Similar styles were all about volume, with bouncy curls, blowouts with curtain bangs, and flipped bobs. On the opposite end, long straight hair parted down the middle or at the side was also a common look and usually included, curtain, blunt, brow-skimming, or parted bangs.
Straight and Sleek
Born from the hippie movement, long, straight hair became highly fashionable during the '70s.
Long, sleek, and parted was THE look of the '70s. The total opposite of the voluminous feathered hair was the long and straight hairstyle. This usually was worn as a single-length cut with a center part that was typically adorned with flowers or a headband. For this style, it was definitely the longer the better.
It seems to have been around awhile now, but when did it start? Back in the 1990s,2000s,and most of the 2010s everyone had flat straight hair. Now younger teens and younger women are going BIG and those older women still have the flat straight hairstyle. What year did this start to happen?
Barbra Streisand, an American singer,and actress, is the one who made crimping hair popular. She has been seen rocking this look ever since the 1970s. Geri Cusenza was then inspired to invent a modern crimping tool in 1975 because of Barbra.
The Shag
If you are looking for inspirations for hairstyles form the 70's, look no further than with Jane Fonda. The Shag happens to be the hairstyle that works for both men and women. The way David Cassidy sported this hairstyle made him an iconic heartthrob back in the day.
Hair straighteners became increasingly popular in the 1960s and 1970s, as more and more women began to wear their hair straight.
Type 1A: The rarest hair type, this one is very straight and fine with a “wispy” appearance. It's very difficult to get it to hold a curl.
Although straight hair was the norm at the beginning of the decade, as many late 1970s styles were still relevant, by around 1982 the perm had come into fashion.
The distributions of these straight hair related alleles (see figure) support the hypothesis that our human ancestors had curly hair; the straight hair found in East Asians and Caucasians likely developed independently.
In the 70s, platinum blonde was the colour of choice for feminine and sensual styles, just like the shade seen on Sylvie Vartan and Brigitte Bardot. XXL volume. Diana Ross and Donna Summer are to thank for the success of the afro cut. The idea?
The social change and dynamic introduced a new kind of expression of femininity that also reflected the male gaze and the heavy-handed objectification of it all. Fast forward to the 1970s when long hair became well associated with the counterculture movement of the hippies and the rejection of societal conformity.
Some iconic 70s hairstyles for women include the shag haircut, feathered hair, curtain bangs, and the afro. These styles represented the fashion and beauty trends of the decade and are still recognized and celebrated today.
When dressing for the disco, 70s beauties would dial up their eye makeup with earthy gold tones, sparkling copper eyeshadows and smokey black eyeliner, sometimes adding playful pops of colour like gorgeous greens or powder blues.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, nearly all black women straightened their hair as a principle of “good grooming” [1].
The 1970s were an experimental period for hair, with everything from poker-straight locks to full-blown perms gaining popularity.
Specifically, the relevant findings indicate that the EDAR mutation coding for the predominant East Asian 'coarse' or thick, straight hair texture arose within the past ≈65,000 years, which is a time frame that covers from the earliest of the 'Out of Africa' migrations up to now.
1920s: The Roaring Twenties introduced a major shift in women's hairstyles. The iconic bob haircut became popular, characterized by short, straight hair that was often worn with a side parting. This style symbolized women's liberation and a break from traditional gender roles.
A general observation across experiments was that straight hair was perceived as younger, healthier, and more attractive than wavy hair and darker shades (medium copper and brown) were perceived more positively than blonde hair.
Hair type and texture are determined by several factors, including genetics. The African hair is more coiled and drier; Asian hair (Korean, Japanese) is straighter and thicker; and Caucasian hair is somewhere in between with around 45% having straight hair, 40% having wavy hair, and 15% having curly hair.
Big hair is a hairstyle that emphasizes large volume or largely styled hair, especially when those styles make the hair occupy a large amount of space above and around the head. The label "big hair" for such styles originated in the late 1970s, when these styles were beginning a period of popularity.
In 1909, Isaac K. Shero patented the first hair straightener, made of two flat, heated irons that were pressed together. Heated metal implements became more popular, as they were easier to use and made hair feel less dry. In the 1960s, women even used clothes irons to straighten their hair!