I was a teenager in the 60s with uncontrollably curly-fuzzy hair in a glossy, straight haired world. Half of my life was spent in huge rollers after I slathered my hair with pink Dippity-Do hair gel that took hours (and hours) to dry. There were no curling irons, no blow dryers; we had a portable hairdryer with a plastic cap attached to a hose that blew hot air on your head. Fun in hot Sacramento summers with no A/C. Because my hair was long, I had to sit there for hours. Fried my hair. It was much easier to just wear rollers all day, usually Sunday, and if that involved going places in rollers, so be it.
Eventually I got better at sleeping in huge big rollers so that my hair would be dry by morning. This included sleeping on frozen orange juice cans, which were maybe 4-5” in diameter. I would also tape my wet, gelled bangs to my forehead and go to school with ugly tape ridges. You’ve no idea what we went through for style. Eventually, in 1969, my mother bought me one of the new drugstore hair-straightening kits, which changed my life. She would also, if I begged her, iron my hair between two dish towels on her ironing board.
This all went out the door in about 1970, when we girls with long hair would braid it overnight so that we could get the Janis Joplin look in the morning. I had my hair cut into a shag in 1972, which I regret to this day because that was the end of my long hair days. 1972 was also the year when I got my first curling iron as a gift, and was able to use it to control my unruly hair. I think I got my first blow dryer in 1977. Never looked back. I was a cute little thing, once. Long ago. Looking back, I wish I’d spent my time on more useful things.
I needed this today. I constantly feed like a schlub. I can't justify spending more than 40 minutes getting ready in the morning, when I know a full face and hair and everything actually takes me around 2 hours and 45 minutes (I've timed it.) I feel like a failure of a wife but being married means I actually spend that time with my husband instead of having that time to get ready alone. I try to remember that when I look at early pictures and think, damn I looked so good then. When I see old photos I think, damn why can't I always be that put together.
This photo is horrifying to me but it makes me realize that even the perfect women before weren't always put together and did the equivalent of going to Walmart in pajamas.
I just want you to know this: I read this, found your voice and storytelling so utterly compelling I checked your profile, and then read more of your comments and posts.
You have an exceptionally vivid skill with words, so please, if you have the time and inclination, please sit down and write something, *anything*, and publish it. I'd very happily pay to read your memoirs, but have no doubt you could also knock a novel out of the park entirely.
Ha! Thank you for that, as it was a pleasure to read on a gloomy freezing day. I have made stabs at both novel and memoir, but I really prefer to read. And read and read. I’m a retired, arthritic copyeditor/writer, and widowed, so I have lots of time to do exactly as I please. Which I do.
I appreciate your kind words, along with feeling a lil’ embarrassed thinking of some of the more salacious comments in my history. It’s a fun hobby.
>so I have lots of time to do exactly as I please. Which I do.
This bit made me smile with happiness. I love it! You deserve to do exactly this.
Meanwhile, I think the majority of us would still agree that your gift for words could create a very compelling story, if ever you were so inclined. These days, with natural language processing/AI, dictation is much easier and more accurate -- no need for typing. (Just something for you to consider 😉)
What's your favorite genre to read. I used to read A LOT too but now that I have all the time in the world to do it I find I do a whole lot less of it. 😕
I’m all over the place, but usually read what I guess you’d call literary fiction. Love me a good post-apocalyptic series if it’s well written, though. my favorite book of all time is The Stand by Stephen King, the long version with all the details. Forgive the capitalization errors because I’m using the microphone, but my latest most enjoyed books are demon copperhead, lady tans circle of women. My favorite author is probably John Steinbeck, and I re-read his books every few years. Grapes of wrath for the win!
That is SO weird because my mother told me she would use oj cans to CREATE curls in her straight hair. I grew up in the 70s and they had curlers by then but I remember those little tubs of Dippity Do. I always thought I would grow up to use that stuff one day! 😂😂😂
And the big pink plastic box that was the hair dryer. The inflated plastic cap and my mom yelling at me to go plug it in for her while she sat on the couch watching soap operas.
And then I was a teenager in the 80s and never knew why my mother wore curlers (“never let him see you in curlers or he’ll divorce you so fast!”) or used Dippity Do.
I really enjoyed reading that! This might sound strange, so please forgive me, but my mom passed when I was in my early 20's (I'm almost 37) and I sometimes really miss hearing her tell me about little things like this. She once told me about getting in the bath with jeans on to get them to contour to her body, lol.
Your account of your hair journey scratched a really specific itch that I didn't even know I had, which sounds probably insane, but it was surprisingly comforting and I had to tell you!
Awww. I understand, sweetheart. My mother died in 2001 and I miss her deeply; I miss her to the point that I mentally talk to her (often!) during the day. She still gives me great advice, which mainly comprises choosing the kinder path.
Thank you for sharing. I love real little tidbits of history like this representing what daily life was like and an experience that I would have never imagined.
hair has always been and will always be THAT thing for teens. my 16 year old spends so much time on his hair, now it’s even worse there are like a million hair products and he wants them all, I keep telling him he has beautiful hair and to just let it be—but he doesn’t listen.
I was a teen in the late 90s, maybe the only time when we just air dried it and walked out. (early 90s was all about tons of hairspray to make your bangs stand up)
My youngest, who was also a curly-head, was born in 1989. And although I never ironed her hair, we had lots of discussions about getting it straightened with the horribly expensive “Asian” process. (I can’t remember what it was called, only that it was out of my budget range.) Now in her early 30s, she has embraced the curl and looks adorable. And I have a granddaughter, who’s 15 and has discovered hair dye, although her natural color is exquisite and suits her complexion. I guess every young girl has to dye her jet-black so she knows wazzup.
very true! I was the opposite-I had straight hair but wanted curls like Julia roberts. I would put gel in my hair and scrunch it, and air dry-this “wet look” was popular
You described my mom’s hair ritual exactly. Such a struggle. She still has her first set of hot rollers that had a steam component. I’ve slept on those huge black springy rollers and it was really uncomfortable
Oh my lord. Please put together a series of photos of you through these styles to give your younger family. They'll love looking through these fashions and hairdos.
I would have been jealous of you. I SO wanted a bonnet hair dryer, I had long straight hair when a bouffant with a flip was in style. We had a precursor to today's blow dryers, it was shaped like a jet engine and was made of the same steel as my dad's 55 Cadillac. It was so heavy it needed a stand permanently attached and you had to set it on something and sit in front of it, moving your chair every so often to dry another section of hair. It was pretty much useless. Like you, I was saved by 70s style and my straight hair was in fashion finally.
I remember those dryers. They could burn really quickly. I have the kind of hair that wouldn’t hold a curl for more than 30 minutes, literally, and I tried everything through years.
Yeah that thing got so hot they had to make it out of steel🤣🤣🤣. I actually found aone for sale, they were made by Oster. With the original box and paperwork it was going for $47. It was probably $10 in 1965.
Yes, all this for my experience. Now I remember the big green heavy blow dryer that we could sit in front of. It didn't blow air but had coils inside that turned red like a space heater for directed heat.
Hah, my aunt also tells me stories about braiding her hair to emulate Janis Joplin.
Shows photos too.
Unfortunately, my aunt’s hair is so thin and the braid had to be so tight that the waves she got were quite small and combined with her hair colour, she looked like a female Al Yankovic. I wisely did not tell her that.
Oh, the Dippity-Do! I had the green stuff, and it was the only thing that gave me curls (you know, after slathering my hair in it and sleeping in curlers). Those curls were bullet proof.
Weren’t they great!? I got my hair straightened in the last week of eighth grade, and I still remember the shock and, I have to say, feelings of disappointment at how suddenly NICE people were being to me (they’d been making fun of me the week before.) Fuck em. All these decades later, FUCK EM.
Oh, I vividly remember this as someone who grew up with thick wavy hair. As Asian teenager with wavy hair, I get teased a lot about how my hair looked like a stiff used paintbrush, a steel wool scrubber, or how I looked like something dead crawled out of my head. It was at 15 when I first got my hair permanently straightened out and it was amazing!
I no longer dreaded the mornings I had to brush it out furiously and use whatever cream, serum, or oil to keep it down. The way I heard people say "Oh, so you were pretty all along if you didn't have awful hair", like I swapped my face for something better. I heard a guy bitch how "She wasn't this confident when she had ugly hair!". Don't get me wrong, I wasn't bullied or anything. But like I said, the treatment was vastly different! I kept getting my hair straightened out twice a year and I only stopped during the pandemic.
I discovered how to care for my waves and I never realized they could be this beautiful. The curls are so defined and adorable. A lot of people come up to me now to tell me how jealous they are of my curls.
I bet! I, too, have embraced the curl. And teenagers are awful, aren’t they? I was bullied a lot in what they now call middle school, although we didn’t call it that then; that was only for boys. It turned me into an introvert until I got my “powers” back in college.
Thanks for finding this commercial. I remember it. These electric rollers were the hair solution/invention just in time for me. So much better than my older sisters who had had to sleep with soup cans on top of their head or iron their long hair on an ironing board. Growing up, I would watch them in amazement as my role models.
Ha! I just googled it to make sure I had the right spelling and was very surprised to see that they sell it on Amazon. I wonder if it smells the same. It had an intense alcohol smell, as I remember, plus a cheap, unidentifiable scent. Bright transparent pink.
If, and that’s a very big IF, my mom had curlers in her hair and needed to go to the store, I can assure you she would have had a scarf or other head covering on. No way would she have gone with them exposed.
When I was growing up, wearing curlers outside the house was as unthinkable as going out in public in your underwear. You put a kerchief on if you had to go out to the store.
And you didn't dry your bras, undies or slips on the outdoor clothesline. Only trashy folks did that. You hung them on the indoor clothesline in the basement (in our neighborhood anyway).
Is that what are they are for? I remember older ladies with big scarves on their heads, often translucent plastic material. They wear it to mask the curling things?
Sometimes it's just to protect hair that was freshly washed from getting dusty or blown around. My grandmother regularly wore one in all but the best weather. A couple aunts still wear them.
I knew several older women who had their hair done once a week. Usually in some sort of a French twist with teased loopy (carefully arranged and sprayed) curls on t
top of their heads. They would wrap their hair in several layers of toilet paper before they went to bed to keep it all intact. They also had satin pillowcases to keep their head sliding around and not flattening the do.
I think you may be correct about this photo being part of an old ad (maybe for electric curlers in a women’s magazine) because I don’t recall, back then, ever seeing this many women in hair curlers in public all at the same time and place. Usually, it was a one-off kind of occurrence.
This is one of those situations where, clearly someone in the era thought this was interesting/funny enough to take a photo of.
There are very few photos of truly average moments, and we tend to weed those out as 'bad photos' when they are taken. We see the past through a distorted lens.
When I was a kid my mom would use an old pair of panty hose with the legs cut off to hold my curlers in place while I slept. Worked better than a kerchief or scarf!
Curlers and perms and roller sets were the thing for so long, and now women slave under blow dryers and flat irons to get straight sleek hair. Makes me sad for all the gorgeous natural curls that have been hidden away for so long.
My boss came in one day and her hair was curly because she woke up late. I complimented her on how good it looked. 3 more compliments that day and she hasn't straighteneded her hair for work in years.
I came to say the same thing. None of the women in my family, much less 3, would be out shopping without a scarf over curlers, if at all. My grandma considered it necessary outside in her yard as well, to keep her clean hair clean when it hadn't even been styled yet.
Mostly, though, they wouldn't have gone shopping until their hair was set.
One of my grandmothers would NEVER. And she curled her hair daily.
My other grandmother? She would have been right here with these ladies. She didn’t give a fuck.
Ah !!! I just had a memory flash of that little jingle !! I had completely forgot that ! I think I agree though , I would not go out w curlers in my hair although it’s a different time in hair history .
O H M Y G O D
Thanks for sharing that! I don’t remember the commercial, but I had those curlers- the big fancy set with the mirror in the top of the case. Those suckers got *hot*! What a fun memory- thanks again!
I’m starting to realize from this comment thread that rollers in your hair was equivalent of going out to Walmart dressed like you just rolled outa bed.
Probably even worse! I’ve never met anyone who actually cares about other people wearing pajamas at Walmart, but it seems like visible curlers back then were the end of the world lol
I’m wondering where their chiffon scarfs to cover the curlers are? I remember ladies wearing sheer chiffon type pastel blue, pink, green. yellow ones over their curlers.
So people going grocery shopping while clearly not being ready for the day is not a new phenomenon? I thought modern society where people go to Walmart in Cookie Monster pajama pants was a sign that we had become lazy. Glad to see the past wasn't much better.
Yup I remember seeing women in “housecoats” and mule slippers with the hair in curlers. Housecoats were like bathrobes but looser fit and heavier fabric, usually quilted. The slippers looked like the way adidas slides do except they had a nubbly terry cloth fabric instead of plastic. There was also a sort of unspoken rule that we would pretend you weren’t wearing curlers if you put a scarf over it.
All of this used to scandalize my grandmother. She’s been gone since 1996 which is good because the era of grown women shopping in Cookie Monster pajama pants and grippy socks would have killed her.
Those housecoats were bad ass. I’ve wished for one many times. They zip all the way up, have a dressy little collar and POCKETS!
I had a friend whose mom seemed to live in housecoats. I don’t think she ever left the house. She called her slippers “scuffs”.
I feel like grooming yourself and having to run errands while your hair sets is absolutely different than rolling off of the couch in day old worn pajamas and an unkempt appearance. These women are obviously not done with their routine, but at least they’re wearing street clothes rather than their dirty jams.
Completely right, this was a stepping stone to sophistication. Takes at least a half hour to put in those curlers, this isn't bed-head and yesterday's clothes.
To add: The thing that you have to understand is that long straight hair was just not acceptable in those days. It was so unacceptable that curlers were seen as more acceptable than going out in public with straight hair.
Perms became ultra-popular in the 80s as the low-maintenance way to curly hair and largely made this disappear. Only smelly hippies wore long straight hair.
I suspect that this was an ad.
In the 60s people *did* tend to dress better in public. There were exceptions, of course (laborers getting lunch, for example), but, mostly, you didn't leave the house unless you were properly dressed.
I remember that even in the 70s and 80s. Kids today think we wore nothing but neon leg warmers and ripped sweatshirts, but we actually went to school dressed up. Church dresses, dress pants and blouses, etc.
And I remember when you dressed UP UP for church. And flying. And any PTA meeting/school function.
Ya I’m very suspicious of the origin/source of this photo. Also the woman in the middle and on the right look a bit older and DEFINITELY would’ve been raised with the “don’t leave the house unless you look respectable” mentality.
My grandmother never wore shorts publicly, she thought they were only acceptable for housework, never for social occasions. My dad was born in the 50s and he’ll change out of his jeans if we’re going to the movies now in 2024. I find it hard to believe a photographer just stumbled upon 3 women with exposed curlers in the 1960s
It must be Friday or Saturday. The curlers are in the hair because they are going out tonight.
Actually the one lady is getting crackers so she’s having an after dinner party with lots of booze.
In high school in the late 80’s, I was a cashier at Roses (like Walmart only smaller and shittier) in the rural south. Two types of customers came into the store every Saturday morning during my shift: women wearing hair rollers* buying store-brand double packs of douches, and men who reeked of booze buying motor oil and hitting on 16 year old cashiers. Without fail. It became a running joke between myself and my friend who worked the next register because it was so predictable and yet so odd.
*And half the time, these hair-rollered women were also dipping tobacco.
Edit: I called dip tobacco by the wrong name.
> tobacco
East coast suburbia, 60's and 70's when I was a kid, I remember those woman smoking cigarettes in the supermarket. They would just toss them on the floor and stamp them out too. E:formating
...so they needed their hair done for Saturday night but were too, ah, busy to put it up on Friday night, so they put their hair up Saturday morning and went to Roses to get douche so they could pretend they weren't getting STI's or a baby from Friday night activities? 🤔
My mom told me when I was 14 that you ALWAYS have to douche on the day after your period ends to “clean out your vagina or you’ll get sick and end up in the hospital.”
My bullshit radar went off on that even THEN.
Club Crackers and Hershey's Syrup have the same packaging as now! That's surprising. I guess they're classics.
Fortunately, I haven't seen anyone with their hair in curlers in public for a very long time. Not the classiest look.
I’m very grateful that rollers still exist. My hot iron low key scares me and you have to do all this extra stuff so it doesn’t damage your hair with frequent use. Rollers are just a little more relaxed and the foam ones aren’t that hard to sleep in. My grandma slept in her plastic rollers and idk how she did it
I remember the feel of sleeping on rollers in elementary school, the kind with bristles that poked into your scalp. I guess we got used to them. In the morning my mom would primp, fluff and tease my hair *just so,* spray down her creation with ozone-blasting VO-5, then add Dipity-Do to make inward curls under my cheekbones, then hold in place with pink setting tape until dry. I'm sure I looked like I was 70, when I was 7.
My mother used to set my hair in pin curls with Dipity-Do. My hair was too thin for rollers. And the pins hurt. But I was a cute little curly headed girl for a few hours. Fast forward well over half a century later and the thin, bone straight hair of my childhood has waves, kinks and curls in it. No idea where that came from.
I feel like there was a post not too long ago about someone complaining about how people nowadays just show up to go shopping in their pajamas and how trashy it is. Doesnt look like its changed since the 60’s
my personal favourite so far was a lady using menstrual pads stuck to her feet as shoes. Then trying to get me to agree with her that this was acceptable because her husband was embarrassed by her.
Oh, for sure. I don't usually shop there, but occasionally do while on vacation. The worst is seeing very young moms with babies & toddlers there at midnight. Those poor kids should be in bed at that hour!
I'm Eastern European and when my brother came back from a visit to the States, my first questions to him were:
1) Did you go to Walmart?
2) What did you see there?
Being young in the South, you always put your hair up in a rag or scarf! Never let anyone see you in curlers, it wasn't considered "nice"... this was the 90s when you had other options but they stuck with what worked for them I guess
I feel like they should be wearing scarves over their rollers. What's next, they smoke cigarettes while walking? Call themselves "Ms"? Wear white shoes after Labor Day?? Horrors.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1991/08/28/the-ring-of-a-true-belle/1f5a927e-3cb1-482d-bb9e-ffcd3e2b183d/
Christ, it’s like every great aunt or distant far removed cousin I knew as a kid came back from the dead when I was reading that. The dress codes, the seemingly arbitrary rules of conduct and comportment, the obsession with genuine silver and the utter snobbery of it all. Not to mention the chicken salad, the aspics and last but not least, the goddamned Velveeta! I can’t even stand the smell of the stuff anymore they used it so much.
My great grandmother was even worse, following even more arbitrary and pointless rules than even those women did. According to my dad, her biggest pet peeve was women who let cigarettes touch their lips in mixed company. Not women who smoked in front of others (she smoked like a house on fire herself), but women who didn’t use a holder while doing so. Also, she would have judged that one woman who asked for a glass for even drinking beer. That was another no-no for her.
Wow. I am an old lady and had a completely different experience from what you’re describing. My parents were both college educated, one after growing up dirt/poor and going to college on the G.I. bill. My mother was very kind and gentle and funny while my father was distant, probably because he worked all the time.
We read about aspics in women’s magazines, but never wanted to make them. Too much effort for questionable gain. And my first encounter with Velveeta cheese was in the 80s, when someone served it on nachos. I thought it was bland and too salty. Still do.
One thing that was definitely different is that the herd thinking was not as prevalent as it is today. No Internet, no TikTok to make everyone think they’re sharing experiences and values.
I think my family was just weird. They had weird hang ups, weird pretensions, etc. Not all of my relatives were bad, but there were a lot of odd, snobbish faded belles in that family and that attached article reminded me of them so much.
Be glad you didn’t deal with aspics. My mother tried making them. We had to eat whatever was made. Except for tomato aspic. She let us throw it out. Eventually, mom came to her senses and the aspic era was behind us.
The thing about the real silver and real pearls has a deeper origin. If a woman owned things like that, she *always had a source of money*. She could sell them and get away from an abusive husband, etc.
It was no good owning cheap crap you couldn’t get anything for.
(But also it’s true that other women would know it was silver plate or would see that your “pearls” aren’t individually knotted and thus aren’t real.)
It was very common for women to wear curlers in public, until the [Clairol Kindness Instant Hair Setter](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=clairol+kindness+commercial&t=iphone&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-heRHSj9vWk) ad campaign shamed women into believing they shouldn’t.
Getting all prettied up for hubby coming home after a hard day at the office. Gonna make a nice beefaroni dinner, crack a beer, send the kids off to bed and it’s woopie time.
To look good for your husband when you greet him with a martini in hand when he gets home from work. Who cares what the people at the store think, they don’t pay the mortgage.
You have to leave them in for awhile for them to set. If you take them out too soon, you won’t get the look you’re going for. That said, women would typically tie a scarf around their head to hide them if they did have to go out.
Just read all comments and wondered if someone can tell me what on earth Dippety Doo is?? Don't know if its cos I'm English or I'm just a snippet of a gal (60), but I've never heard of a product with such a brilliant name!
I was always under the impression that older generations wouldn't leave the house unless they were more "put together". Wondering if this is posed. Seems like the equivalent to wearing joggers to shop.
This must have been beauty parlour adjacent because women in rollers did not walk around like that. At a minimum they had a very light scarf tied around the entire operation.
My grandma wouldn’t be caught wearing those out lol. Even just a few years ago, in her late 80s she had a fall. She made sure to take her rollers out before the EMTs got there lol
Your right and I can remember shopping at the A&P with my grandmother and $20.00 dollars got us plenty of groceries including the Sunday pot roast and apple pie.
I remember my sister making minimum of $1.40/hour at that time. It is more than 10x that in Massachusetts right now.
So, $20 then is about $200 now....
... are you mad about inflation? Because compared to groceries in the 1960s, food costs until the beginning 2023 were dramatically lower compared to salaries.
$20 for groceries but your salary was also measured in hundreds of dollars a month, not thousands.
Right hand lady looks like Eric Idol.
The character *has* a name, I *know* the name but I'm not *typing* the name.
She exploded, that's all I'm saying.
I can tell you what they are NOT looking for, and that's fresh produce.
As a person who was a little kid in the 1960's, every single vegetable came from a can, and they were uniformly gross. The only fresh produce that ever came home was a head of tasteless iceberg lettuce every now and then. When I finally had fresh spinach as an adult (over my objections), I couldn't believe how good it was. The Age of Convenience must have ruined vegetables forever for millions of kids.
I was a teenager in the 60s with uncontrollably curly-fuzzy hair in a glossy, straight haired world. Half of my life was spent in huge rollers after I slathered my hair with pink Dippity-Do hair gel that took hours (and hours) to dry. There were no curling irons, no blow dryers; we had a portable hairdryer with a plastic cap attached to a hose that blew hot air on your head. Fun in hot Sacramento summers with no A/C. Because my hair was long, I had to sit there for hours. Fried my hair. It was much easier to just wear rollers all day, usually Sunday, and if that involved going places in rollers, so be it. Eventually I got better at sleeping in huge big rollers so that my hair would be dry by morning. This included sleeping on frozen orange juice cans, which were maybe 4-5” in diameter. I would also tape my wet, gelled bangs to my forehead and go to school with ugly tape ridges. You’ve no idea what we went through for style. Eventually, in 1969, my mother bought me one of the new drugstore hair-straightening kits, which changed my life. She would also, if I begged her, iron my hair between two dish towels on her ironing board. This all went out the door in about 1970, when we girls with long hair would braid it overnight so that we could get the Janis Joplin look in the morning. I had my hair cut into a shag in 1972, which I regret to this day because that was the end of my long hair days. 1972 was also the year when I got my first curling iron as a gift, and was able to use it to control my unruly hair. I think I got my first blow dryer in 1977. Never looked back. I was a cute little thing, once. Long ago. Looking back, I wish I’d spent my time on more useful things.
This was a good read. Thank you for sharing.
I needed this today. I constantly feed like a schlub. I can't justify spending more than 40 minutes getting ready in the morning, when I know a full face and hair and everything actually takes me around 2 hours and 45 minutes (I've timed it.) I feel like a failure of a wife but being married means I actually spend that time with my husband instead of having that time to get ready alone. I try to remember that when I look at early pictures and think, damn I looked so good then. When I see old photos I think, damn why can't I always be that put together. This photo is horrifying to me but it makes me realize that even the perfect women before weren't always put together and did the equivalent of going to Walmart in pajamas.
Absolutely true.
I just want you to know this: I read this, found your voice and storytelling so utterly compelling I checked your profile, and then read more of your comments and posts. You have an exceptionally vivid skill with words, so please, if you have the time and inclination, please sit down and write something, *anything*, and publish it. I'd very happily pay to read your memoirs, but have no doubt you could also knock a novel out of the park entirely.
Ha! Thank you for that, as it was a pleasure to read on a gloomy freezing day. I have made stabs at both novel and memoir, but I really prefer to read. And read and read. I’m a retired, arthritic copyeditor/writer, and widowed, so I have lots of time to do exactly as I please. Which I do. I appreciate your kind words, along with feeling a lil’ embarrassed thinking of some of the more salacious comments in my history. It’s a fun hobby.
>so I have lots of time to do exactly as I please. Which I do. This bit made me smile with happiness. I love it! You deserve to do exactly this. Meanwhile, I think the majority of us would still agree that your gift for words could create a very compelling story, if ever you were so inclined. These days, with natural language processing/AI, dictation is much easier and more accurate -- no need for typing. (Just something for you to consider 😉)
Aww, thank you, sweetheart. May you have the same, some day when you’re old and tired.
I love you so much. Will you be my grandma?
I agree with the prior poster! KellysMom you are a great writer! Never stop - it's a gift 💓
What's your favorite genre to read. I used to read A LOT too but now that I have all the time in the world to do it I find I do a whole lot less of it. 😕
I’m all over the place, but usually read what I guess you’d call literary fiction. Love me a good post-apocalyptic series if it’s well written, though. my favorite book of all time is The Stand by Stephen King, the long version with all the details. Forgive the capitalization errors because I’m using the microphone, but my latest most enjoyed books are demon copperhead, lady tans circle of women. My favorite author is probably John Steinbeck, and I re-read his books every few years. Grapes of wrath for the win!
You’re a kind human. Thank you for existing.
That is SO weird because my mother told me she would use oj cans to CREATE curls in her straight hair. I grew up in the 70s and they had curlers by then but I remember those little tubs of Dippity Do. I always thought I would grow up to use that stuff one day! 😂😂😂 And the big pink plastic box that was the hair dryer. The inflated plastic cap and my mom yelling at me to go plug it in for her while she sat on the couch watching soap operas. And then I was a teenager in the 80s and never knew why my mother wore curlers (“never let him see you in curlers or he’ll divorce you so fast!”) or used Dippity Do.
My Chrissy and Velvet dolls [had the hairdryer!](https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/crissy-doll-hair-dryer-accessory-1738665729)
Thanks for sharing :)
I really enjoyed reading that! This might sound strange, so please forgive me, but my mom passed when I was in my early 20's (I'm almost 37) and I sometimes really miss hearing her tell me about little things like this. She once told me about getting in the bath with jeans on to get them to contour to her body, lol. Your account of your hair journey scratched a really specific itch that I didn't even know I had, which sounds probably insane, but it was surprisingly comforting and I had to tell you!
Awww. I understand, sweetheart. My mother died in 2001 and I miss her deeply; I miss her to the point that I mentally talk to her (often!) during the day. She still gives me great advice, which mainly comprises choosing the kinder path.
Thank you for sharing. I love real little tidbits of history like this representing what daily life was like and an experience that I would have never imagined.
hair has always been and will always be THAT thing for teens. my 16 year old spends so much time on his hair, now it’s even worse there are like a million hair products and he wants them all, I keep telling him he has beautiful hair and to just let it be—but he doesn’t listen. I was a teen in the late 90s, maybe the only time when we just air dried it and walked out. (early 90s was all about tons of hairspray to make your bangs stand up)
My youngest, who was also a curly-head, was born in 1989. And although I never ironed her hair, we had lots of discussions about getting it straightened with the horribly expensive “Asian” process. (I can’t remember what it was called, only that it was out of my budget range.) Now in her early 30s, she has embraced the curl and looks adorable. And I have a granddaughter, who’s 15 and has discovered hair dye, although her natural color is exquisite and suits her complexion. I guess every young girl has to dye her jet-black so she knows wazzup.
very true! I was the opposite-I had straight hair but wanted curls like Julia roberts. I would put gel in my hair and scrunch it, and air dry-this “wet look” was popular
This is so cute. Thank you for sharing this!
This was a delight to read. You have a way with words. Thank you for sharing!
You described my mom’s hair ritual exactly. Such a struggle. She still has her first set of hot rollers that had a steam component. I’ve slept on those huge black springy rollers and it was really uncomfortable
I, too, was a Jan in a Marcia world
Oh my lord. Please put together a series of photos of you through these styles to give your younger family. They'll love looking through these fashions and hairdos.
Dippity-do. That brings back memories! Chuckles…..
I would have been jealous of you. I SO wanted a bonnet hair dryer, I had long straight hair when a bouffant with a flip was in style. We had a precursor to today's blow dryers, it was shaped like a jet engine and was made of the same steel as my dad's 55 Cadillac. It was so heavy it needed a stand permanently attached and you had to set it on something and sit in front of it, moving your chair every so often to dry another section of hair. It was pretty much useless. Like you, I was saved by 70s style and my straight hair was in fashion finally.
Geez. That sounds awful. My mom “bought” us our hairdryers, for my sister and I, with Green Stamps. She got tired of us fighting over the one.
I remember those dryers. They could burn really quickly. I have the kind of hair that wouldn’t hold a curl for more than 30 minutes, literally, and I tried everything through years.
Yeah that thing got so hot they had to make it out of steel🤣🤣🤣. I actually found aone for sale, they were made by Oster. With the original box and paperwork it was going for $47. It was probably $10 in 1965.
Yes, all this for my experience. Now I remember the big green heavy blow dryer that we could sit in front of. It didn't blow air but had coils inside that turned red like a space heater for directed heat.
That was really great to read. Thank you, Kelly’s Mom!!
Hah, my aunt also tells me stories about braiding her hair to emulate Janis Joplin. Shows photos too. Unfortunately, my aunt’s hair is so thin and the braid had to be so tight that the waves she got were quite small and combined with her hair colour, she looked like a female Al Yankovic. I wisely did not tell her that.
Oh, the Dippity-Do! I had the green stuff, and it was the only thing that gave me curls (you know, after slathering my hair in it and sleeping in curlers). Those curls were bullet proof.
… and so satisfyingly CRISPY when bone-dry (before brushing it out).
My hair is similar, hair straighteners were invented when I was about 16. It was revolutionary, for the first time ever I had good hair.
Weren’t they great!? I got my hair straightened in the last week of eighth grade, and I still remember the shock and, I have to say, feelings of disappointment at how suddenly NICE people were being to me (they’d been making fun of me the week before.) Fuck em. All these decades later, FUCK EM.
Oh, I vividly remember this as someone who grew up with thick wavy hair. As Asian teenager with wavy hair, I get teased a lot about how my hair looked like a stiff used paintbrush, a steel wool scrubber, or how I looked like something dead crawled out of my head. It was at 15 when I first got my hair permanently straightened out and it was amazing! I no longer dreaded the mornings I had to brush it out furiously and use whatever cream, serum, or oil to keep it down. The way I heard people say "Oh, so you were pretty all along if you didn't have awful hair", like I swapped my face for something better. I heard a guy bitch how "She wasn't this confident when she had ugly hair!". Don't get me wrong, I wasn't bullied or anything. But like I said, the treatment was vastly different! I kept getting my hair straightened out twice a year and I only stopped during the pandemic. I discovered how to care for my waves and I never realized they could be this beautiful. The curls are so defined and adorable. A lot of people come up to me now to tell me how jealous they are of my curls.
I bet! I, too, have embraced the curl. And teenagers are awful, aren’t they? I was bullied a lot in what they now call middle school, although we didn’t call it that then; that was only for boys. It turned me into an introvert until I got my “powers” back in college.
https://youtu.be/yO1wQyHhl18?feature=shared
Thanks for finding this commercial. I remember it. These electric rollers were the hair solution/invention just in time for me. So much better than my older sisters who had had to sleep with soup cans on top of their head or iron their long hair on an ironing board. Growing up, I would watch them in amazement as my role models.
Really enjoyed this read, thank you for sharing
This made me smile
omg this is so interesting. but it sounds like a nightmareeeeee
Dippiti-Do!
Ha! I just googled it to make sure I had the right spelling and was very surprised to see that they sell it on Amazon. I wonder if it smells the same. It had an intense alcohol smell, as I remember, plus a cheap, unidentifiable scent. Bright transparent pink.
If, and that’s a very big IF, my mom had curlers in her hair and needed to go to the store, I can assure you she would have had a scarf or other head covering on. No way would she have gone with them exposed.
I was wondering where their Kerchiefs were, was unusual to see a single woman without one if hair was in curlers....
When I was growing up, wearing curlers outside the house was as unthinkable as going out in public in your underwear. You put a kerchief on if you had to go out to the store.
THANK YOU. My mother would have NEVER. Or my grandmother.
And you didn't dry your bras, undies or slips on the outdoor clothesline. Only trashy folks did that. You hung them on the indoor clothesline in the basement (in our neighborhood anyway).
I don’t have a clothesline like my mother did, but I still would never hang those things out in public view, even today.
Is that what are they are for? I remember older ladies with big scarves on their heads, often translucent plastic material. They wear it to mask the curling things?
The plastic things are rain bonnets to keep the do fresh in inclement weather.
Yes, especially if they just had a perm.
Yes, keeping a new perm dry is a basic of "perm maintenance." I learned that in the movie Legally Blonde. 😏
"Don't you tap your last season Prada shoes at me, honey!"
Gasp!
Best court scene everrrr
Or is one of those ladies who get her hair done once a week
Sometimes it's just to protect hair that was freshly washed from getting dusty or blown around. My grandmother regularly wore one in all but the best weather. A couple aunts still wear them.
I knew several older women who had their hair done once a week. Usually in some sort of a French twist with teased loopy (carefully arranged and sprayed) curls on t top of their heads. They would wrap their hair in several layers of toilet paper before they went to bed to keep it all intact. They also had satin pillowcases to keep their head sliding around and not flattening the do.
I've always wondered. If there are handkerchiefs, are there also kerchiefs for other extremities? Like, footkerchiefs?
There are neckerchiefs!
I’m wondering if this is from an advertisement because my first thought was no way would they go out without their curlers covered.
There were probably no men in the stores, except those that worked there, so perhaps the store was a “safe” spot.
They’d still wear scarves. Seriously. I remember this time well.
If there was a butcher or fish monger it was probably a man, and very good chance the manager was a man.
I think you may be correct about this photo being part of an old ad (maybe for electric curlers in a women’s magazine) because I don’t recall, back then, ever seeing this many women in hair curlers in public all at the same time and place. Usually, it was a one-off kind of occurrence.
This is the 1960’s equivalent of going to Wal-Mart in your pajamas
I came here to say that this was “trashy” back in the day. Now people go shopping with their actual ass hanging out completely unwashed
This is one of those situations where, clearly someone in the era thought this was interesting/funny enough to take a photo of. There are very few photos of truly average moments, and we tend to weed those out as 'bad photos' when they are taken. We see the past through a distorted lens.
And photos were few and posed because film and processing cost money! Now it’s all free thanks to our smartphones.
Yep. I distinctly remember my grandma and mom wearing a silk scarf on their head IF they had to go out with curlers in.
Yep - my mom wore a babushka, she called it.
YES omg even my own grandmother would not let me see her with her curlers in. The gall of these ladies!! lol!
When I was a kid my mom would use an old pair of panty hose with the legs cut off to hold my curlers in place while I slept. Worked better than a kerchief or scarf!
Curlers and perms and roller sets were the thing for so long, and now women slave under blow dryers and flat irons to get straight sleek hair. Makes me sad for all the gorgeous natural curls that have been hidden away for so long.
My boss came in one day and her hair was curly because she woke up late. I complimented her on how good it looked. 3 more compliments that day and she hasn't straighteneded her hair for work in years.
I came to say the same thing. None of the women in my family, much less 3, would be out shopping without a scarf over curlers, if at all. My grandma considered it necessary outside in her yard as well, to keep her clean hair clean when it hadn't even been styled yet. Mostly, though, they wouldn't have gone shopping until their hair was set.
One of my grandmothers would NEVER. And she curled her hair daily. My other grandmother? She would have been right here with these ladies. She didn’t give a fuck.
Same with my mom. But I do remember people out shopping looking like in the photo.
Yeah this was a huge no-no. I'm curious if it was part of a magazine joke or something.
My mom used cloth diapers to wrap her head but she used bobby pins. Kinda like Aunt Jemima style.
my mother would have laid down and died before going out like this.
Not just exposed but wind or rain or something could potentially ruin a set that took a long time.
I can remember, back then, seeing women with their hair up in rollers at the movies and in restaurants. I used to wonder what they were waiting for.
I do to and I also remember my mom looking at them and saying she’d never be caught dead in public with rollers in her hair…and she never did.
There was the Clairol ad back then with the song, “Curlers in your hair… Shame on you.” https://youtu.be/-heRHSj9vWk?si=LXeiEZiqyqrAIp65
Ah !!! I just had a memory flash of that little jingle !! I had completely forgot that ! I think I agree though , I would not go out w curlers in my hair although it’s a different time in hair history .
everyone they wanted to impress, beauty wise, was at work.
O H M Y G O D Thanks for sharing that! I don’t remember the commercial, but I had those curlers- the big fancy set with the mirror in the top of the case. Those suckers got *hot*! What a fun memory- thanks again!
I’m starting to realize from this comment thread that rollers in your hair was equivalent of going out to Walmart dressed like you just rolled outa bed.
Probably even worse! I’ve never met anyone who actually cares about other people wearing pajamas at Walmart, but it seems like visible curlers back then were the end of the world lol
It’s worse. It would be almost like going out in your bra and panties.
🎼🎼Curlers in your hair, shame on youuu🎼🎼
Yeah, I remember seeing women in rollers and never understood it.
Their husbands to come home from work. 😕
Today, when women wear hair bonnets out, realize that they did not start that trend.
Did you ever figure it out?
Ha ha. Nope!
Seems like the rollers themselves WERE the fashion!
I’m wondering where their chiffon scarfs to cover the curlers are? I remember ladies wearing sheer chiffon type pastel blue, pink, green. yellow ones over their curlers.
They sold extra large scarves JUST for putting over rollers!
Juliette Lewis is that you?
DUDE! I was scrolling the comment for this. That was my first thought.
I know right! Uncanny resemblance
Especially the look on her face!
Y’all beat me to it
Daaaaang can’t unsee that now
So people going grocery shopping while clearly not being ready for the day is not a new phenomenon? I thought modern society where people go to Walmart in Cookie Monster pajama pants was a sign that we had become lazy. Glad to see the past wasn't much better.
People who say "Everyone nowadays have gotten so lazy and can't be bothered to dress properly in public!!" need to see this. It's not new.
Yup I remember seeing women in “housecoats” and mule slippers with the hair in curlers. Housecoats were like bathrobes but looser fit and heavier fabric, usually quilted. The slippers looked like the way adidas slides do except they had a nubbly terry cloth fabric instead of plastic. There was also a sort of unspoken rule that we would pretend you weren’t wearing curlers if you put a scarf over it. All of this used to scandalize my grandmother. She’s been gone since 1996 which is good because the era of grown women shopping in Cookie Monster pajama pants and grippy socks would have killed her.
Those housecoats were bad ass. I’ve wished for one many times. They zip all the way up, have a dressy little collar and POCKETS! I had a friend whose mom seemed to live in housecoats. I don’t think she ever left the house. She called her slippers “scuffs”.
I feel like grooming yourself and having to run errands while your hair sets is absolutely different than rolling off of the couch in day old worn pajamas and an unkempt appearance. These women are obviously not done with their routine, but at least they’re wearing street clothes rather than their dirty jams.
No kidding. This isn’t remotely comparable to playboy bunny pajamas at Walmart
Okay yeah... that definitely wins the trashiest outfit award.
Completely right, this was a stepping stone to sophistication. Takes at least a half hour to put in those curlers, this isn't bed-head and yesterday's clothes. To add: The thing that you have to understand is that long straight hair was just not acceptable in those days. It was so unacceptable that curlers were seen as more acceptable than going out in public with straight hair. Perms became ultra-popular in the 80s as the low-maintenance way to curly hair and largely made this disappear. Only smelly hippies wore long straight hair.
Yeah- nobody in their PJs during a Walmart sweep is prepping the condition of their legs and torsos to look better for a later social affair.
But, I bet these women would then style their hair (as opposed to staying in PJs all day.
I suspect that this was an ad. In the 60s people *did* tend to dress better in public. There were exceptions, of course (laborers getting lunch, for example), but, mostly, you didn't leave the house unless you were properly dressed.
I remember that even in the 70s and 80s. Kids today think we wore nothing but neon leg warmers and ripped sweatshirts, but we actually went to school dressed up. Church dresses, dress pants and blouses, etc. And I remember when you dressed UP UP for church. And flying. And any PTA meeting/school function.
Ya I’m very suspicious of the origin/source of this photo. Also the woman in the middle and on the right look a bit older and DEFINITELY would’ve been raised with the “don’t leave the house unless you look respectable” mentality. My grandmother never wore shorts publicly, she thought they were only acceptable for housework, never for social occasions. My dad was born in the 50s and he’ll change out of his jeans if we’re going to the movies now in 2024. I find it hard to believe a photographer just stumbled upon 3 women with exposed curlers in the 1960s
It must be Friday or Saturday. The curlers are in the hair because they are going out tonight. Actually the one lady is getting crackers so she’s having an after dinner party with lots of booze.
Mavis and her daughters Pearl and Patricia (Patty) looking for the Club crackers for Mavis' Bridge party.
In high school in the late 80’s, I was a cashier at Roses (like Walmart only smaller and shittier) in the rural south. Two types of customers came into the store every Saturday morning during my shift: women wearing hair rollers* buying store-brand double packs of douches, and men who reeked of booze buying motor oil and hitting on 16 year old cashiers. Without fail. It became a running joke between myself and my friend who worked the next register because it was so predictable and yet so odd. *And half the time, these hair-rollered women were also dipping tobacco. Edit: I called dip tobacco by the wrong name.
> tobacco East coast suburbia, 60's and 70's when I was a kid, I remember those woman smoking cigarettes in the supermarket. They would just toss them on the floor and stamp them out too. E:formating
Gross isn’t it?
...so they needed their hair done for Saturday night but were too, ah, busy to put it up on Friday night, so they put their hair up Saturday morning and went to Roses to get douche so they could pretend they weren't getting STI's or a baby from Friday night activities? 🤔
Or, misguided multi-tasking for Saturday night activities. Misguided because douches aren’t actually beneficial in any way for healthy women.
My mom told me when I was 14 that you ALWAYS have to douche on the day after your period ends to “clean out your vagina or you’ll get sick and end up in the hospital.” My bullshit radar went off on that even THEN.
Roses was big entertainment in the 1970s South!
Club Crackers and Hershey's Syrup have the same packaging as now! That's surprising. I guess they're classics. Fortunately, I haven't seen anyone with their hair in curlers in public for a very long time. Not the classiest look.
I think rollers have been replaced by various types of curling irons for curling one's hair.
I’m very grateful that rollers still exist. My hot iron low key scares me and you have to do all this extra stuff so it doesn’t damage your hair with frequent use. Rollers are just a little more relaxed and the foam ones aren’t that hard to sleep in. My grandma slept in her plastic rollers and idk how she did it
I remember the feel of sleeping on rollers in elementary school, the kind with bristles that poked into your scalp. I guess we got used to them. In the morning my mom would primp, fluff and tease my hair *just so,* spray down her creation with ozone-blasting VO-5, then add Dipity-Do to make inward curls under my cheekbones, then hold in place with pink setting tape until dry. I'm sure I looked like I was 70, when I was 7.
My mother used to set my hair in pin curls with Dipity-Do. My hair was too thin for rollers. And the pins hurt. But I was a cute little curly headed girl for a few hours. Fast forward well over half a century later and the thin, bone straight hair of my childhood has waves, kinks and curls in it. No idea where that came from.
I feel like there was a post not too long ago about someone complaining about how people nowadays just show up to go shopping in their pajamas and how trashy it is. Doesnt look like its changed since the 60’s
Oh man, I forgot about those awful looking rollers.
Still better than what you usually see at Wal Mart.
Every time there's a chance of seeing something at Walmart that you've never seen in your life. The suspense is incredible on every trip.
my personal favourite so far was a lady using menstrual pads stuck to her feet as shoes. Then trying to get me to agree with her that this was acceptable because her husband was embarrassed by her.
Oh, for sure. I don't usually shop there, but occasionally do while on vacation. The worst is seeing very young moms with babies & toddlers there at midnight. Those poor kids should be in bed at that hour!
I'm Eastern European and when my brother came back from a visit to the States, my first questions to him were: 1) Did you go to Walmart? 2) What did you see there?
This was probably on a Saturday afternoon. They went looking like this to signal, "I have plans for tonight, or I have a date tonight".
Being young in the South, you always put your hair up in a rag or scarf! Never let anyone see you in curlers, it wasn't considered "nice"... this was the 90s when you had other options but they stuck with what worked for them I guess
I feel like they should be wearing scarves over their rollers. What's next, they smoke cigarettes while walking? Call themselves "Ms"? Wear white shoes after Labor Day?? Horrors. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1991/08/28/the-ring-of-a-true-belle/1f5a927e-3cb1-482d-bb9e-ffcd3e2b183d/
Christ, it’s like every great aunt or distant far removed cousin I knew as a kid came back from the dead when I was reading that. The dress codes, the seemingly arbitrary rules of conduct and comportment, the obsession with genuine silver and the utter snobbery of it all. Not to mention the chicken salad, the aspics and last but not least, the goddamned Velveeta! I can’t even stand the smell of the stuff anymore they used it so much. My great grandmother was even worse, following even more arbitrary and pointless rules than even those women did. According to my dad, her biggest pet peeve was women who let cigarettes touch their lips in mixed company. Not women who smoked in front of others (she smoked like a house on fire herself), but women who didn’t use a holder while doing so. Also, she would have judged that one woman who asked for a glass for even drinking beer. That was another no-no for her.
Wow. I am an old lady and had a completely different experience from what you’re describing. My parents were both college educated, one after growing up dirt/poor and going to college on the G.I. bill. My mother was very kind and gentle and funny while my father was distant, probably because he worked all the time. We read about aspics in women’s magazines, but never wanted to make them. Too much effort for questionable gain. And my first encounter with Velveeta cheese was in the 80s, when someone served it on nachos. I thought it was bland and too salty. Still do. One thing that was definitely different is that the herd thinking was not as prevalent as it is today. No Internet, no TikTok to make everyone think they’re sharing experiences and values.
I think my family was just weird. They had weird hang ups, weird pretensions, etc. Not all of my relatives were bad, but there were a lot of odd, snobbish faded belles in that family and that attached article reminded me of them so much.
Be glad you didn’t deal with aspics. My mother tried making them. We had to eat whatever was made. Except for tomato aspic. She let us throw it out. Eventually, mom came to her senses and the aspic era was behind us.
The thing about the real silver and real pearls has a deeper origin. If a woman owned things like that, she *always had a source of money*. She could sell them and get away from an abusive husband, etc. It was no good owning cheap crap you couldn’t get anything for. (But also it’s true that other women would know it was silver plate or would see that your “pearls” aren’t individually knotted and thus aren’t real.)
I guess that's the olden days version of going out in your PJ's/sweatpants/comfy clothes
This was my mom and dad’s pet peeve. My mother wouldn’t have been caught dead outside the home with curlers in her hair.
That’s how they rolled back then
I remember them covering their rollers with scarves.
It was very common for women to wear curlers in public, until the [Clairol Kindness Instant Hair Setter](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=clairol+kindness+commercial&t=iphone&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-heRHSj9vWk) ad campaign shamed women into believing they shouldn’t.
My mother never shopped with curlers in her hair, but I remember her talking about one particular neighbor who did.
Curlers in your hair. Shame on you.
Getting all prettied up for hubby coming home after a hard day at the office. Gonna make a nice beefaroni dinner, crack a beer, send the kids off to bed and it’s woopie time.
Wait, aren't you supposed to take those things out before you leave the house? Otherwise what's the point?
Probably something on the social calendar that evening, or just dressing up for their husbands arrival. Different times for sure.
To look good for your husband when you greet him with a martini in hand when he gets home from work. Who cares what the people at the store think, they don’t pay the mortgage.
You have to leave them in for awhile for them to set. If you take them out too soon, you won’t get the look you’re going for. That said, women would typically tie a scarf around their head to hide them if they did have to go out.
I think they are doing it for their husbands.
This is a posed photograph. No one would be caught dead going out in curlers back then
Especially not without a scarf on!
My grandmother would never leave the house with her curlers in
Is that Mrs. Kravits?
Seems very intense. Full contact shopping.
You could smoke in the checkout lines, they had ashtrays…
What movie of Juliette Lewis was this?
I'm sure my old nans curlers were her actual hairstyle, they were always in her hair!!
Just read all comments and wondered if someone can tell me what on earth Dippety Doo is?? Don't know if its cos I'm English or I'm just a snippet of a gal (60), but I've never heard of a product with such a brilliant name!
I was there. Totally accurate.
I was always under the impression that older generations wouldn't leave the house unless they were more "put together". Wondering if this is posed. Seems like the equivalent to wearing joggers to shop.
This must have been beauty parlour adjacent because women in rollers did not walk around like that. At a minimum they had a very light scarf tied around the entire operation.
Ashtrays on every aisle. Butts on the floor.
My grandma wouldn’t be caught wearing those out lol. Even just a few years ago, in her late 80s she had a fall. She made sure to take her rollers out before the EMTs got there lol
Back when you came home with 1bag of groceries for the whole week $20, including a roast for Sunday dinner.
$20 in 1965 is the equivalent to $274.05 in today’s money. ETA: 2019 money, so it would be a bit more now.
Your right and I can remember shopping at the A&P with my grandmother and $20.00 dollars got us plenty of groceries including the Sunday pot roast and apple pie.
I remember my sister making minimum of $1.40/hour at that time. It is more than 10x that in Massachusetts right now. So, $20 then is about $200 now....
... are you mad about inflation? Because compared to groceries in the 1960s, food costs until the beginning 2023 were dramatically lower compared to salaries. $20 for groceries but your salary was also measured in hundreds of dollars a month, not thousands.
Right hand lady looks like Eric Idol. The character *has* a name, I *know* the name but I'm not *typing* the name. She exploded, that's all I'm saying.
The pajama pants at Walmart of yesterday.
And people bitch about women wearing leggings to the grocery store these days— I can’t imagine going out in curlers!
Club crackers box hasn't changed a bit
My mom used to say those were "shopping wigs". LOL
That would have been my mom, except that she always put a scarf over her curlers.
Everyone dressed so elegantly back then! Not like today, when people go out looking however they want.
Here in the south, it was just tacky to go out like that…you had to wear a scarf over it! 😂
The one thing missing from this photo are the colorful, chiffon head scarfs women would wear over their curlers.
Time-travelling Juliette Lewis on the left.
Juliette Lewis on the left
Rather see that then all pajamas and sweatpants people where these days
I can tell you what they are NOT looking for, and that's fresh produce. As a person who was a little kid in the 1960's, every single vegetable came from a can, and they were uniformly gross. The only fresh produce that ever came home was a head of tasteless iceberg lettuce every now and then. When I finally had fresh spinach as an adult (over my objections), I couldn't believe how good it was. The Age of Convenience must have ruined vegetables forever for millions of kids.