I just read a post by 37th Dream/Rumors of Peace about friends of hers in 1967. She posted their senior pictures. I am in love with the hairstyles from the 1960s. They were so sleek and straight and gorgeous. Think Marianne Faithful or Patty Boyd. I also liked earlier teased (and sprayed) hairstyles with the perfect flip. And bangs. Geez-o-freakin' Pete! What I had to do to make my bangs stay straight for at least half the day, especially during humid summer months.
Naturally curly hair was a cross to bear throughout the swinging 60's. Growing it long and not having bangs helped weigh it down, but it was still too wavy to be cool. I tried ironing it. I used big oversized curlers. Then Janis Joplin came along. I never struggled with my hair again, and the humid summer months were the absolute best for crazy hair.
Me in 1969, feeling pretty darn good about my hair:
Oh wow, I hadn't thought in years about all the crazy stuff I did to make my slightly wavy hair look totally straight in the 1960s. Yes, ironing and taping. Yikes!
ReplyDeleteTaping! I had forgotten about that.
DeleteAnd then came Andie MacDowell! (Many years later!)
ReplyDeleteOh, I loved her hair.
DeleteO my goodness. Janis Joplin! I love your drawing! I did everything you did to discourage my curly hair. I even used Scotch tape to tape my bangs flat when they were drying under those old giant shower-cap like hair dryers. I first wanted bangs in 1964 so that I could be like The Beatles and still be a girl. I can almost see the Scotch tape line in my senior photo. What a relief it was when I stopped hating my hair. With longish hair and as I have aged, my hair has become much less curly. I do always dry it with a hand-held hair dryer which does give it the brief appearance of being straight, but it definitely becomes more curly as day progresses because the air is damp much of the time here in the coastal Pacific Northwest. My youngest sister had the curliest hair which she has kept short and curly since the 1970s. My middle sister had thick straight hair. My mother had curly hair more like mine, which became completely straight as she aged. The really really tightly curled hair that my youngest sister has came from my father's side.
ReplyDeleteMy hair has become more curly as I age. But I think that's because I live in Florida, and rarely have to turn on the dry heat.
DeleteYup. Same hair here, with the added bonus of humid Virginia.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter was more fortunate. Hers is even curlier, but she was a teen in the 70s, and was a ringer for Molly Ringwald.
My daughter had stick straight hair, and she'd get it permed in the 80s. We're never happy!
DeleteI gave up the fight and let mine be.
ReplyDeleteWe have to pick our fights. Hair is one that just takes too much effort to win.
DeleteJanis Joplin must have inspired a lot of women to be themselves and stop worrying about what they were supposed to look like and how they were supposed to behave.
ReplyDeleteShe did.
DeleteExperience has shown - at least my experience - that straight haired women are envious of women with curly hair and vice versa. The same seems to apply to red heads, all genders, both curly and straight. When I moved away from my childhood home in dry, flat and plain boring Franconia to more exciting places incl. hills and hippies, my hair started to get curly. I kid you not.
ReplyDeleteHa! I love that.
DeleteI am pretty sure I posted a comment yesterday but I don't see it here. I wonder if my posts are disappearing somewhere (maybe in your spam folder?) I have heard that it happens sometimes lately. Just checking! :)
ReplyDeleteI didn't find anything in my spam folder.
Deletetrade ya! I wanted to iron my hair in the worst way. But mine was stick straight. We all want what we don't have. I had a friend with curly hair in high school and she hated it and I loved it. Today she would be so instyle. It was big and thick and curly. She wanted my hair and I coveted hers.
ReplyDeleteTo this day, when people say they wish they had curly hair I wonder why. Ha.
DeleteMy mother tortured me with curlers through my teens until I rebelled and took charge of my own hair. It was naturally wavy, but in the mid fifties it was almost like a sin to just let your hair dry naturally so we suffered with those god-awful rollers that made sausages of your hair and damaged your scalp! I was so happy when we got to the sixties and hair-freedom.
ReplyDeleteYes, the smaller the curlers, the more they hurt.
DeleteOh, hair stories! Love the pic
ReplyDeleteOh,the hair stories!
ReplyDeleteMy sisters all had the long straight "Marsha Brady" hair that I envied. Mine definitely has that Janis look if left to its own accord. I tame it a bit but not overly much and now that I am older, well, I tend to just love it as it is. I sometimes wonder if I am getting too old for long hair but then I say "eff that" and go with what I love.
ReplyDeleteMom braided us all in the morning when I was very little. Metal comb and a brush that we got smacked with if we moved too much but that ended early because my older sisters stopped tolerating it and I was the beneficiary of their insubordination.