Happy Tuesday, My Friend!
For today’s email, I’m dusting off an old post from an old blog. This one is from April of 2016! It serves no earthly purpose other than reminiscing about the good old days. If you were born too late to enjoy the 70s, you have my deepest condolences. If you’re about my age, perhaps this might ring an old bell . . .
Ah, 1970s hair care products. The stuff dreams were made of. “Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific,” “Wella Balsam,” “Lemon Up,” and “Clairol’s Herbal Essence.” I was sure these products would change my life when I was a 15-year-old budding beauty. I’m using both terms “budding” and “beauty” rather loosely here. Truth is, there was very little budding going on, and no one had accused me of being beautiful as a freshman in high school. And yet, my three best friends and I were in hot pursuit of finding the perfect shampoo/creme rinse combination that would make our hair stop traffic and, basically, change the world.
Oh, and by the way, you read that right: creme rinse. Not “conditioner.” When did it go from creme rinse to conditioner? Doesn’t creme rinse sound fancier?
Linda, Andrea, Kathy, and I considered it our personal assignment to investigate every possible shampoo and determine what was the most awe-inspiring. And, lest you think we simply used a product straight from the bottle, let me stop you right there. We added a whole new dimension—mixing—like half Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific with half Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. Or three parts Prell to one part Breck. The possibilities were endless and we were determined to get it just right. The trick was remembering our “perfect formula” to recreate our life-transforming hair.
It was very convenient for Linda’s Mom to have a baby around this time, thus creating a stockpile of baby food jars at her house, the perfect receptacles for our concoctions. Linda would bring the little jars to school, and we gingerly put them in our lockers for safekeeping. I’m trying to remember if we also mixed creme rinses, but I’m foggy. I think we left those alone and just concentrated on mixing up the bubblies.
Between the four of us, we had every kind of hair. Kathy’s blonde hair was silky and straight and fine. She sported both the popular “Dorothy Hamill wedge” and the “shag”—but not at the same time, obviously. Brunette Andrea’s was super-coarse and thick. She also had a wedge for a time, although hers was considerably thicker than Kathy’s. Linda’s and mine were the most similar—both dark blondes with wavy hair. Not a single wedge between the two of us, though. We were so “out of it.”
Here are a few other popular looks in the 70s:
Jane Fonda sporting a shag. There was “Toni Tennille” hair. My sister rocked this look! Susan Dey – The vast majority of us fell into this camp—middle part, hair straight down and partially impairing our vision.
But without a doubt, the hair we ALL wanted, no matter who you were, no matter what color hair you had, no matter what side of town you lived on, or what you ate for breakfast that day, every girl worth her weight in shampoo wanted to look like the one and only—Farrah Fawcett.
Flawlessly fabulous feathers!
I have no words to describe this. Well, wait, sure I do: “sheer perfection.” How did she get her hair—I mean—feathers to flip in the perfect direction at just the correct angle all over her head like that? I’ll never know. No shampoo/creme rinse combination in the world could’ve gotten my hair to look like that. Not many girls could achieve this look, not for lack of trying. There were an elite few, certainly. If you did, you have my utmost respect and admiration.
And here I am now, badly needing my roots dyed. (Apparently, I did, indeed, “bud” and am way on the other side of that process.) I may not have ever had hair that came close to looking like a TV star, but I sure had fun playing “shampoo chemistry” with my friends back then. And waiting for the world to change simply because our hair smelled terrific!
May you have more good hair days than bad this week! Next week, I’ll be on a Tour de Florida, visiting my boys, so I won’t get to write to you! Catch up with you later, alligator!
Written with love – – – Patti XOXO
Whenever I get my roots dyed, I remind myself of an Afghan Hound. (Afghans . . . another 70s thing!)