1 week ago
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A while back, we asked older adults of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the "weirdest" beauty trends and routines from the past that would confuse (or shock) younger generations today. Here's what they had to say:
1. "I remember my mom telling me to create highlights in my hair using hydrogen peroxide. So I highlighted my hair with it for about a year. Worked like a charm. I even have highlighted hair in my senior (Class of '76) picture!"
2. "In the '80s, we used to add Mercurochrome (red liquid used to sanitize cuts and other boo-boos) to our baby oil AND put the Sun In on our hair, and then lay out on the aluminum foil reflectors for HOURS. I was so brown and my hair and teeth so bright, my cousin used to say I looked like a negative! 😂"
"Oh Lord, it just occurred to me that you young'uns might not know what a negative is... LOL."
3. "Aqua Net hairspray. It was probably a big contributor to the depletion of the ozone layer."
—49, Anonymous
"I always say us '70s/'80s kids caused global warming thanks to all the Aqua Net! (Guilty!) Unfortunately, I'm only half kidding..."
4. "Bleaching facial hair. There was this weird idea that shaving or waxing would make hair grow back thicker, so bleaching was the way to go. Having darker skin with a blonde upper lip was a weird look and way more noticeable."
—50, California
5. "We'd tease our hair with a toothbrush in the '80s."
6. "My grandmother and great-grandmother tried to perm my mother's hair as a newborn in 1960. It was ridiculous, but it was the '60s."
—31, Kentucky
7. "We mixed iodine with baby oil to get a darker tan. It's no wonder that I’ve had multiple skin cancers removed."
"Nivea cream mixed with iodine as a homemade tanning cream was the craze in the '80s in Spain. I never tried it because I was having a hard enough time with suntan back then (I didn't discover I was allergic to the sun until a few years later), but most of my fellow 15-year-olds would slap that on and lie in the sun for a good couple of hours. They didn't get visibly burnt, just something between orange and brown. I wonder how many melanomas were diagnosed 20 years later. Being pale was practically a sin in the '80s, and there weren't even pale shades of makeup."
8. "Split curls. My mom used to do split curls on the sides of my face, and I would have to sleep upright in those pink foam curlers twice a week."
"She was so nuts about making my hair elaborate every day (while smoking a cigarette an inch away from my face) that my older sister tricked me into cutting it all off to make my mom mad when I was 7 years old, and that saved me."
9. "Skincare wasn't a thing like it is now. Younger generations were stripping their skin with products like Noxzema and Sea Breeze, while older women used Oil of Olay. Now, there are so many different skincare products."
—44, Michigan
10. "Rollers and Dippity-Do: This was popular when I was a little kid in the late '60s/early '70s. If you wanted to have the Jackie Kennedy 'flip' at the ends of your hair (and volume at the roots), you'd roll sections of your hair using pink plastic cushioned rollers, coating each hair section with a gel called Dippity-Do that held the shape in place once you brushed it out."
"This was done at night before bed, and in the morning, you'd unroll and style your hair before school or work. (That's why you used the cushioned rollers — they were softer to sleep on.)"
—62, Virginia
11. "We used Nair for shaving legs because I was told that once you shave, it will come back thicker (I think my mom just wasn't ready for me to shave yet). So, I once used Nair on the area between my eyebrows and, in a hurry, just wiped it off with a tissue. I ended up with very burned and blistered skin."
—64, Maine
12. "We'd buy brand-new jeans at the mall, then go home and shred them with a razor blade to look 'hair metal' or, rather, aesthetic, as the kids say today. We wore Lycra everything with them. We wanted to look older so we could get away with doing bad things, I guess."
—53, United States
13. "I stuck pencils in my hair, then used jam to hold them in place."
—66, Utah
14. "My dad told me stories about his sisters and other girls in the '70s using horse shampoo to try to get their hair looking all lush and soft like horses' manes!"
—26, Florida
15. "In the early 1970s, my mom had the beehive hairdo, and at night, she would wrap the beehive with toilet paper to hold it in place overnight! Worked like a charm!"
16. "We used to iron our long hair to get it as straight as possible. This required an accomplice to iron while the other stood stooped over the ironing board. I can't believe we actually did this."
—73, Iowa
17. "As a child of the 70s, sunscreen was unheard of. We used baby oil, cocoa butter, and tanning oil (some of those were SPF 4). We'd lie in the sun for hours. It's a miracle we didn't burst into flames."
—56, Pennsylvania
"We used to slather ourselves with baby oil and lay out in the sun just hoping and praying to get that 'tropical golden glow,' but instead, we always ended up with blisters, second-degree burns, and peeling shoulders. Back in the 60s and 70s, there was no such thing as SPF."
—62, Texas
18. "My mom would use a lighter to melt her eyeliner pencil for a more intense color (before liquid liner, I would assume). My grandmother would pinch her cheeks for blush."
19. "Punk rockers used egg whites and Elmer's glue to get their mohawks extra spiky!"
20. "My grandmother was blonde, and I was her only blonde grandchild. She showed me to put ketchup in my hair if it had gone a bit green (hard water/chlorine area) and then rinse it with cold chamomile tea. Works an absolute treat."
21. "In the 1990s, when I was in my 20s, it was fashionable to have overplucked thin eyebrows. I never did it because I have large eyes and didn't think it would suit me. I'm glad I didn't. I have friends who overplucked and now don't have any eyebrows left."
22. "We used a blow-dryer on hair-sprayed bangs to get them to stand up, curled them with a curling iron (backward, of course), and then back-combed them to tease them out. And we'd wear neon clothing, eyeshadow, and lipstick all together in the same outfit."
23. "My aunts used to put pop cans in their hair as homemade curlers. They said it worked really well!"
"My mom used the big, frozen orange juice containers. 😂"
24. "Lemon juice to 'bleach' freckles. Also, lemon juice to lighten hair…neither worked."
25. "My college roommate spent so much time curling, teasing, and SPRAYING her bangs into the perfect shape that she only washed her bangs once a month. Her bangs were perfect '80s mall-chick bangs — very high! She would literally put a plastic sandwich bag on her bangs before showering so her bangs wouldn't get wet. By the end of the month, the amount of hairspray build up looked like the worst case of dandruff you could possibly imagine. When she finally did wash them, she had to take a fine tooth comb and comb out all the hairspray bits."
"Then, she would come them out — they reached her chin — put mousse in them, put in the pink plastic rollers, spray the heck out of them, and go to sleep. Every morning, when she got up, she'd roll them with a curling iron and spray them with hairspray while on the iron until they were crunchy. She'd end up with about six perfectly round, crunchy rolls. Then, she'd take a pick and pick them out. When she was finally done, she'd respray them. Sometimes, if she were going out, she'd repeat the process before leaving. I had a spiral perm and some curly bangs, but nothing compared to this — and I washed them every day!"
—50, Tennessee
26. "Trying to use Kool-Aid to dye your hair. Also, do the kids still pierce their ears with safety pins?"
27. "We would shave our legs with Vaseline instead of soap, shaving cream, etc. It left your legs shiny like glass, but it ruined your disposable razor."
—50, Virginia
28. "I had a neighbor in the late '80s and early '90s who was so obsessed with having a tan that she would cover her body in Crisco shortening. She would scoop some out with her hands, rub it in like it was lotion, and lay in the sun for hours every day during the summer."
"She would get so dark, and I don’t remember her ever getting a sunburn."
29. "We'd use sun reflectors made of album covers and tin foil."
—63, Chicago
30. "My mom made me sleep with a head full of curlers every night when I was a kid. When I was in middle school, my sisters told me it was time for my eyebrows to be plucked — one of the most painful experiences of my life! In high school, I didn't dare leave the house without first applying three different colors of eye shadow."
"Perms were also a big thing. And big hair."
31. "Do any ladies remember that old-school mustache/hair remover stuff that was pretty much a mini chem lab in your bathroom? You had to mix the powder stuff and goo stuff with the little plastic spoon thing, wait, then apply. Sometimes, if you put too much powder on, it would burn the hell out of your skin. Nothing like walking into school with a red and scabby upper lip. LOL."
"Nowadays, I just use a disposable razor and some soap or lotion. Done in less than 30 seconds. I noticed the hair has gotten lighter over the years, so less maintenance."
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
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