What we did/do for "beauty". Wire bra, girdles, spiked shoes, slept in curlers with wire brushes

[debm55]

inside-like sleeping on hair brushes. Can you remember or think of others. My earliest one was the hard plastic headbands with teeth in them.

[Wicked Blue]

1. Those headbands hurt!

Nylon stockings and garter belts.

The white gloves girls and women had to wear in the 1950s-early 1960s.

[debm55]

3. Oh yes the garter belts. When you sat down they would rub into your skin on the back of your legs..

It was great when panty hose came out.

[Wicked Blue]

31. Also those things that held the menstrual pads

Ironing your hair

[debm55]

35. I used a safety pin to hold my pad in place. That thing would creep up to my waist and the pad was

Last edited Tue Apr 11, 2023, 10:32 AM - Edit history (1)

messing getting off. Didn't use a tampon, as it was not proper.

[Walleye]

2. I had one of those headbands, my grandmother worked in a dress store

She wore a girdle, nylon stockings and high heels every day of her life, I don’t ever remember seeing her in flat shoes, her back got so bad she couldn't walk without pain

[debm55]

4. I could never walk in high heels. I wore what we called pussy cat heels--about an inch and a half.

Also the nails being done and that awful Aqua Net hairspray to keep your hair in place.

[Walleye]

5. I flat out rebelled against all that, I haven't worn a bra since high school I think

[debm55]

6. Me either. And the padded bras! No way. Anyone remember Dippity Do hair gel?

[Laffy Kat]

36. Yes! Dippity Do.

I can still smell it.

[wnylib]

21. Some women appreciate the support

that a bra offers. But, otherwise, why bother with it? And underwire bras are ridiculous, unnecessary, and very uncomfortable.

[Walleye]

26. I have nothing against it for other women, I just think it's uncomfortable

But to me most clothes are uncomfortable, anything beyond T-shirts and cut offs. In fact I’m having a lot of anxiety now because my niece is getting married next month and I have to figure out what to wear

[RegulatedCapitalistD]

11. kitten heels...

[gay texan]

7. Polyester dresses

Horribly hot!

"Nair" made my legs look amazing but smells soooooooo bad

[debm55]

8. And wearing those shoulder pads. Yes, the polyester dresses.

[Wicked Blue]

32. Polyester slacks

[debm55]

33. With the matching blazer?

[gay texan]

49. I feel like I'm looking at a sears catalog from 1977 n/t

[wnylib]

22. Nair made my legs break out in a rash.

[Diamond_Dog]

9. I hated those hard plastic headbands, too.

When I was small, my mother used to put up my hair in pin curls, the kind where you fasten them with 2 Bobby pins in an X. Then sit under the hair dryer with a bonnet on my head attached to the dryer with a hose. Yuck! The bonnet pinched my forehead and the dryer was loud and you had to sit still in a chair for 1/2 an hour. I hated it!!! I remember she used something called Rinse Away on my hair. Later on came those stockings with garter belts that were just AWFUL.

[debm55]

14. I had the pin curls with the bobby pins. I slept in mine. If you want to call that sleeping.

[Diamond_Dog]

15. Pure torture! Yep I remember sleeping on them a few times.

And boys would complain about wearing neckties.. I remember thinking, wow, you don’t know the half of it, brother ….

[gay texan]

10. Jelly flats

Remember them?

They were super cute and came out in the early 80's

I wanted a pair so bad, until I tried them on.

Omg, they were Horrible!!!!!!

[debm55]

12. I did the same. thought they would be very comfy--NOT

[gay texan]

16. I was talking with bestie

The other day and I commented how I wanted to look like daisy Duke back in the day. She got to wear all the cute stuff like those Candies high heel mules.

She said "oh hell no! Be glad you didn't!!!!"

She broke her ankle in a pair!!

[Ocelot II]

13. Clip-on earrings. They pinched.

[wnylib]

24. They sure did. My mother opposed me getting my ears pierced.

She said it was barbaric. So I did not get mine done until I was 25. Eventually, when everyone that my mother knew had pierced ears, she got hers done and wished that she had done it sooner. Once the ears healed, the pierced earrings were so much more comfortable than the clip on ones.

[Ocelot II]

29. So did mine, at least at first. She said girls with pierced ears were "fast,"

which might have been true when she was a teenager in the '30s. But I whined and complained, finally got mine pierced when I was about 17. Then Mom did it. She didn't like the pinchy ones, either.

[CTyankee]

40. "Those girls" were not us WASPs. "Those girls" were Mexicans.

I grew up in Texas in the 1950s.

[Ocelot II]

41. Not in my neck of the woods; the Midwest wasn't very diverse in those days.

I don't know where my mom got her idea about girls with pierced ears while growing up in Wisconsin in the '30s. Maybe from the movies? She said the same thing about ankle bracelets, which nobody wore that I knew of.

[yellowdogintexas]

51. I never did understand why pierced ears only went out of

fashion in the US.(and only part of the US). My grandmother was 2nd generation Norwegian and had pierced ears. I had wanted them for years, and when I went to college, one of the first things I did was get my ears pierced.

Ultimately my mom got hers pierced too, I think at the same time my youngest sister got hers done.

LOL that same sister and I have daughters who are only 3 weeks apart. We made a pact that ear piercing would be the big 13th birthday event. I asked my daughter when she thought she would pierce her daughter's ears. Her answer: whenever she really wants it.

[Rhiannon12866]

37. I wanted to get my ears pierced in 9th grade. My mother took me and my friend who had a note

From her mother - but my mother wouldn't let me. I went to boarding school for my last two high school years and my roommate pierced my ears for me, even let me borrow a pair of her earrings. She'd done it before for other girls and I never did have a problem. However, when I went home for vacation, I rode to Albany with another girl's mother and spent the night at my aunt and uncle's - and when my mother came to pick me up the next day, she noticed as soon as she walked in the door. She was not pleased, but a few years later she got her own ears pierced.

[wnylib]

38. I had friends who offered to pierce mine for me, but

I was too squeamish to let them do it. I worried about my ears getting infected.

When I did finally get mine pierced, it was in a mall at a kiosk that sold earrings. They used a piercing gun that implanted a pair of small gold studs. My ears took a long time to heal. I switched to thin wire hoops to let the pierced holes get more air for healing and that helped.

[madamesilverspurs]

17. Merry widows.

Also the lingering stench to go with the frizz of home perms.

Raccoon tan (from goggles) to prove you'd been skiing, went with the sunburned knees from wearing cutoffs on the slopes.

Wrapping wet hair around small juice cans to give a gentler "natural" curl.

Torpedo bras.

Evening in Paris.

.

[debm55]

19. Do you remember the Jean Nate bath line? Powdered eye liner that you had to add water to.

[yellowdogintexas]

50. I still use cake eyeliner with water. It is the easiest

and always looks smooth. Clinique still makes it in brown.

[debm55]

23. I remember the Toni home perms. And the home frosting kit that you pulled strands of your hair

through a cap with a hook and applied the frosting stuff.

[qwlauren35]

18. Plastic curlers.

The snap-on kind.

Oh, and I once shaved my legs. I got a two inch gash at my ankle. Never did it again.

[debm55]

20. Were those the hard plastic ones or the foam ones.

[qwlauren35]

25. Hard plastic.

I slept in the foam ones. The hard plastic went under the dryer. For 1-2 hours. Burned my ears.

[debm55]

28. They where so hard to sleep in. We had a hair drier too. the hose was always comming apart from the

bonnet.

[blue neen]

30. We used to iron our hair.

Yep. Laid the hair out on the ironing board, covered it with wax paper, and ironed it with a hot iron.

This was all to make our hair "straight", but the minute you got out in the humidity it was all curly again!

[debm55]

34. Did that too, but not with the wax paper. Also used empty soda cans. Some curlers had these sticks

that would go through the curlers and stab you in the head.

[Aristus]

39. My grandmother was a career woman from the 1940's to the 1980's.

Which was rare enough when she started. She was required to wear pumps every day in the workplace, and suffered horribly from bunions until she retired. She got them operated on later, but one of my strongest memories of her was coming to visit, and not being able to join the family until she got her shoes off and gave her feet a rest.

[Ocelot II]

43. A neighbor lady when I was a kid always wore high heels - not because she had to

but because she liked them - she even wore high-heeled slippers. Eventually, though, she couldn't wear flat shoes at all. My mom, a nurse, said it was because wearing high heels all the time for years had probably made it hard for her to extend or stretch her Achilles tendons. I hate to think what her big toes looked like.

[debm55]

45. Like ballerina feet. High heeled slippers? Not me.

[debm55]

44. So very sad.

[quaint]

42. Thankfully, no bras, girdles, perms or rollers.

Luckily I was born in SoCal, had straight hair and turned into a small hippy chick.

[debm55]

46. My hair was wavy, I so wanted straight hair. Now that I'm older, I wish I had the wavy hair.When I

was young the pin curls would be put in ringlets. It was called the Shirley Temple.

[quaint]

47. I'll bet you were adorable.

Me, on the other side...

[debm55]

48. Thank you------------------------------------