I forgot to mention that another treasure I got from my parents’ house was my three Jody dolls. If you were a little girl in the '70s, you might remember her: “Jody, the Country Girl Doll”. She has long red hair and is dressed a la Little House on the Prairie.
Unfortunately, I did what many little girls do, in all eras, not just the '70s: I damaged her while trying to beautify her. I remember dipping their hair in shampoo and water, and now they’re just the way I left them: hopelessly tangled.
Anyone know a way to get the hair back to its former glory?
I don’t want to go to the Doll Hospital unless I absolutely have to. The one near my house, I’m boycotting, because after I saw Toy Story 2, I brought in my childhood teddy bear to have his arm reattached. The owner fiddled with the remaining arm to see how it worked, then pulled it off and wanted to charge me to have both reattached. I don’t THINK so! There’s another one, but it’s a long drive away, plus I don’t want to pay to have this done if it’s at all possible to do it myself.
I’ve just emerged, coughing, from the steam-filled bathroom where I managed to comb the snarls out of one of them. It’s an improvement, but the hair is still very flyaway, not smooth. Well, the hair on the crown of her head is smooth (it was before I started this), but that’s it. So does anyone know how I can get all of it looking like that?
Well, I have an American Girl doll and I bought some detangling stuff from a wig shop. I’d tell you the name, but unfortunately I can’t find it. Sorry.
Basically, you wash the hair with liquid dish soap or baby shampoo. Then you pour a solution of 1 part fabric softener, 5 parts water over the hair. You leave this in for “a few minutes to a few hours” then rinse with warm water.
You use fabric softener because the hair is a synthetic fiber. Some people do use hair conditioner, so there’s nothing wrong with that. But the fabric softener seems to work really well.
This site also has directions for styling hair. You can use hairspray on doll hair if you need to. Remember, if you don’t like the results you can always wash it back out again.
If you want to get really brave, you can use boiling water. This is how curls are set. You roll hair up on pieces of drinking straw, then dip the hair in boiling water. I haven’t been brave enough to try this yet, but it seems to work well:
You will have to comb the hair. You can start with a comb with wide teeth, then move to a finer tooth comb. I would recommend holding the top of the hair while combing the bottom. This will help avoid pulling hair out.
Good luck getting your Jody’s back into shape! Do you still have their clothes?
Well, I tried the dish soap and followed it with the fabric softener dilute. I can definitely see a difference, but I also see I didn’t use enough of it. Tomorrow I’ll make a big batch of dilute and really soak the hair in it. That should work.
I soaked her hair for half an hour and rinsed it, then another half hour, then three and a half hours. Each time, a few more skeins of hair became smooth. The bulk of it did not become smooth, but seems to be getting less bushy each time. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking. At any rate, I’ll keep doing this until I get fed up. It’s not really time-consuming.
There is, however, something a bit creepy about an 11 1/2 inch plastic naked woman hanging head downwards from the rim of a coffee can on my kitchen counter.