Memories of ...

... My mother spraying Sun-In on my hair before I went outside to play, trying to prolong my childhood blondeness after my hair had darkened.

... The year they introduced Malibu Barbie & I suddenly wanted a "deep, dark SAVAGE" tan. The neighboring teen girls never used suntan lotion, though. They'd just slather themselves with baby oil.

... My mother's teasing comb, with the metal spikes on the end, and the fascinating crystalline blue container of Dippity-Do that she used on her hair. And her hair dryer, which came in a rather substantially sized domed box with a handle on the top & fit over her head like a helmet. When blow-dryers came out & everyone blew out their hair, this was a very exciting modern development.

... My sudden passion for spicy, sexy "adult" perfumes like Halston, Cinnabar, Maroc and Opium, which were nothing like the florals that my mother & grandmother had preferred.

... The permutations that jeans went through. When I was younger, the bells were so wide, I remember having to wrap them around my legs before stuffing my feet into the boots so necessary in snowy Upstate NY. By the end of the decade, they grew skinny & tight, and everyone wore Gloria Vanderbilt jeans or Calvin Kleins. One pair was so tight on my legs that there were zippers running from the ankle up the calf. Oh the sorrow caused to me by these jeans, because I could only fit in the largest size available & they were impossible to find. I think I wore my one pair of Calvin Kleins every day for weeks on end.

... The "mean girls" in my high school (before anyone recognized that concept or schoolgirl bullying) decreed that everyone had to wear a mandarin collar for their class picture. And the poorer kids in my school were angry because suddenly they had to go out & buy mandarin collar blouses.

... The evolution of earrings over the decade. From chandelier earrings & big hoops & ethnic-looking stuff to the tiniest gold studs & buttons imaginable. I mean, these were teeny tiny earrings. (I still have a box full of them & probably ought to be cashing them in for $$$ through those gold-buying franchises.) Gold "snake" chains when they first came in, and how everyone wanted that liquidy-looking kind of chain, rather than one with a series of oval links.

.... P.O.W. bracelets. You got a bracelet with a Vietnam prisoner of war's name on it & you were supposed to wear it forever, until he was freed.

... Platform shoes with "doughnut" heels -- that is, the wooden "hooves" had holes in them.

... Dressing like a peasant or a woman from an imaginary 1800s-early 1900s. Peasant blouses, "prairie" skirts. This was when Gunne Saxe dresses became the rage, and later Laura Ashley.

Someone else mentioned Long and Silky, and yes, I also wish they still made it. The short-hair equivalent was Short and Sassy.

Nobody's mentioned Billy beer. My grandmother still has a six-pack of that, somewhere.

Does anyone remember Hash jeans? It might have been a local trend in Idaho, LOL! They were extremely wide legged jeans with the star on the back pockets.

I wasn't allowed to wear much makeup either since I was in my early teens, but I loved the lipsmacker lipglosses. They were so thick, but tasted great.

I remember opening the seam of my jeans from the knee down and sewing triangles of cotton fabric in to make the bell really wide. Did they do that anywhere other than Idaho?

Oh, wow....click clacks, Loves Baby Soft and Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill, LOL! Yes, I remember these!

Maybelline cake mascara...was in a little compact, you wet it and applied it with a brush. Better and less clumpy than the tube mascara. Remember Maybelline mascara in the skinny white tube and red tube, before the fat pink one they have now? Bright navy blue mascara with frosty white or frosty tan lipstick? (early 70's thing)

And yes, we did redesign our bell bottoms with fabric inserts, and I lived in the Northeast back then.

But within a year or two we were wearing straightlegs. Lee Riders, Levis and regulation Khakis from the Army Navy store.

Also "boys" sneakers on girls - Converse All Stars were all of 20 bucks and they were considered the "elite" sneaker back then. The cheap imitations were 3.99 in Woolworths. (Remember Woolworths?) Who could have imagined paying over 200 dollars for a pair of sneakers, ever?

I remember the commercial "Converse All Stars...limousines for the feet" :D

Oh, and AM radio! But that's not beauty related....

Originally Posted by Mariella:
Oh, and AM radio! But that's not beauty related....

Just wanted to note, the Billy beer is beauty-related, sort of. My aunt used to use it in her hair.

I remember gauchos. (Gauchos, for you young chicks, are what we used to call capris, except they were flare-legged.) I thought yecch then, and I think yecch now.

Originally Posted by :
....the Billy beer is beauty-related, sort of. My aunt used to use it in her hair.

LOL! And the empty cans made great hair rollers. :dizzy:

Levi's 501 button fly jeans, they were all the rage in Alaska.
Afros and dashekis (I don't know if this spelled right)
reel to reel recorder and tapes
"Everybody was kung fu fighting"
Now and Later candy was .05 for 10 big ones
Candy Store Lady - for those of you that never heard of such a thing...she lived in the neighborhood close to the elementary school and sold candy out of her house along with pickles, popsicles, freeze pops and breakfast sandwiches.
Pickle with peppermint candy stuck down in the middle of it. Yum!!! This was the granddaddy of them all!!

My husband just brought up Nash Ramblers, and I remember doing aerobics to "Beep Beep."

Oh, and I just thought of something else.

Pin curls. Anybody remember that?

And dialing a rotary phone with a pencil, so you won't chip a nail?

My mom still has a rotary phone in my childhood upstairs hallway. My niece (about 18 at the time) didn't have any idea how to use it! lol

lol...I wondered if I was dating myself by saying "dial the phone" but I asked my 22 y.o. and he said everyone still says dial, maybe he was just trying to be nice to me :D