Teased hair and other follicular torments
I spent quite a few of my early teen years developing a skill I haven’t used since: the ability to coax hair into tangled masses and then smooth the top layer over the whole thing in order to create volume, a process known as “teasing.” It involved a fine comb, much patience, and iron will, things the teenage girl has in abundance when it comes to fashion and her hair.
It also involved another lost skill set, that of rolling the wet hair around large metal cylinders almost as big as Coke cans and then pinning them in place, tying the whole thing down with a hairnet, and sleeping on it. Yes, sleeping on it, which was perhaps the most acquired skill of all, involving the ability to stay in one position all night, carefully putting pressure only on the spot designated most comfortable (or rather, least uncomfortable).
It meant, among other things, that a girl couldn’t comb or brush through her hair once it had been arranged, until the next time it came to wash it. And unless you had very greasy hair that needed washing very often (I did not), you spaced out the washings as long as possible because hair teased much better when less than squeaky-clean.
I was reminded of all of this by a single photo I came across last week, in an article celebrating the music of Ellie Greenwich. I’d never heard of her before, but I’d certainly heard some of the songs she wrote—most notably “Be My Baby,” “Do Wah Diddy Diddy,” and especially “Leader of the Pack” (vroom, vroom!)—that spanned a long career as a very successful songwriter. Ellie died just a few days ago, and as I was searching the tributes I came across the following very fine example of the art of teasing. Blond Ellie is on the left, her husband and co-writer Jeff Barry in the middle (sans teasing), and on the right (and sporting the higher, and therefore better, “do”) is someone I believe to be Ellie’s sister:
But these hairdos are models of restraint compared to the ones I frequently encountered—and sometimes sported myself—in the public junior high and high schools I attended. Alas, I have very few photos of myself in those years and none readily available for scanning. So you’ll just have to trust me when I say that I achieved great heights during the time I wore a hairdo known as the artichoke, which was a shortish (but not too short) and highly teased and layered coif.
Sorry, can’t find a good photo of an artichoke—even on someone else, even after a Google search—except for pictures of the vegetable. But here’s the beehive, courtesy of the singing group known as the Ronettes:
Lest you think that only black entertainers did this to themselves, let me just say that I recall a very Caucasian girl in my high school who daily sported an even loftier version of this very same hairdo, and she did it without using a false hairpiece or any such nonsense. Marie Antionette would have been proud:
The whole thing collapsed, as it were, sometime in the mid-to-late 60’s. First came post-Beatles British fashion and then hippies, and shiny straight hair was the thing.
You’d think that would liberate us females. But no, girls with un-shiny, un-straight hair (otherwise known as curly) had to decide whether to use straightening irons (or even regular irons, after protecting the hair by placing a thin towel over it and putting the iron on a low setting—not recommended!) or whether to go au naturale.
Curly hair came in later, of course, and then for a brief and unshining moment it was our straight-haired sisters who suffered through perms. Here’s an example of a typical bad, bad, super-bad one:
But those days are gone—fortunately for all of us, curly and straight. Now, however, we have the odd habit of the fashionistas to flatten any natural tendency of the hair to wave or even to fall in any normal sort of manner. They straighten it via the ceramic iron. Here’s the desired result:
To me it looks as though every ounce of life has been squeezed out of the girl’s poor tresses. But fashion is a cruel master, and twas ever thus.
[ADDENDUM: Here’s a video featuring stills of Ellie Greenwich. It’s a tour of some of the hairstyles I mention, from all sorts of teased do’s to the long straight look. Ellie’s the blond:
Although I look bald there is actually some fuzz on top of my 67 year old head that justifies my occasional trips to the barber. (My forehead extends to the back of my cranium.) Is there a critical mass of hair essential to reach such high teased splendor? If I was able to tease the fuzz, would it still be invisible? Would the ladies swoon anyway? In other words, is teasing in my future?
Tease tease tease!
No, feather feather feather!
Rather the female advertising equivalent of Tastes great/Less filling.
Steve G: sorry to inform you that you can’t successfully tease very thin hair.
Check out a high school or college year book from the Sixties. Don’t know how the ozone layer survived.
Just for grins, youtube Brothers Four, the original group. There are a couple of vids of them in concert in the Sixties. The camera pans the audience.
What rapt attention.
I figure, with a couple of hundred guys killed a week in VN, riots and burning and assassinations and the roof about to come off, it was a good thing to disappear into “four strong winds” or its like. And check out the hair.
I always preferred the long hair, easy curls. Easy to me, anyway.
You post like a girl.
Vanderleun is just waxing (pun intended) nostalgic for Brylcreem, D.A. haircuts, and teased hair a la Liberace.
This brought me back. My older sister had curly hair and did the coke can thing in the late 60s. I had straight hair and did the curiling iron think in the 70s to emulate Farrah Fawcett. We are never happy with what we have.
My parents made my little sisters get Astrounaut Wife haridos for my 1965 Bar Mtizvah. Bwahahahah.
I started reading this thread with the anticipation of seeing a picture of Neo with teased hair. Once again she teased me down the path and left me waiting and wondering when.
I have fine, wavy hair, longer than most of those pictured (except for the Ronettes and Marie Antoinette). And when my locks choose to do their own thing, there isn’t much I can do to stop it. Being a dude, I have no time nor inclination to apply any sort of iron or external heat to it. I’ve learned to live with it.
I don’t miss the teased hair from that era, but I am fond of the era’s girl groups such as the Ronettes and the Crystals, who made simple tunes much better with their harmonizing. One of the links said that Ellie’s group ( with one male) did a version of Da Doo Run Run. I hope that turns up on YouTube some time.
I remember my sister with the curled hair look. It was called an “Anglo.” Some things are best left in the past.
The beehive-type hairdos persisted in TX long after they had gone out of fashion in the rest of the country. That earned TX the nickname of “big hair country.”
Twenty years old, dark-hair teased like Susan Hayward, 5 feet tall, size 1 and built like a brick house – that was my wife when I first laid eyes on her December 3, 1985. Come to think of it, she hasn’t changed much…urrh ‘cept she’s slips into a sexy size 6 nowadays.
van.
Who?
You ever try to make out with a girl wearing a lacquer helmet?
Quite honestly, I have always loved Robert Smith and The Cure:
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/dc9/robert_smith_1996.jpg
I had fine, straight, flyaway blond hair in a “high and tight” that I’d Brylcreme straight back; until last year when I saw a photo of me that looked like I was trying to comb it back over a bald spot (that I didn’t even know I had)….
I loved Brylcreme and Top Brass, and I assure you: they are available at every military post, base and camp all over the world.
Then I shaved it all off. Not with a razor, but with clippers. Using a razor to shave your head is more work that having hair!
I was an Aqua Velva and Brylcreme kinda guy…. Now I’m just an Aqua Velva Man.
Baldness is freedom. Embrace it.
Nothing a little Dippity-do won’t solve….
I had long blondish hair and had permanents to make it straight. I never used coke cans… it was frozen OJ cans for me.
My father always tried to make me feel good. He told me he liked girls with curly hair… I told him I didn’t want a guy his age.
Later, when I was protesting the long skirts he wanted me to wear, I said they made me feel like an old maid and he said he liked old maids. My mom said she wished she’d been one.
Life was fun in those days.
Baldness is freedom. Embrace it.
Once a week with Braun clippers–that’s it.
Fortunately, by dint of my Scandinavian heritage, I have a handsome dolichocephalic skull.
Wahl #3. All around. Freedom! (Thank God my wife likes it.)
Speaking of skirts….
My wife had one left over from college in the Sixties.
Our daughter, then in jr. hi., tried it on. “Mom!” Scandalously short.
As my wife said, trying to sit down both gracefully and modestly was a chore.
Not my problem.
LOL,
One of the previous posters summed it up well, tease! Let’s see a few pics of our gracious host as a tender young blossom. She certainly has no need, but full grown she could get by on looks alone. 🙂
Can’t find anyone who knows how to do an “Artichoke” anymore. It’s obviously a layered cut, but no one will even try it.