"There was a long time — who knows when it ended? — when, if you were a woman and you parted your hair on the side, someone would say you look like Veronica Lake."

"Side part *meant* Veronica Lake" — I write over at Facebook, where my son John — a propos of his "101 Years of Movies" blog — posts a lovely photograph of Veronica Lake (from "Sullivan's Travels," his second favorite movies of 1941).

John responds: 

A scene in Billy Wilder’s breakthrough movie, “The Major and the Minor” (1942), starring Ginger Rogers, pokes fun at Lake’s famous hairdo: “There’s an epidemic in [this] school…. They all think they’re Veronica Lake.” 

Amazing! Look:

 

To quote myself again (with an added link, to Glamour):

That was way back in 1942. That was still going on in the 1960s and beyond.

These days, there's a big fad for parting the hair straight down the middle. We had that in the 1960s too. But hysteria over a side part is really very funny. Lake didn't pull the hair back, though. That was a big thing about it. She let it fall over her eyes.

It was the hair in your eye/eyes that drove people crazy. I got the impression they thought it was one thing for one actress — Veronica Lake — to perform that insanity in movies, but no one else can try that — certainly not in real life, where you've got to watch where you're going — and if you do, we're going to discipline you by calling you out for copying Lake. Like this was a hairstyle for one person and one person alone. 

I think it was just over-the-top policing of young women. And I'm saying that as someone who, in junior high, was sent to the vice principal's office for having excessively long bangs. I mean, what are eyebrows for if not to tell you here is the line that must not be crossed?