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Torture beauty secrets of our mothers
“Beauty requires sacrifice”. This capital truth sometimes pushes women to madness. Women living in the USSR were lucky only in that the medieval fashion for zinc white and tight corsets, which cause fainting and displacement of internal organs, has long passed. However, they also had to tinker with them to keep up with the trend. Now, in a time of abundance and availability of beauty products and technology, we can only sympathize with our mothers and grandmothers. And wonder: how hardy a woman is who wants to be a beauty!
An iron tube with round holes on the sides for air circulation and an elastic tied at the base to hold a lock of hair. Classic beauty-torture tool of the USSR era. In Soviet hairdressing salons, such curlers hung on the wall in huge lows, worn by rubber bands on a thick bent wire.
What were these curlers terrible? Yes, literally everyone. The woman’s head, equipped with a couple of dozen iron curlers, became heavy, like a cannonball. They mercilessly pulled the strands both by their own gravity and with an elastic band. And from the elastic bands on the dried strands, ugly creases remained. In order not to spoil the upper, “main” strands for the hairstyle with kinks, a thick knitting needle or pencil was inserted between the elastic bands of the upper row of curlers.
Now attention, drum roll. The most persistent inhabitants of the USSR curled their hair on curlers in the evening and … slept on them. All night long to torment on pieces of iron in order to come to work with curls in the morning! And after that we laugh at how in Ryazanov’s film “Office Romance” the secretary Vera teaches the boss Lyudmila Prokofievna to pluck her eyebrows with a drawing pen …
“I got my first electric hairdryer around the beginning of the eighties. It was a terribly chic thing for those times, albeit quite cumbersome, – recalls 65-year-old Galina Nikolaevna. – The hair dryer had different attachments and a huge hood made of rustling bologna. But he was nice to me and without attachments – he blew hot air right on the hair! It was no longer necessary to stand in the morning over burning gas burners, holding an unfolded newspaper overhead. “
Drying your hair over burning gas is still a pleasure. And if you consider that the woman at the same time not only spoiled her hair with intense heat and heated metal curlers, but also inhaled harmful products of combustion of household gas, then the process can be called torture.
Soviet style false eyelash effect
The eyelash extension service is now one of the most demanded in the beauty market. Fan eyelashes, the dream of every woman, are now available to everyone if desired.
In the USSR, a young beauty, dreaming of long eyelashes that make her face so fragile and touching, had to go for tricks. Craftsmen diluted dry “Leningradskaya” mascara to the ideal degree of density and applied in several layers. And so that the layers were thicker and the eyelashes would sooner acquire a coal “hairiness”, a little ordinary flour or powder was mixed with the diluted mascara.
The elegance of a woman is unthinkable without stockings, but what if pantyhose and stockings are a terrible shortage?
“On the eve of summer, some young girls went for a trick – they tinted their legs in tan color with the help of a decoction of onion peels,” recalls Raisa Vasilievna, 66 years old. – At least in the evening at the dances it looked very much even nothing. And later, when the first dull beige tights went on sale, they were also dyed dark brown in a decoction of onion peels. “
Near the shelves of an ordinary modern supermarket, lined with hair styling products, a woman from the 60s and 70s would probably have fainted with delight. It turns out that there is not only hairspray (shortage!), But also mousses, foams, sprays, gels, waxes and even clay for modeling curls. Having recovered from a swoon, a Soviet woman could tell us a lot.
For example, as in hairdressing salons and at home, before curling on curlers, the curls were moistened with a solution of sugar or beer in order to somehow fix the “wave” or fleece. Attacks on beauties with sugar curls of wasps and bees were frequent and even ridiculed in the humorous magazine “Crocodile”.
The end of the 60s – the beginning of the 70s of the last century – the era of the general fashion for high hairstyles. Torture for the sake of beauty was practiced regularly and everywhere. The very process of blunting, that is, combing strands, dumping them into a ball of felt for the sake of a hairstyle, was terrible and destructive for the hair. The hairstyle done by the master was kept for weeks, like the apple of an eye – not every day to run to the hairdresser’s to pick hair. Sleeping half-eyed, preserving a fashionable high hairstyle – isn’t it torture? Then we will enhance the sensation with one small detail: it’s good if an old nylon stocking served as the basis for the “challah”, and it also happened that the volume was achieved by putting a tin can inside the house from the hair. Empty, of course. Thanks for that.
Recent advances in the chemical industry
“The eyebrow should be as thin as a thread raised in surprise,” – let’s return to the instructions of the secretary Vera from the film “Office Romance”. It would be strange to think that Soviet industry would start thinking about how a Soviet woman could draw her eyebrows. She herself will find and draw something. And so it was: the so-called chemical pencils – blue and black – were at the service of ladies in the USSR. The same chemical pencil that began to write brightly if the lead was wet. And the eyebrows can be depicted, and the arrows, like Marina Vlady in the film “The Witch”. The main thing is to slobber your pencil.
Crushed chalk eyeshadow mixed with blue powder – isn’t it torture to look stylish? Using a pin to scrape off the gold paint from the letters “Smolensk” written under the lid of the piano in order to make yourself golden shadows — isn’t that a trick?
“Light lilac lipstick was in vogue, but only an eerie carrot color was on sale,” says Svetlana Viktorovna, 67 years old. – And once I was terribly lucky – I bought a box of theatrical makeup! I mixed white makeup paste with raspberry and got the coveted lilac color. With black arrows, the makeup was just cosmic! “
Now girls buy stockings to seduce or create retro pin-up looks. In the 60s and 70s, stockings were only worn because pantyhose were not yet on sale. The upper edge of the stocking was either fastened to the belt (which also served as a shaping underwear), or … It is even painful to talk about it: you could support the stocking with a special round elastic band, which tightly fitted the top of the leg. Naturally, this was terribly inconvenient. The rubber bands cut painfully into the body and stopped blood circulation.
The 70s of the last century – the era of synthetic curls. With the help of henna, curlers and fleece, it was possible to create a stylish image, but there was also a cardinal way to solve all problems – a wig. I put it on in the morning – and immediately with a haircut, with a shock of curls. You can be chestnut, you can red, but a special chic is a cold blond with a shade of gray hair. In approximately such a wig, we see in several episodes the heroine Natalia Gundareva in the film “Sweet Woman”. Everyone would be fine with a wig if it wasn’t so hot in it, and if under it, deprived of oxygen, the beauties’ own hair would not deteriorate so badly.
However, we should pay tribute to our mothers: even with such meager opportunities, they managed to be irresistible and dizzy for men.