Member-only story
Snippets of memories
Pompadours and Bobby Pins
Hairstyles and identity in the 1940s and 50s
Memories of my mother
Some of my first memories of my mother were her pompadour, a style popular in the 1940s and 50s in the USA.
When she would be scrubbing the floor or peeling potatoes in the summer heat, since we had no air conditioning, she would make a sound like an elephant to blow her hair out of her face. At night, bobby pins and water set her waves, training her perm to do what it was supposed to do: curl her straight hair until it got too long.
Reminders of those permanents
Then a hair trim and that smelly stuff called a “home permanent” would be bought and used each year, of course, to
- keep the hairdo to keep up with the Jones,
- look like Shirley Temple, the styles and appearance of the day.
I was to look like Shirley Temple. I was given a Shirley Temple doll when I was 7 in the 50s. That doll sat there in that house in my room for 50 years, too.
Curls were in. Straight hair was out. She never liked bangs. She had them as a child. No bangs for me until I was 63.
