I styled my hair like I was in the '50s for a week and I was surprised by how many looks I liked
- I tried five different popular hairstyles from the 1950s: a high ponytail, a fake bob, pin curls, a poodle, and a bouffant.
- Most of the styles were easy to create, requiring just a few bobby pins and my natural curls.
- I couldn't get the pin curls or the bouffant to stay put.
- I might wear some of these styles again if I were feeling whimsical.
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Like most of the world, I am currently spending most of my time self-isolating indoors. It can be difficult to maintain any sense of the passage of time when every day looks the same.
I decided to liven things up by trying a new 1950s hairstyle each day. I'm actually no stranger to the decade — I've already tried vintage recipes from a 1950s cookbook, and while I wasn't a fan of the Golden Glow Jell-O fruit salad, I did have a lot of fun.
I chose five vintage styles to try by consulting "Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History" by Victoria Sherrow, as well as magazine spreads and celebrity photos from the '50s.
By the end of the experiment, I was surprised by how many of the looks I actually liked.
This is what my hair normally looks like.
With naturally curly hair, I had a head start on '50s styles — no perm required.
I decided to ease into my week of 1950s hairstyles with a classic look that I already wear often — a ponytail.
According to "Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History" by Victoria Sherrow, "a signature look of the 1950s was a high ponytail, often tied with a scarf." Teenagers in particular were fond of the style, which was featured on the original 1959 Barbie doll.
I grabbed a scrunchie and a thin scarf, pulled my hair back, and secured it with both items. Piece of cake.
It was a little tricky to loop the scarf around my ponytail, but I got it on the second or third try.
I liked how the colorful addition of a scarf made the ponytail feel more polished.
I usually wear ponytails if I'm doing something active or just need to get my hair out of my face. Taking the time to style the ponytail elevated the look for me. I'd probably wear something like this again if I were feeling whimsical.
For day two, I took inspiration from a 1957 issue of Glamour magazine featuring headbands.
Like ponytails, I'm also a fan of headbands in my everyday life. They tame flyaways and make fun accessories.
I recreated the Glamour photo shoot with the help of a pink headband, a few bobby pins, and a tree.
I like wearing headbands, and this style was very easy to construct. I simply tucked my hair into the back of the headband to create a fake bob, pulled some hair out on the sides to create large waves, and secured everything with bobby pins.
While I probably wouldn't wear this tucked-in style in my everyday life, it didn't feel too far off from my usual hairdos.
Pin curls rose to prominence in the 1940s and remained popular into the following decade.
Pin curls are created by rolling strands of hair towards the scalp and pinning them in place. Actress Betty Grable wore pin curls in the 1953 film "The Farmer Takes a Wife."
To copy Grable's pin curl style, I tied my hair back into a ponytail and left out a few strands so I could curl them up onto one side of my head.
The first curl went fairly well. I dampened my hair to help it keep its shape, and was able to secure the curl with just one pin.
Shaping pin curls and making them stay in place turned out to be more difficult than I'd anticipated.
I managed to keep the first few curls secure, but every time I started working on another section of hair, the curls would tumble out. Maybe I should have used more hairspray.
Next came a style I'd been apprehensive about trying — the poodle.
Lucille Ball often wore the poodle hairstyle on "I Love Lucy," which ran from 1951 to 1957.
I think I nailed it.
This style was easier than I anticipated. I rolled the front section of my hair towards my forehead until it sat in a voluminous pile on my head, and then pinned it in place. I've done toned-down versions of this style for special events, so it felt like it was in my wheelhouse.
My hairstyle received rave reviews on a Google Hangout with my colleagues.
One person said it looked like a "lady mullet," but the consensus was that my hair looked pretty fabulous.
Then came the bouffant. This one made me a bit nervous.
According to "Encyclopedia of Hair," the bouffant is a voluminous hairstyle with a high top, wide sides, and the ends turned under or over. It looked pretty technically challenging to create — most women in the 1950s went to salons and left bouffants to the professionals.
I had trouble getting my bouffant to stay up.
I pulled my hair forward in order to create volume, then folded it back over my head so that the ends would look turned under. The whole thing immediately collapsed.
I tried teasing it instead. That was a disaster.
Teasing involves backcombing hair towards the root in order to provide a lift. My bouffant ended up looking like a rat's nest.
The only way I could maintain the perfect bouffant was if I held everything in place. No one would notice if I walked around like that all day, right?
Like my ill-fated pin curls, the bouffant look was unsuccessful. It seems that '50s hairstyles requiring lots of hold and dexterity were out of my skill set.
I preferred the poodle hairstyle to the bouffant, anyway. It's distinctively vintage with sky-high volume, but it didn't require too much know-how. I also enjoyed putting old-fashioned twists on familiar looks like ponytails and headbands.
I'm not usually one to experiment with my hair — I wear it down almost every day and leave it at that. I appreciated the chance to try some new styles and see what I might have looked like if I'd been born a few decades earlier.
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