In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

GOMINA 103
never loses its strong association with Latin America, it becomes a loanword
in French, where it produces the verb form se gominer (Robert,
751). But Gardel's song about gomina is not the only evidence of such
an emblem of up-to-date fashion. There are quite a number of other
hairdos and headdresses that have an especially strong symbolic link to
whatever appears to be "typically modern."
One of the first images in the film Metropolis presents the "Club of
the Sons," in which a rich and elegant jeunesse doree revels in mundane
pleasures. The atmosphere of the "Eternal Gardens," the club's variety
theater, is emblematized by the "nude back" of a revue girl "covered
with exotic sequinned designs," and by another girl in "a long, flounced
skirt, her nude breast swathed in a diaphanous shawl." Only the appearance
of a third revue girl, who sports a sumptuous headdress, is highlighted
by the film script as representing the present: "Another girl,
clothed in more contemporary garments and an elaborate headdress,
curtseys toward the camera" (Lang, 24). The actress in the film is actually
wearing a turban similar to those that have become the trademark
of Natasha Rambova, Rudolph Valentino's divorced wife (Morris, 174),
and that embellish the public image of the French tennis star Susanne
Lenglen. Charles Pelissier, a bicycle racer who causes a sensation in the
world of sports by winning, at a very early age, the French cross-country
championship [see Endurance], is dubbed "the Valentino of sports"
because-thanks to gomina-he manages to keep his hair as smooth and
glossy as the movie star's, even in the most grueling competitions (Annees-memoire,
178). By the end of Josephine Baker's first season at the
Folies Bergeres, it has become obligatory among the fashion-conscious
women of Paris to imitate her slicked-down hair, and before the year is
out, the new trend conquers the market with a product called "Bakerfix"
(Rose, 100). Bakerfix, gomina, and a very popular Vaseline pomade
whose label shows Valentino's face (Orbanz, 20) give hair that shining
surface which fashionable people now wish to have over their entire
body. White women put walnut oil on their skin because they envy the
appearance of Josephine Baker's shining body under the spotlights of the
revue theaters (Rose, 101). Rather than highlighting the natural tints of
the skin, makeup is used for inscription on the body's surface-inscription
that emphasizes its own artificiality. The shorts and bathrobes of
professional boxers shimmer like the slicked-down hair of gigolos and
movie stars. [see Boxing] The appeal of the Channel swimmers is height-