Last weekend I found myself reaching into the second hand book bin at a convenience store at a tiny beach north of Sydney.
As you do.
I didn’t have to reach very far because the book that had caught my eye was indeed a large tome of coffee table proportions.
Blazoned across its front under the words, The Great Aussie Beauty Book (by Ursula Hufnagl, in association with Debbie Coffey), was an image of sun-kissed Aussie beauty posing and pouting like she was on the set of Bold and the Beautiful wearing a white one-piece featuring Australian flag-shaped maps of Australia.
Snorts and smirks about maps of Tassie aside, I realised that a $2 investment in this 1984 gem would indeed offer up a nostalgic look at how beauty advice was dished out in the 1980s.
I’m over at The Hoopla today sharing some of them.
In the meantime, I’d love to know:
What did you inflict on yourself beauty wise in the 1980s that now makes you shudder? Any beauty regrets?
Me? It would have to be the torture that was having my hair streaked and that one and only perm in 1984.
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Plucking my eyebrows too thin! and now I’m stuck with it … lol
Yep, lucky Brooke Shields was my idol or I’d have been the same!
Hi Nikki,
yes – I think the hair streaking cap, the perms (streaks and perms with the BIG blow-dried front fringe flick!)
and my formal dress.
they were all pretty tragic.
have a great day
x Loulou
Tragic but fun at the time x
Big hair. That is the one thing I regret.
I was always trying to get it! So much hairspray!!
I was guilty of all manner of sins including the big hair and perms but the one that I was thinkiing about today was how much i loved culottes….. but now as I’m typing this I’ m wondering was that the 80s or the early 90s???
Oh they were the ’80s! Yes, they were Sha xx
Purple and pink eyeshadow all the way to the brow!
Of course … where else would it have gone?!
Lavender blush and lipstick. Yuk.
Nice! Lavender was so hot back then!!
My fringe was also teased sky high. It was also over streaked and over permed. I use to use mum’s clothes iron to iron the fringe.
Now, the iron the fringe thing – I never tried that. The teasing sky high? You betcha x
Oh yes I confess I had the high fringe, used Sun In and lemon juice and had hair that naturally looked like a scruffy shaggy dog. I think that is why I straighten my hair all the time now … to make up for all those years. Imagine what we are going to think in 20-30 years time of our poker straight hair.
We will LAUGH at our straight hair, I’m positive of it. But I agree, the fact I could never get my hair straight now makes me want straight hair!
Shudder.
I totally used Sun In…but only in the front, where I could see.
So my hair was an orangey copper in the front and brown in the back.
Hideous.
Of course at the time I thought it was hot.
Live and learn!
LOL – that’s hilarious. I would squeeze lemon juice on mine because the mags told me I’d go blonder. Never worked!
I went from short to mullet to long in the 80s. I didn’t have big hair, being in school and all, but did do the high fringe!
The high fringe took a particularly skilled round rubbing motion to achieve – with a lot of hairspray!
In the 80’s my Grandma used to say my sister and I looked like we’d been ‘dragged through a bush backwards’, and looking back at photos of our hair at the time, she had a point. We were fans of gel, scrunching, and fringes like a hair verandah. Great times.
So much hairspray!!!
My regrets run along the same lines as yours Nikki,a spiral perm,when you have curly hair already duh?? what was I thinking and it looked like a triangle and took 2 whole years to grow out,sunbaking every chance I got,and I got streaks too,and they were more like tiger stripes,orange in my then mid brown hair ,very attractive NOT.Oh and my leotards I used to wear to aerobics too funny,very Jane Fonda workout look.
That book would be very intersting indeed!
Oh, the leotards … in the ’90s they call all fluoro for me too!