flashback...

reading Curvy Kitty's "a cautionary tale" about the 'art' of hair styling the other night took me back to the implements of torture young girls were subjected to in the 50s and early 60s...

mothers australia-wide (worldwide too probably) seemed to have this need for their daughters to look like shirley temple (who, incidentally, is a year older than my mother so i suspect it's a handed-down desire from my grandmother's generation)...

Shirley & friend (1940 perhaps)...

& me (1959 - so shy)...


but to get my straight locks looking like that it took lots of persuasion...

from the ancient heat-on-naked-flame curling iron (and it was very, very scary seeing that coming towards you - and my mother wasn't the most patient person so there was a lot of catching hair in tongs, and a lot of burning head, hair, ears and forehead!!!) ...

to tightly wrapped rags (and that was a process and a half - a lot of hair pulling - a lot of trepidation when you saw an old sheet being torn up!!!)...

with the torturous 'night-time curler agony' to come as i got older...

imagine sleeping with these things in your head... they were plastic, with little spiky ridges all along and around them - not pleasant at all!!!




oooh, i did sooooo love shirley temple movies though - especially the dance scenes with the likes of bill 'bojangles' robinson and george murphy in 'the little colonel', 'the littlest rebel', 'little miss broadway' - actually probably the only reason to watch a shirley temple movie (they were total propaganda after all) - hard to believe she's 81 now...

and here's some of those dance routines...