Hair Styles and Makeup in the 80s Decade
Hair Styles and Makeup: a Short Step Back into the 80s Decade
By Honey B. Wackx
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Hairstyles come and go and almost certainly you will see today’s hairstyles back again in - well no one knows, but you can be sure what’s cool today will make its rounds at some future date. Let’s take a little trip back into the eighties and remember what the hairstyles of that day were like.
Big hair has been a cultural trend and fashion icon for many centuries. Big hair can be achieved by the use of wigs, hair tools, hair spray, hair gel, hair mousse and other hair products. Big hair became popular in Western culture during the 1950s and 1960s with bouffant hairstyles. Then we saw it again in the eighties.
Some music groups that promoted the big hair 1980s hairstyles included Bon Jovi, Whitesnake, Poison, Guns N’ Roses, and Twisted Sister. Alternative music groups also sported big hairstyles including the mohawk. The TV characters in the 80s television show Dynasty also displayed big hairstyles. Many characters in the 1988 film Hairspray exhibit such big hair styles.
If you were young or are young now you may not realize these were the eighties styles. However there are still remnants of these styles on some TV shows, more specifically the reruns.
Bright lipstick, bright eye shadow, big jewelry and big hair were all the rage in the mid 80’s. Short hair behind the ears, with height on top (puffy), was definitely the thing. Big gaudy earrings and as many bracelets as you could fit on your wrist.
The early 80s involved bright neon colors such as pink and green on your clothing color, your hair pieces, shoes and jewelry. The brighter, the better.
The invention of hair gel brought a shift away from the hairspray 60s hairstyles the parent’s of the 80s kids wore. While in the 70s it seem the straighter and less styled look prevailed. No hairspray, no gel, and no big hair.
But, in the 80s for men it was cool to wear gel to spike up the hair or to get that 50s look that was popular in movies like “Back to the Future” and “Peggy Sue Got Married”. More movies made the 50s hairstyles popular in the 80s such as “La Bamba” and “The Buddy Holly Story”.
The eighties hair for girls was big. The style was big puffy hair in the front for women. An overall big hairstyle, like on designing women or spike up bangs. There was often quite a bit of gel and a hairdryer used in 80’s hairstyle for women. Colored hair was very normal. Dale Bozio of the band “Missing Persons” had pink hair in 1982 and Cindi Lauper had all kinds of different colored hair from pink to purple.
Short hair for girls, cut above the ears and short in the back with a little poof of top, but slick on the sides was really cool in the early 1980’s (i.e. Pat Benatar, Sheena Easton), but as the 80’s progressed hair became bigger and bigger and blonder and blonder.
A bottle of peroxide was the cheapest way to bleach your hair. The accessories remained large throughout the decade.
The 80’s had preppy boys wearing penny loafers and oxford shirts all the way to boys wearing lip-gloss and eyeliner, jewelry, skin tight pants and of course very big and long hair. As the late 1980s rolled around boys began cutting their hair above the ears (mullet). (See Pretty in Pink movie).
As the years roll by you may see some of these older styles revitalized again. Since movie stars often set the trend in hairstyles keep a sharp eye out for such styles from the stars.
Copyright © Honey B. Wackx
Honey B. Wackx is an aspiring author. She writes many articles for herself and other website owners. One of her favorite interests is cooking different delicious meals. Another is online dating. Honey B. is now involved in Internet marketing profits by working smart.
