Ah, the 70's. The Me Decade. The Polyester Era. The Disco Era. I think one more moniker should be added to the list. The Decade of the Blow Dryer.
During the 1970's, sales of hair dryers shot upwards, perhaps doubling. Why? Because MEN needed them now.
I mean think about it. Women have always had a need for hair dryers, but prior to the 70's, what the heck would a guy use one for? Yeesh, imagine a guy putting one of those plastic bubble dryers on his head like my mom used.
But then, along came The Dry Look. Suddenly, men who had dried their hair with a bath towel were sheepishly purchasing hair dryers. Only they weren't hair dryers. They were, you know, hot combs!
Soon, guys were spending as long as an hour on their hair. And they learned the most effective ways to run a blow dryer.
You could really screw up your locks if you dried them the wrong way. That would mean rewetting your hair and doing it again.
So, all guys soon had blow dryers in their bathrooms. And sometimes guy talk would even consist of discussing what brand of blow dryer was the best for the price, and what brand of hair spray was most effective.
What had the world come to?
As hair got big and Charlie's-Angelish, blow dryer sales continued to skyrocket. Untold millions of hours were spent by Boomers all over the country in front of mirrors accompanied by a noisy blow dryer.
The average life of a 70's era blow dryer was perhaps six months. Then it would either stop working cold, or would fry itself in a rank-smelling cloud of internally burning plastic. I'm not sure how long they last today, seeing how my hair care implements currently consist of Edge shaving gel and a Gillette Mach 3 razor.
Off topic, but I will share this money-saving tidbit with you. I get six months of twice-weekly shaves from the expensive Mach 3 blades by rinsing them in cold water when I'm finished, then dipping them in rubbing alcohol. Believe it or not, it works.
So, male or female, when you look at pictures of yourself circa 1976 with mounds of immaculately styled hair, think back longingly to the Decade of the Blow Dryer.
I think that might just catch on. You heard it here first!
Comments (4)
I think that the "Decade
of the Blow Dryer" can be best understood in the context of another phenomenon.....the dawn of the unisex salon, also in the 70's. We make a big to-do about metrosexuals today, who have impeccable grooming
habits, but heterosexual
tastes. Well, when Blow dryers first came out,
they were considered very metrosexual for its day. Don't forget, male hair was only long for the later years of the 60's, and that only for the under 25's. As
the guys used to having long hair in their late-teens, got into their mid-20's, they decided it would be nice to groom it with some of the same care of a woman's, including male perms, another tacky 70's fashion, and yes,
again related to disco
(does it not seem like everything tacky was related to disco, from
spinning balls to polyester?). At the same time the first male blow dryers came
out, another short-lived product came out...the heated shaving cream dispenser. Some places even sold male purses, which proved the 70's
were more metrosexual than even now. Back to the Unisex salon....I remember that prior to '70, the local old man barber was still king. You still looked for the barber pole in front, and got a shave, a peek at Playboy while you were waiting(actually my local guy had Hustler for reading material, I kid you not. Sure won't see THAT at today's unisex salon.) ARRRGGHH, my main point already....the unisex salon was the main beachhead in the grooming of the american male in the 70's. He went from the shaggy hippie look, to a couffered look, seemingly overnight. I should say, at least guys over 21 that were out of their college years. Kids didn't have the money or inclination to groom yet. I remember that the first male stylists were simply barbers who upped their equipment and hair products, and took at little more time. At some supercuts that is still the case. You can get a simple snip, or up it to a style for a bit more.
Then came the bona-fide Unisex salons, which were actually mostly male, but simply hired female stylists. The guys learned to enjoy getting their hair cut by "Babes", rather than old dudes, and never went back to Floyd again. Now even hard-core beauty salons cut men's hair with regularity. Everything comes back around again, and now the old-fashioned barber is cool, with certain modifications. Women and men work in them, but they offer the old fashioned extras like shaves and playboy-maxim mags, and they look more like barber shops. Again, the 70's as a whole was metrosexual, more than even now, and blow dryers and unisex barber shops were on the cusp of that change......
Posted by scott | August 23, 2007 4:29 AM
Posted on August 23, 2007 04:29
AHHH! That's the blow dryer that we ALL had. Got it for Christmas in '72. Or was it '73? It seemed to be the only game in town for a while. Thanks for the picture and the memory.
Posted by Cathy | August 24, 2007 8:17 AM
Posted on August 24, 2007 08:17
I actually had a temp job in the Conair hair dryer company in New Jersey one summer. Conair was the big brand back then.
Posted by Rhea | August 26, 2007 2:37 PM
Posted on August 26, 2007 14:37
I think this is another product Ron that the Mrs. Can gather up and bury in a hole! Lol!
I unfortunately had a hair dryer to use during my highschool years! I had a lot of hair and tried to achieve that shag look! I remember the plastic burning smell as well as hair burning! My baber today still uses a hair dryer to use on my hair! I have this nasty cowlick that can only be controled with a dryer! I don't use a dryer these days! Hair is thinner and can control with a wet comb! Thoise dryers tended to dry out your hair and give you split ends! Horrors!
Posted by Rivers End | June 30, 2009 4:44 PM
Posted on June 30, 2009 16:44