Yeah, washing hair once a week used to be considered quite enough, and for some people, more than enough.
Another popular line was “I just washed my hair and I can’t do a THING with it!” Women were used to having a lot of styling product and grease build up in order to style their hair. Clean hair that’s not conditioned tends to be very flyaway, and I don’t think that conditioners were marketed to the consumer back then. I remember that my parents didn’t think that it was necessary, so I bought my own using my allowance and babysitting money.
In the early 70s, my father was horrified to learn that all three of us kids had washed our hair that day, and in fact usually washed it every day. My mother had (and still has) very dry hair, and she usually got it washed and set once a week at the beauty salon, as did most women of her age and class. Nowadays she washes it daily, in the shower, but she’s still likely to set it with hot rollers if she’s going out.
To concur with everyone else, my mother (now 83) tells me that washing hair was a big production number and you would set aside one evening a week to do it, mainly because of the time it took to dry/style it (which seemed to involve sitting in front of the fire with rollers in).
You would always do it on the same evening because any more often and your mother would think you were being wasteful (and you would butt into your siblings hair washing time) and any longer and your hair would be a disaster. So to say you couldn’t go out on Thursday, for instance, because that was your hair washing evening was deemed a reasonable excuse.
My mane is closer to 2.5 feet right now (butt-length, if you must know) and it takes 15-20 minutes to thoroughly wash and rinse it. I find it takes longer to rinse the soap out than to put it in.
But that’s not all - if I don’t blow dry it (and I usually don’t, as repeatedly blow-drying damages hair which makes growing it long difficult) it takes 2-4 hours to dry completely. I don’t recall home, handheld hairdryers becoming a household staple until the “Farrah Fawcett” hairstyle became fashionable (late 70’s?) so in the 1960’s someone washing long hair pretty much was not going out that evening.
I *am *blessed with curly, long, thin hair. The thin part is the only part that makes it manageable. And I am far from high maintenance but even in this day of modern products, it still takes a little time to wash my hair. If I do it the “right” way, it’s wash-condition-comb out all of the snarls-apply gel-scrunch just so. Generally I use 2-in-1 shampoo and it’s quicker.
But I always thought it was just a condescending “no” - as in, I don’t enjoy washing my hair, but I’d rather even do that than date you.
Man, I can’t imagine not washing my hair every day. Or at LEAST every other day. I know that people often say it’s good to go a few days without it, but I tried that as an experiment earlier this year and you could literally see the grease on my hair. I felt like the Fonz but with fewer STDs. Does anyone else get majorly greasy when they don’t wash as often?
Absolutely. Most women slept on rollers back in the day. I did it as a kid in Jr. High. You put the pillow under your neck so your head is kind of suspended off the mattress and try not to move around and don’t think of sleeping on your side and if you’re lucky, everything’s dry by morning.
To be fair, considering the smells of sulfur and eggs coming at my hair dresser’s last week, I don’t think people have stopped doing horrible things to themselves to achieve desired results.
And from what I hear, people do (or pay to have done) some damaging stuff–not in the name of curls anymore but in the name of straight hair.
“Or maybe she decided that an evening with your old tutor would be blisteringly dull and opted for the more exhilarating course of washing her hair instead. Dear me, I know what I would have done. It’s only lack of hair that forces me to pursue such a hectic social round these days.” - Professor Chronotis, in ‘Dirk Gently’
I actually got that excuse when I was dating. It was in June of 1971 (Yes, I remember the date, since we met at the US premiere of Jesus Christ Superstar).
She called back about ten minutes later and said that she could wash her hair the next day, so it had a happy ending.
I think the fact that in these days it’s easier than it used to be makes the excuse unintentionally (or maybe intentionally) ironic. Like, I care so little about you or what you think that I’m not even going to try to make a plausible excuse.
Yeah, I think my mom used to sleep on her face, pretty much. (Then the 60’s happened when she was in college and she went for long hippie hair, and still has it.) But it seems girls mostly slept in rollers. Otherwise you’d wake up with horrible bedhead and no way to fix it.
My MIL claims that wigs were pretty popular when she was in her 20’s, and I think this is why. It was easier!
Wigs made a brief comeback in the 70’s. I don’t know why, or what started it, but they were very common. Mom would take hers to the hairdresser for cleaning and styling.
I slept on rollers for years, the wire/sticky ones. You could get little pink foam pads to put under them, and that made it bearable.
Tame might have been one of the first conditioners. I remember being jealous when a rich girlfriend bought some. It was a concentrate. You had to mix it with water and then pour it over your hair. Prell and Tame and Jergens lotion – 60’s cosmetic icons.
ETA: I read that wrong. I thought it was “in the 20’s”, not “in her 20’s”. Was your MIL in her 20’s in the 70’s?
Handheld dryers available in the 20’s? Why did it take so long for them to become common? I don’t remember them until at least the late 50’s, early 60’s. I don’t remember them in movies from that period either, although scenes of women drying their hair probably wound up on the cutting room floor.
Seriously, my rich friend would have had one, and she dried her hair under one of those bonnet thingies.
Then again, I was raised in the Midwest, and it takes forever for new stuff to get here.
My mother still has one of those bonnet dryers. I don’t know how often she uses it, but she does ‘set’ her hair with curlers.
She has a regular blow-dryer, too.
I remember my sister getting a blow-dryer when she was in high school - must have been early-mid 70s. It was metal, and incredibly heavy. Loud, too.
But it’s the heat that does the damage, isn’t it? So what you should really do after washing your hair is go up in a plane that has an open cockpit for the ultimate blow-dry.
I - we - did, yes. For varying values of sleep, of course. When I was in high school in the late 60’s and terribly concerned about my appearance, I would wash my butt-length hair every afternoon after school, roll it in the OJ cans and leave 'em in until the next morning (more than 12 hours). We had one of those hair dryers with the plastic cap and I’d sit on my bed with the thing running for bleeping hours while I did my homework ;). Then I’d “sleep” with the rollers in.
