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In addition to clothes, hair styles are an important indicator of who 
     ou are and the cult to which you belong. The wartime spivs, the teddy boys
     and the mods each had their own distinctive hair style. The hard mods had      
     lready taken to cropped hair by 1964 and the style was taken further by 
     the skinheads, giving rise to their own name of peanuts and other names 
     such as lemons, spy kids and no-heads. "Skinhead" had already been      used 
     to describe the US marines, but a skinhead crop is not a crew cut, which 
     is close cut at the sides and flat on the top. The length of the cut is 
     controlled by the thickness of the white plastic clip-on guard of the 
     barber's electric razor. There are four thicknesses of guard, with number      
     one giving the shortest crop and number four the longest. Partings could 
     be shaved into the crop from front to crown. Again, this feature was 
     copied from the West Indians who used it as part of their own hairstyles.      
     Some skin went further than the number one crop and had a "dark shadow",      
     but at this time they were never bald. When long hair was the trademark of      
     the hippyand the dropout, it is 
     to be expected that an anti-hippy movement should adopt short hair. A 
     crop, however, has other benefits. If you get in fight, short hair is an 
     advantage since your opponent cannot grasp it. It has another practical 
     benefit in that it is easy to keep clean and to wash. It is also easy 
     to manage when you are working. Moustaches and beards were rarely seen 
     on skins; shaving was obligatory and stubble not accepted. However, some
     skinheads had long side-burns terminating at the lower jaw. Hair style varied      
     over time. In the early days, the crop was fairly 
     short; the number one crop came into fashion, giving skins the nearly 
     bald look. By late 1969, the length had increased, giving rise to a new 
     name. The suede head had hair at least one and a half inches long. It 
     was neatly combed, parted to the side and style. By 1971, hair had grown 
     to collar length and the final phase came in as the smooth. The name 
     came both from the general appearance and from a certain make of shoe 
     with pattern free surface. Although the smoothes looked nothing like 
     their skinhead predecessors, they were the same kids extending the 
     fashion. Generally, short hair is associated in the public mind with convicts,      
     prison camp inmates and the military. It was exactly this mean look 
     which the skins wishes to cultivate.