The Girl with Green Hair

In her early twenties, ruth hitchhiked across the country to the Old French Quarter in New Orleans, where she worked for two years alongside a community of artists and poets. It was here that she first dyed her hair a vivid shade of green in 1950. It was an impulsive decision, a half-dare, made after watching a film called "The Boy with Green Hair," starring young Dean Stockwell.  

The Boy with Green Hair, 1948, directed by Joseph Losey, starring Dean Stockwell

"The Boy with Green Hair" is a whimsical anti-war film released in 1948. In it, a young boy mysteriously grows green hair, attracting a lot of unwanted attention and unkind reactions from his neighbors and community. He begins to be "visited" by visions of war orphans, who implore him to use his newfound notoriety to call attention to the horrors of war. He begins to spread the orphans' message, but his campaign gets derailed, as the pressure and torment of the townspeople eventually lead him to shave his hair and censor himself. The film concludes with the young boy finding the courage to grow his unusual hair and speak out against war again. 

It's not hard to see how the film's themes would resonate with ruth and her Beat colleagues. When America was fighting against communists around the globe, being vocally anti-war was as glaringly aberrant as having a head full of green hair. In a time when much of society was unforgiving to people who didn't conform, visually or ideologically, ruth and the Beat Generation prophetically pointed toward the values and aesthetics that would shape the decades to come. Although ruth was not a war orphan, she was a refugee, spreading a message of peace to a society built on fighting.

It's telling then that ruth continued to dye her hair for much of her life, even as the world slowly changed and colorful hair entered the mainstream. Just as ruth's green hair symbolized an authenticity and ideological compass that grounded her, regardless of the social currents of the 1960s, war cast a shadow on society in her old age as it did in her youth. And like the orphans of the 1948 film, she never gave in. 

Photographed by Melody C. Miller from ruth weiss, the beat goddess documentary