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DeAnn (Wolkow) Kruempel, Columnist
Hair Curling Stories
Curl-coveting and straight-hair envy has endured a long and winding road throughout history.
The stories could make your hair stand on end! Egyptians wore curly wigs held together with beeswax. Greeks and Romans used hot metal rods to curl their hair. Pain and risk for the sake of beauty have created stories to make one’s hair curl.
In Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Jo heated tongs in the fireplace and promised Meg lovely curls as she wound a lock of hair around them. “Ought they to smoke like that?” Beth wondered. Jo replied that it was just the dampness drying. But once the hot curler was removed, instead of a cloud of ringlets waving from Meg’s forehead, a row of scorched bundles glowered from the bureau next to the tongs. Now that was a bad hair day!
Artfully placed ringlets and curls have been the rage through the years. For women with naturally straight hair, curls have been hard to come by. I recall our mother talking about “rag rollers” when she grew up. She reminisced of heating “crimpers” on the wood stove to achieve wanted waves. In later years, I remember seeing Mom and her sisters’ hair wound into small “pin curls” that lay flat against their scalps. To achieve a tight-curl effect, they also used narrow metal curlers with a hinged end that clamped down to hold the small cylinder in place.
Thankfully, my time of vanity over hair came at the end of the suffering-pain-for-beauty era, but I recall about every kind of curling device stored in shoe boxes or plastic caddies stashed in dresser drawers. Dorothy remembers sleeping on prickly brush rollers every night. Plastic “magnetic” tubes of every size and color waited to roll strands of hair. Really large bobby pins or sharp plastic pins poked through holes in rollers to hold them in place, at the same time poking irreparable holes in the head. No matter what the antennae-like devices, a thin nylon scarf tied at the back of the neck held them in place. Much to many a suffering teen’s dismay, occasionally a roller or two fell out during the night, resulting in straight strands. A half can of Aqua Net or a strategically-placed barrette helped disguise the mishap, eliminating the girl’s urge to tear her hair out. Some innovative teen got a wild hair and used juice cans as substitutes for jumbo rollers to train her tresses. Imagine sleeping on those!
Beauty departments offered curling gadgets in varying degrees of pokiness. Foam rollers and “spoolies” of softer plastic provided options for less painful sleep. Dippety-Do was supposed to hold rollers in place. Once set and dried, the green gel also held curls in place, providing the slinky look. The bouncy coils gave new meaning to the phrase, “not a hair out of place!”
Eventually, electric hot rollers saved the day, allowing quick curling before school or work and a good night’s sleep.
Mane management has taken more than a hairpin turn in recent years. Women have let their hair down and now make do with less fuss on the hairdos. No longer do we need to suffer through the hair-raising experiences of the 60s and 70s. Likely, we will never see hide nor hair of such torture devices again. I for one, will not lose any hair over it!
DeAnn Kruempel grew up on a farm near De Smet, SD, the sixth child of Harrison and Mabel Wolkow. She attended school at Erwin and De Smet and has lived in Benedict, ND, Toeterville, Akron, Missouri Valley and Logan, IA. The author worked in school and public libraries for more than 30 years. Her column has run in a growing number of Midwest newspapers for five years.
Each year the author has published the stories into a book. She has also written a historical fiction series, “Promises to Keep.” Her ten books are available on Amazon.
Signed copies may be purchased at the Harrison County Welcome Center. Contact Kruempel at deannkruempelauthor@gmail.com
