for more indulgent approaches to personal grooming was
really perfect for Raymond, and it was not long before
his clientele began to grow and to include celebrities. This
is when Raymond's talent for publicity became really apparent. He

(06:43):
started appearing in segments on weekly chat shows showing off
the latest styles. And this is also the time when
Raymon took on the nickname Mr. Tez Wheezy. Although there
are a couple of different tales of how this moniker
came about. One version attributes the aim tobiss On skill
at backcombing hair also known as teasing. We're gonna talk

(07:04):
about that a little bit in a minute. Uh. The
other version involves some of his early TV appearances. So
when styling young ladies during these TV shows, if there
was a stray lock of hair, for example, at the
side of the face, Raymond would make it into a
curl and make it into a feature of the style.
And when asked by a host what these tendriled pieces
were called during one broadcast, he replied to her that

(07:24):
they were teazy wheezies. But he also if you watch
any documentaries about film, there are lots of people that
that kind of use a variation of that story where
they're like no, he would say, oh, and you put
a t Z easy here to t Z easy there.
It's not entirely clear that the teaz Weezy was one thing.
It was really more a phrase that he loved to
use as kind of a catch all. Regardless, though Mr

(07:46):
Teezy Weezy was larger than life, he would make appearances
wearing a dramatic full cloak over his perfect suit. His
hair was jet black with this contrasting white streak. His dogs,
who were also died to the latest colors of the season,
traveled along with him. He drove around an a vintage
open top Bentley and he knew how to market the

(08:07):
glamor of hair, and he knew how to market himself
as a purveyor of that glamour, And soon he had
his own weekly BBC television series. It aired on Saturdays
at tea time, so that ladies at home could enjoy
their tea while also being served up a visual spectacle
of all of the latest hair trends. Raymond would talk

(08:27):
to them about the latest hairstyles he had invented, and
he would show off a series of lovely models wearing
those hairstyles and the entire viewing audience could feel informed
and in the loop with regards to the very latest
and most chic looks. Ever, the proponent of cutting edge
hair technologies, Mr TC Wheezy, even promoted a waterproofing sprap

(08:48):
for hair that would enable ladies to dive right into
the water and come out with their hair do still
fully intact. This waterproofing treatment would allegedly last day, full week,
but it appears not to have survived the test of time. Yeah,
there's a video and it's linked in in my sources,
so you'll see it in the show notes where he's
doing a woman's hair and she really does dive into

(09:10):
the pools. It's into a pool. It's kind of a
tight to the head like pin curled look. It's not
like a big puffy affair, and she does come out
looking pretty good. So it worked to some degree, but
apparently not not well enough that it's still around. As
early as late nineteen In early nineteen five, Raymond was
experimenting with all kinds of fabulous hair colors. So if

(09:33):
you think all of those fun colors you see around
today I mentioned at the top of the episode, like
blue and purple and pink hair. If you think that's
anything new, rest assured. Stylists were already working with a
rainbow of color washes as early as the nineteen thirties.
Uh and it was becoming very popular in the fifties.
The song, like his contemporaries, would use temporary tints to

(09:54):
create drama and glamour. We're gonna talk a little bit
about how he liked a two tone style. Uh. And
they also would use these colors to match gowns for
special occasions throughout the fifties. In nineteen fifty six, famed
British pin up girl and actress Diana Doors flew him
to Hollywood to do her hair. She would make a
fantastic podcast subject herself. Her story involves a lost fortune

(10:16):
that's spread throughout various banks of Europe and remains a
mystery to this day. She paid, She paid two thousand,
five hundred pounds to have Raymond brought in to give
her a shampoo and a set. And this was amount
an amount that was downright scandalous in its enormity for
the time, I mean today to really, the pricey visit

(10:37):
kept the gossip press busy for weeks. Yeah, you'll often
see it written up as like that's the equivalent of
a modest home. It was really really uh, kind of
one of those gawker moments in terms of people just
sort of gazing and going really paid how much to
guy set your hair? Uh? Next up, we're going to
talk about a couple of pieces of advice that Raymond

(10:59):
gave to the women of the fifties to stay stylish.
But first we're gonna pause for a word from one
of our fabulous sponsors. So it was also in n
six that same year that he flew to Hollywood to
give that very expensive shampoo set that Basson proclaimed that

(11:20):
women over twenties should not wear their hair long. He
managed to dole out a little bit of shade husbands
who preferred longer locks on their wives in the press
at this time, saying quote, husbands are the worst possible
sources of advice for women on hairstyles. It is not
that a man deliberately will try to give his wife
wrong advice on her hair, but a husband suffers from

(11:41):
two handicaps. If a woman asks her husband whether she
should cut her hair, or diet blonde, or make any
major change, he will say no. Just to be on
the safe side. He's afraid of getting into trouble if
it turns out wrong. When he tells his wife he
wants her to change to long hair of platinum blonde,
he invariably does it because he has a sudden way
for her to look like somebody else. Anita Ekberg, for instance,

(12:04):
I seemed like this advice that that long hair is
not for like adult grown women lingered around for a while. Yeah,
and you know, I'm always a big proponent of like
I understand that styles come and go, but no one
really should ever be telling anybody they should or should

(12:24):
not do things with their parents too. What you like
and what makes you happy. I'm sorry, Ramon, I'm not
with you on this. So in that same interview, he
also said that French twists are too severe and unflattering
to faces, and that women should keep things softer around
their face. Yeah, he had opinions, as you know, celebrity

(12:50):
stylists tend to do. But the long hair, I put
it on a French trest French twist all the time,
and it was way less severe than when I would
braid it really hard. Right Again, everybody has opinions. His
his reasoning was that they didn't. They also didn't stay
very nice looking, and unless you were someone like Princess

(13:10):
Grace who could have their hair touched up constantly throughout
the day, you really, um, you know, shouldn't bother with it.
But to see what this opinionated stylist did like. There
are a number of really wonderful videos online, but there
is one in particular of one of his hair shows
from seven again we will link it in this show
notes where he debuted a look called the Shangri Law,

(13:31):
and this event was incredibly theatrical. Hair models appeared in
ways equally silly and entertaining to the modern ie. Some
of the ladies modeling the latest Ramon and Besson looks
are wheeled out in this video and little mini floats
pulled along by men dressed in medievalish costumes. They look
almost like court jesters, but not quite. One woman is

(13:53):
in what looks like a teacup or maybe a cappuccino cup,
and white balloons create foam or maybe mar smallows, depending
on how you're interpreting this. Around this seated model one
is in point shoes and dances ballet along the runway.
There's a pair of models who are paraded through the
crowd and what looks like a giant easter basket. Yeah,

(14:14):
it's a very big Like I said, it's extremely theatrical,
but perhaps the most entertaining aspect of this show. And
it's all narrated in that wonderful sort of newsreel narration
style is the story behind it. So Raymond Bisson claimed
to have been inspired by a skiing accident. He took
a tumble, according to the story, and lost consciousness, and

(14:37):
when he came to, he looked at the mountain peaks
around him, and he thought of Everest in the story
of the everlasting youth and beauty that could be gained
at the mythical Shangar Law SAIDA he had hair inspiration.
This Shangar Law hairstyle, by the way, is triangular pyramid shaped,
not unlike the peak of the of a mountain. The

(14:57):
hair at the back is very short, with the sides
a little longer and old or waved top has a
little bit of lift, but it's mostly pretty sleek. Yeah,
it's a it's a fascinating style. It's one that I
think if you sported it today you might get an
on look. But if you like it, you should do
it just the same. Uh. In terms of hair color,
as soon as we mentioned earlier, was fond of two

(15:18):
tone styles and that's definitely on display in this video
as well as another video that will link to you.
And the two ways this style could go, according to him,
were either light on top with darker sides and back,
or light sides and front with a darker back. And
the big bridal finale of the show is another woman
in a basket and at this point she comes out,

(15:39):
she's drawn out by these men and their medieval ensembles,
and Raymond steps out onto the runway to attach her
little mini veil, and it's all very dramatic and exciting,
and the whole thing is exactly as much of a
spectacle as you think, and it really seems like everyone
in attendance just loved it. In part due to that
spectacle making nature, bass On success continued to grow and

(16:01):
rapidly in a seemingly exponential rate. The more high profile
clients he had, the more people wanted to see him,
and he opened multiple salm locations selling this completely over
the top luxury experience. In each one is Kensington location
offered a champagne fountains, women have their hair done while
sitting under expensive chandeliers and looking into mirrors with guilt edging.

(16:26):
And his salon designs, you should point out we're also
pretty revolutionary beyond just being the super opulent getaways for
ladies who had money. Ramon is said to have been
the first to shift to an open floor style salon,
just like the ones you have probably had your hair
cut in. Dozens of times. Prior to that, stylists worked
in much more closed off cubicles within a salon. It

(16:48):
did not have that open airy field that is pretty
much the standard now, like how are you supposed to
gossip with other people? Exactly? You have hit upon like
a major thing. He wanted salons to be social enters
as well as places people went to become beautiful. So
with all these hair shows and TV appearances, dramatic presentation

(17:08):
and indulgence that he was cultivating in his business, Raymond
really made himself stand out as the first celebrity hairdresser.
Unless any of our listeners think that Raymond's standing as
a stylist was all smoke and gilded mirrors, his work
was actually considered impeccable in the documentary Bouffont's Beehives and
Bob's The Hairstyles that shaped Britain. Stylus Rose Cannon, who

(17:31):
is a contemporary of Bessans who is credited with inventing
the blowout, says quote, I always knew when somebody really
did go to him, it was a cut that was
so perfect and in such a way cut that you
couldn't do anything else with it. That was it best
on himself once said, a woman's hair is like a
work of art. It must have balance and composition, lines

(17:52):
must mean something, with every curl adding to the full effect.
He considered every aspect of a woman's hair, face and
head when heating and styling, and he would speak about
them in terms of creating a geometric harmony. Yeah, it's fascinating,
he I mean, he would do hairstyles called like the cube,
and he would point out how every line of the

(18:12):
style and the cut were accentuating different parts of the
woman's face. And it's when you see that you then
see how like Vidal Sassoon really applied the similar concepts
of geometry to his work. And now that's completely common today,
so really quite groundbreaking at the time. One of Raymond's
biggest contributions, though, to hair history was the invention of

(18:35):
the modern bouffant hair style. And this name, of course,
comes from the French verb bouffet, which means too puff,
and while it existed in various forms earlier in history,
the early nineteen fifties saw the birth of the song's version.
You've probably seen bufont hair styles, but just in case
you haven't, or if you didn't know the name, it's
a style that's created by first back combing the hair

(18:55):
for volume, so see you above for his teasy wheezy
nick name where it came from, and then calling the
hair around these teased pieces smooth to create a kind
of bubble shape. It's definitely not a free flowing style.
It's one that's secured with lots of hairspray. If you
have fine hair like me, lots and lots and lots
of hairs well. And it's uh in in that documentary

(19:20):
that I reference, just a moment ago, there's a modern
woman talking about how to her she really loves them
because she doesn't want to move her head and the
hair moves with it. She wants it to be like
a hat and that's kind of how they were. Uh.
And despite the unnatural character of this style of the
modern bouffone, it was a huge hit, first and Great

(19:40):
Britain and then globally, and it seemed at the time
incredibly modern. The perfection, the control and the tidiness of
it was keenly in line with the quest for perfection
that was common in a lot of nineteen fifties style.
So while Mr Teezy Weezy is associated the most with hair,
he also had his finger in some other insurers too,

(20:01):
and we will talk about those right after a verte
word from one of our fantastic sponsors. To get back
to our story, Raymond didn't just to make a mark
in the hair industry. He dabbled in a very minor
way in politics. In nineteen sixty three he ran for

(20:23):
a seat on the Council of the South Kimpson ward
of Bournemouth, where he had a lot. There was an
outcry when he announced his candidacy as a Liberal candidate.
Opponents felt by that by a virtue of being a
TV personality, he had an unfair advantage. At the end,
it didn't matter. He lost the election to the Labor candidates.
He had much more success in another arena entirely, which

(20:46):
was horse racing. Also in nineteen sixty three, he co
owned the horse that won the Grand National. That horse
was named Ayala, and this horse had been a long
shot and the wind came really as a total surprise.
You can watch footage of that online. It's embedded in
one of the articles I linked to. If you are
maybe an animal lover, I don't know that you should
watch it. It's I found it troubling. Uh. Watching horses

(21:09):
fallen mud is upsetting for me. But you can't see
the whole thing and how his horse kind of really
came from an unexpected point to win. Uh. And jockey
Pat Buckley, who was only nineteen at the time of
this big win, reminisced years later that there had been
no big party after the race, which surprised some people
since Ramon Besson was known for doing everything lavishly and big,

(21:31):
but this was perhaps because no one really expected Ayala
to be victorious at all. In the nineteen seventies, Besson
decided to invest in another race horse. This one was
named rag Trade. He initially bought the gelding at auction
for eighteen thousand Guineas, but he later decided to sell
half of his share in the horse the two ment
William Laurie and Herbert Keene. In nine seventy five, rag

(21:53):
Trade ran the Grand National, but it was a disappointing showing.
A new trainer, Fred Rimmel, was brought in the immediately,
and the following year, nineteen seventy six, rag Trade redeemed
himself entirely, winning the Welsh Grand National and the Grand
National in Aintree, and there was this time indeed a celebration.
As a side note, allegedly his horses had permed manes,

(22:15):
but we haven't found any photos that clearly confirmed this.
They're all a little bit lurry. Yeah, horses go fast,
so you don't really get a nice, uh quiet shot
on their hair a lot of the time. Uh and
photography has come a long way. Later in Bissell's life,
he really experienced a mix of deep tragedy as well

(22:37):
as the highest of honors that someone could expect. In
nineteen seventy nine, he lost one of his daughters, who
was pregnant at the time, in a tragic accident. She'd
been driving home from a wedding when she hit a
damaged sections section of road she wound up colliding with
an oncoming car. He also lost his son in law
and two grandchildren in the wreck. These deaths, of course,

(22:59):
took a huge toll on the notoriously jubilant Raymont. Yeah,
some accounts basically say he was never quite his his
same jovial self after that, which is completely understandable. Three
years after that event, though, in Night two the Song
was awarded the title Officer of the Order of the
British Empire, and that honor is given quote for having

(23:21):
a major local role in any activity, including people whose
work has made them known nationally in their chosen area.
Ten years after that, he died of cancer at age
eighty on April seventeenth of nine. Yeah, his life became
quite quiet in its later years. He just wasn't in
the public spotlight as much. So there's there's not as
much like stuff to discusses in the fifties and sixties

(23:44):
when he was really kind of in the spotlight and
changing the hair industry. And next we're going to move
into one of the trickier aspects of speaking about Raymon
Bison's life and in his persona, and it's brought about
by his sort of theatrical presentation that we've talked about. Uh,
And we mentioned that he was sort of larger than life,
and his image was always carefully curated. He always, for example,

(24:07):
where a carnation in his lapel, and it was always
died to coordinate with his suit. And he painted his nails,
and he wore flamboyant custom tailored suits. And he sometimes
also affected a sort of false French accent. And while
we normally default on this podcast letting historical figures define
themselves in terms of their sexual orientation and their identity,

(24:29):
in fact before we're not super in favor of like
assigning a sexual orientation to a dead person who's not
here to claim it for themselves. Uh. With Raymond best
On in particular, there's a cultural discussion that arises with
this particular topic. Yeah. At one point, uh, during a

(24:49):
television podcast, he exclaimed, quote, I am homosexuality. This, despite
the odd phrasing of it, made him the first man
to come out on television. But they is a lot
of debate about whether that statement was nothing more than
a publicity stunt. Some critics even point to his awkward
wording as evidence that he didn't really know what he

(25:10):
was talking about, and this was a put on Beason.
We mentioned just a moment ago had children. He was
married to actress Rosalie Ashley and they had three daughters together,
and friends described him as quote vigorously heterosexual, but he
carried himself, at least publicly, in what would now be
seen as a very stereotypically gay manner, and that's why

(25:31):
his identity becomes really complex. He's been described in numerous
writings as putting on a persona that was expected of
him in his industry, which is unfortunate from the point
of view that he had to be some kind of
fake creation to achieve his success. But the other side
of it, if he was feigning this image is that
he was feeding the stereotypes surrounding a group of people

(25:53):
and a culture that he didn't belong to. Becomes really problematic,
especially giving this high profile. He had a very real
influence on the way people continue to perceive. There's a
lot in just industry and the people who worked there
and also really game in. Yeah, absolutely, and it's one
of those things where, uh, he really was quite famous

(26:15):
in his time. He appeared as a character on Red
Dwarf and he was. There was a spoof of him
on Monty Python. I mean, he was part of sort
of the culture's knowledge at that point of what a
quote gay man seemed to be, whether he was or not. Uh.
But of course if he was actually homosexual, and I

(26:37):
feel compelled to point out that most people who knew
him really swear he wasn't, but again we we don't know.
But if he was, it brings up the question of
whether he married to fit in with societal norms. And
though his personality seems to have run counter to a
desire to be seen in any way as ordinary, the
culture of that time period was still a mine field

(26:57):
for gay men. Keep in mind that this was a
time when it was still illegal to be gay in
the United Kingdom. It actually wasn't until nineteen sixty seven
that private sexual interactions, which there was a lot of
legal wording around what constituted a private interaction between two
men over the age of twenty one, was decriminalized in
England and Wales. So it's a complex time. Well, and

(27:20):
there's also the part where bisexuality exists correct there you
don't have to be one or the other. Well, and
so many of the conversations, Uh about this whole idea
center around like was he gay or was he straight?
He said he was gay, but he was married to

(27:40):
a woman. Like there's bisexuals, y'all right, it's yeah, it's
it's not a black and white issue. There's no again,
there's fluidity on that specter. Yes, So while the actual
nature of Besson's sexuality could really be unimportant to anyone
but his partners, the story really creates a lens through

(28:01):
which to examine the cultural expectations of people in certain roles,
as well as the history of LGBT rights food for thought. Yeah,
it's one of those things that you know, it kind
of crops up, as often happens when we're researching an episode,
like I'm like, oh, I want to do this fabulous
hairstylist from the fifties, and then you realize, like, oh,

(28:22):
there's a there's a really bigger, kind of important aspect
to this. Yeah, that is you and I had a
conversation while you were doing the research about how it's
possible that that by affecting this persona, he really reinforced
the scared, the stereo scareotypes. I mean, we could say

(28:43):
that too kind of the stereotype of like the gay
male hairdresser, and that's something that it really persists. Uh yeah, yeah,
having worked in the salon industry with people of all types,
Sure there's people that kind of fit a stereotype, but
there is a whole spectrum of other people with a

(29:03):
whole lot of other personalities probably don't appreciate assumptions being
made about them well. And it reminds me of when
I was in college, I was an orientation leader, uh
and we had a during orientation leader training, there was
just a lot of discussion about making sure that we
were welcoming of everyone. Uh And because I was in
college in the nine nineties and relatively mountainous, not relatively

(29:30):
definitely mountainous, relatively rurled North Carolina, uh Like, for a
lot of people, it was their first experience meeting another person,
like meeting a gay person at all. And so that like,
that was part of what we talked about. And our
orientation leader team actually put together a presentation to teach
to other orientation leaders about that and about stereotypes and perceptions.

(29:52):
And we had two people one when a guy and
when a lady who stereotypically we're like people interpreted them
as being a gay man and a lesbian, right, both
of them, we're straight, and so like they would begin
the presentation with being like, all right, who thinks because

(30:13):
we're up here today and because I talk like this
and because I look like this, like who thinks we're gay?
And like the room will be like me, I think
you're gay? Right, Well, we're not news. I don't know
if you're watching Orphan Black or if any of our
listeners are, and I will not really say much about
it because I don't want to give anything away. But
there is a sort of wonderful scene in the current

(30:35):
season where Felix, who is a gay man on the show,
has to explain to a straight guy who is trying
to pass for gay, like, you have no idea do
you know any gay people? And he says no, and
he's like, yes, you do, you absolutely do. It's not
it's not one type of behavioral person like you absolutely
know gay people. Uh So that's that's our our note

(30:58):
on Raymond and how he can kind of offer us
an opportunity to think about sort of some of these
uh social expectations and how people are defined and where
some of that seems to come from historically. Yeah. So
to close out, we're going to use another quote from
Videlsa Soon about Ramon who once said quote, he weaved

(31:19):
magic throughout his work and made us feel we were
doing so too. There was only one Raymond, have some
listener hair history. I do have a listener mail that
has nothing to do with hair. I also want to
reiterate the thing that you said at the top, which
is that if you are an expert in in in
the history of like African hairstyles and black hairstyles in

(31:41):
America and elsewhere sand doesn't know, yes, please, that would
be spectacular. We're eager there are there are lots of
things that you and I are comfortable talking about, even
though like we personally are not part of a specific community.
But that is one where that you and I are
not the people say yeah and I have spoken kind

(32:03):
of reached out to a couple of um specialists in
black hair that I know, and they're very knowledgeable and
really know their stuff. But when I asked him how
comfortable they would be talking about the history, they were
like less. So, um, you know, they know current stuff
and they know some of the history, but in terms
of like the wider spectrum of history. They were not

(32:24):
so comfortable about that, but so yeah, right to us
if you know that. But before we give you the
email address, I'm going to read a different listener mail,
which is actually a comment from our Facebook page and
it is from the National Gallery of Canada related to
our Visual Lebois episode. If you remember, I think I
had posed the question we talked about during the revolutionary time,

(32:48):
people who we're not fans of threw sulfur into her
basement and we were wondering if that would affect her paintings.
We haven't an answer. Uh. This is from the National
Gallery of Canada who said, Holly and Tracy, thanks for
sharing your love for vision Leblin. Did you get an
answer to your question about sulfur? You ladies know your stuff. Nope,
I was just guessing. Sulfur in the atmosphere can be

(33:11):
bad for paintings, especially those that aren't varnished, provoking discoloration
of certain pigments in the most extreme cases, turning a
white pigment black. One early manual for conservators even advised
explicitly against cooking of certain vegetables in your paintings, that
you can guess which ones. That said, we are presently
opening crates and examining paintings for the opening of the

(33:31):
exhibition here and we aren't seeing any evidence of that
type of discoloration. All of the paintings are breathtaking and
we can't wait to unveil our new version of this
extraordinary exhibition here in Ottawa. So that's the exhibition that
was at the met in New York, and now it
is going to be at the National Gallery of Canada.
I don't know for how long, but for a while.
It's opening shortly, I believe. So if we're in that area,

(33:53):
absolutely go see it. Uh. And it's good to know
now we have an answer to the sulfur question. If
you like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast at house works dot com. Again, any
experts in black hair history please write to us. You
can also reach out to us at Facebook dot com,
slash misst in history, on Twitter at misston History at

(34:14):
pinterest dot com, slash misst in history at misston history
dot tumbler dot com, and we're on Instagram at can
you guess it missed in history? Uh. If you would
like to do a little bit of research about some
of the things related to what we talked about today.
You can go to our parents site, House that Works.
Type in the words hair color in the search bar,

(34:35):
and you'll get an article called how Hair Color Works
will explain sort of how pigments will actually stick to hair.
You can also visit us online at mist in history
dot com, where you can find show notes for all
the episodes that Tracy and I have worked on together,
as well as a complete archive of every show from
the beginning when it was very very short UH and
we encourage you come and visit us at Houston Works

(34:56):
dot com and mist in history dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuff Works
dot com. E