"when the moon is in the seventh house and jupiter aligns with mars and peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars"...
raise your hand if you got that?
what?
2 of you?
I have to admit something somewhat shameful here...
I totally loved The Fifth Dimension...
ok, maybe not "Up Up and Away" so much but oh the rest of it...yes, I did love it...
"Age of Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine" (which is really from the musical "Hair")
"Stoned Soul Picnic"
"Wedding Bell Blues"
"One Less Bell to Answer"
"(Last Night) I Didn't Get to Sleep at All"
I wanted to be Marilyn McCoo...that is until she did "Solid Gold" and after that...notsomuch...
although Solid Gold was a pretty awesomely bad show...remember The Solid Gold dancers?
raise your hand if you danced along with them...
what?
2 of you?
MarvelousMargaret PLEASE say you did...
(she and I like to dance in public to embarrass our children)
Growing up in the 60's was fun...although I don't remember a whole lot about it...and no, even though sometimes I feel old enough to have been around when dinosaurs roamed the earth it was not because I took all kinds of mind altering drugs that I don't remember it...it is that I was a VERY YOUNG CHILD
I have much more clarity about the 70's...because I was a a bit older...
I do remember my mother's fashions in the 60's and 70's...
and her hair
or rather her hairpieces...
At that time my mother had her natural hair color...brunette...so all of her wigs and falls and little hair things were brunette.
She went blonde in the 70's and spent years trying to achieve golden perfection although once or twice or twenty times she ended up a pretty bad shade of orange or a bad version of "ash blonde".
My hair has always been blonde...and that is what it will be until I go grey...although I have flirted with the idea of strawberry blonde which no hairdresser has ever agreed to because they know better than me...and they know I will cry...so blonde I stay...but I might just order me a red wig on QVC and have a taste of it...
When I was a child my mother always allowed my sisters to have long luxurious hair and I was forced into whatever horrible short haircut she thought would be cute...
and each and every one of them was...
perfectly awful...
No let's make that: "AS BAD AS A TRENDY HAIRCUT CAN GET AND SADLY HEAPED UPON A POOR UNFORTUNATE GIRL THAT ONLY WANTED LONG LUXURIOUS HAIR AND NOT SOME UGLY SHORT HAIRSTYLE"
So what did I end up with:
pageboys
blunt chin length bobs with bangs
but the worst...and this is a tie:
THE CAROL BRADY SHAG (I sobbed for hours after that one)
and
THE DOROTHY HAMILL (I sobbed for days after that one)
Raise your hand if you were forced into one of these travesties of hair fashion...
what?
2 of you?
My sisters were never forced to have scissors taken to their hair...they were allowed to grow their hair long but my mother never let me...maybe that is why I like mine long now. Any time it would start to grow out she would find some excuse to force me into a haircut.
Once she told me that if I got the shag/pixie/bob whatever horrid haircut she wanted me to have that I could have my ears pierced. So I allowed the horrid haircut to happen...and then went to the doctor and got my ears pierced...
And then she let my sisters get their ears pierced...
THE VERY NEXT DAY
and
WITHOUT HAVING TO HAVE SCISSORS TAKEN TO THEIR HAIR TO GET A HORRIBLE UGLY SHORT HAIRCUT THAT MADE THEM LOOK LIKE A BOY
David Cassady had longer hair than me...actually the entire cast of the Partridge Family had longer hair than me...(and oh how did I want to be Lori Partridge with her long straight thick gorgeous shiny brown hair)
except Shirley (the Mom)
because I was sporting that same ugly haircut...
UGH
raise your hand if you remember the Partridge Family...or had a crush on David Cassady and his puka shell necklace...or Shaun Cassady...
what?
2 of you?
2 of you?
Hence I was obsessed with her wigs and wiglets. I would go around the house for hours in her long dark brown fall...happily perched to the back of my white blonde hair...
I wanted to feel that hair all around me...
I think that was part of my attraction to wanting to be Marilyn McCoo...she was gorgeous and had long hair that she could swing around. It made no difference to me that she was black and I was white...I thought she was the very image of beauty and glamour...because she was...and I am betting she still is...that kind of beauty never truly goes away...fades maybe...but never goes away...
And you won't be surprised that my other beauty obsessions were Ann-Margaret and Vanessa Redgrave (in her Camelot "Guinevere" look)...both redheads...
But not once did I ever want to look like Goldie Hawn in her Laugh-In days or Twiggy with her pixie or Mia Farrow with her Vidal Sassoon pixie...nooooo I much preferred Lynn Anderson and Dolly Parton and their full heads of long blonde hair...and Barbie of course...
But I did have a "Twiggy" doll...but I always wanted her hair to be long...
Raise your hand if you remember who Twiggy was...
what?
2 of you?
My mother slowly transitioned from brunette to blonde by spending a fair amount of time doing the "frosted hair" look...
oh...no...
(shaking head)
oh...no...
The only good thing about that was that my mother would have "frosting parties" and her friends would come over and bring wine and frost each other's hair...that is until they drank too much wine and had me and my sisters pull their hair through the frosting caps for them...
I was highly coveted as I was fast and gentle...and never pulled too much through...
(and there are women who read this blog that will back me up on this)
although with all the Mateus Rose and Lancer's Rose they were drinking I'm not sure hair pulling was a problem...
It was hideous stuff (and by that I mean the frosted hair and the very bad wine)...a few looked very pretty with it but my mom...notsomuch...it was a bit harsh on her...things got better when she transitioned to highlighted lighter hair...and then blonde
She always had a thing for hairpieces...her hair was thin and got thinner from all that bleach...so if she was dressed in the least she usually had some sort of wiglet in place.
When she passed away I took her wiglets to the funeral home and instructed the lady there to put one or two in her hair so she looked right.
Yes, I sent my mama to heaven in her Manolo stilettos, her favorite Dana Buchman pants suit, a sweater in her favorite color (or at least my favorite color on her), her Lancome eyeliner and Estee Lauder lipgloss...AND HER WIGLETS...
I know my Mama is proud of me for that...
I have the rest of them (the wiglets and falls) that I didn't bury her in...they don't match my color but...I don't know...they were such a part of her.
She was quite the fashion plate...even in the 60's.
Right now I would totally kill to have her pink/purple Pucci velvet evening gown...to me it was the very essence of 60's glamour...along with a long fluffed up fall...and false eyelashes...
I don't know what happened to it but I wish I still had it...Ke$ha Barbie would rock it...
She had several dresses that looked like they belonged on Goldie Hawn during her "Laugh In" years (Please tell me you remember "Laugh In"...what? 2 of you?)...I wish I had those too...not that anyone needs to see me in polyester mini dresses with big bell sleeves...
She had a lot of flowered shift dresses...
and one dress that I really remember was one she wore to my cousin Tio's wedding...I was the flower girl and my mom was fairly pregnant with my brother. She bought the dress a few months before she wore it and never bothered to try it on. When we got to Fort Worth for the wedding she did try it on and it didn't fit (my brother was a BIG baby) so she went and bought a girdle to wear to fit into the dress and to keep my brother looking not so big in utero.
She passed out.
But it was a really pretty brown lace dress.
(and yes, I know there is no way that you can think a brown lace dress is pretty but this one was...in a very Jackie O sort of way)
Speaking of Jackie O, my mom had quite a great collection of sunglasses. I still wear some of them...not from the 60's but she had a drawerful and once in a while I pop a pair on to think of her.
In the 70's the fashion got...uglier...
For me it was a lot of polyester double knit
For my mom it was a lot of polyester double knit
For my dad it was a lot of polyester double knit...and some godawful jumpsuit things he wore on Sundays...
my brother had matching ones...
I'd kill for a photo of that...
I had a lot of those polyester double knit shorts and pants...just some really hideous stuff...
Just watch The Brady Bunch...see what Jan has on? That was me...
Except that I wasn't allowed to have Jan Brady hair...
but sometimes I did get to sport a yard ribbon in my hair if it was longer than a few inches...we often had our hair tightly pulled back in a half up/half down look with a yarn "ribbon" in our hair...
raise your hand if you remember "yarn ribbons"
what?
2 of you?
how about "doobies" (that's what we called those ponytail holders with the big plastic balls)
again...just 2 of you?
I never minded maxi dresses or halter tops...in fact I still love them...but sadly the maxi dresses all made us look like Laura Ingalls or Holly Hobby and I never rocked a halter as well as Cher did...
Raise you hand if you remember Holly Hobby...
what?
2 of you?
Raise your hand if you know who Laura Ingalls was...and if you don't get on Wikipedia right now...
I am sure my children will one day look back on the fashions I foisted upon them and tell their friends "my mother dressed me in the most gawdawful stuff"...but I never made Kesha Barbie cut her beautiful hair off...oh no...
I really wish I could have dug up some of the old awful photos of me in these fabulous looks and haircuts but heaven only knows where they are in storage right now...maybe they should just be burned...
And as for 80's fashion...
well...that is a whole other blog...maybe 2...
So if you will all excuse me now I am going to go put on a maxi dress and make my long blonde hair look like Ann-Margaret's and I'm gonna wing out my eyeliner in a perfect cat's eye...
what goes around comes around...but hopefully it is better the second time around...
I hope that for fashion...and for my romantic future...
Inspiration Song: "Age of Aquarius" by the 5th Dimension...originally from the 60's musical "Hair". It is sung in medley with "Let the Sunshine In" which I may also use as a blog title if it doesn't stop raining around here...I loved the 5th Dimension...
Bye Darlings...aren't you glad we have survived some bad fashion and hairstyles...and the words to the song aren't bad advice:
Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation
Aquarius! Aquarius!
Ok so maybe that last part is about drugs...
don't take drugs...
but find your peace and harmony darlings and make peace and harmony with your past fashion mistakes...
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