Believe it or not,  once upon a time,  young women cut their own hair.  Back in the early twentieth century,  beauty parlors were mostly  places where older women got permanents and manicures.  Rollers hadn’t been invented, nor had the curling iron come into common use.     Girls not only cut their own hair, but “put it up”  at night.   For long hair, kid curlers or rags would produce curls that bounced on your shoulders. Short hair required pin curls.   Now that most of us are afraid to go to hair salons, many are reverting  to old fashioned hair styling methods.  It’s the return of the bobby pin.

The  most important thing about curling hair with rags or bobby pins is that it be done with damp hair.  You can’t get any lasting  curls if your hair is dry.  What you do is dampen a strand  of hair slightly before making the pin curl., and let it dry overnight.  That way, the resulting  curl will last through the next day.

We used to wonder what we would do when we got married.  Going to bed with pin curls wouldn’t be  romantic, would it?   That was before the time when  unmarried  boys and girls spent the night together.  So, you could slather your face with cold cream, put your hair up in rags or  pin curls, and  maybe even cover your head with a hairnet so the curls would stay in.  No boyfriend would ever see that version of you.

If you look at old pictures, you can see that most women had “flat “ hair, with a middle or side part.  No one had ever heard of teasing or blow drying.  That all changed in the late fifties when short hair came in style.  A pixie cut required a trip to the beauty shop.  Often, you didn’t curl it at all. In the sixties and seventies long hair returned, and that’s when hot and cold  rollers came into use.  They were pretty uncomfortable if you were trying to sleep, but most young women managed to do it anyway.

So here we are during the pandemic of 2019-2020.  If you’re afraid to go to the beauty parlor, you  may decide to cut your own hair.  If it’s long, you’might have  to  use use those pesky rollers.  But if it’s short, pin curls are the answer. It’s the return of the bobby pin.