“Next door neighbor and best friend to your face – your hair!  How have you been treating it?  Something like this – if I know women: flipping a comb through it several times a day, giving it a painstaking wave once a week and a casual shampoo when decency demands it, and otherwise doing nothing whatever for it.  “Long may it wave!” is the modern maiden’s prayer for her top knot.  She asks for Francois at the hairdresser’s because he has a deft way with the curl over her ear.  To her the fact that he skimps on rubbing and rinsing and often leaves soap on her hair is unimportant beside the fact that he gives the best wave in town.

This is all wrong.  To keep its nice, healthy color and luster, your hair must have proper care – most of it simple and inexpensive, but necessary.  I wish I could make every woman who reads this article realize the importance of brushing.  I am told that there are women nowadays who don’t even own a hair brush, and I am certain that very few of us use one as often as we should.  Brushing for a few minutes night and morning accomplishes surprising results.  It cleans the hair of an amazing amount of dust.  It distributes oil the length of the hair and thus helps to keep it glossy and free from split ends and that dry, strawy look that annoys so many women.  Try fifty stroke morning and evening, and I promise you your hair won’t be listless and stringy.

Next in importance to daily brushing and massage, is the shampoo.  Hair can not be clean-smelling, healthy, and manageable unless it is washed often. Just how often depends on whether your hair is dry or oil, whether you live in the country or in a city, and what the climate is.  Wash your hair when it looks dull or oily, when the brush shows undue grime, when you notice dandruff.  Wash it more frequently in warm weather when the scalp perspires.

Another interesting product (prepared shampoo) is a help to blondes whose hair begins to get oily and darker three or four days after a shampoo.  By applying it sparingly, letting it dry, and brushing out the white deposit what has absorb the extra oil, you can make your hair fluffy and bright without disturbing a marcel.  

Blondes also like a lemon rinse because it is believe to have a slight bleaching action.  It also helps to remove soap curds from the hair, especially if the water used is hard.  A little brilliantine will give gloss and softness to the hair that seems too dry after the shampoo.

There would be more lovely coiffures if every woman knew how to give herself a wave.  Even after a permanent, many women are helpless without a hairdresser, and very few can do anything with straight hair.  Lack of patience and practice is usually to blame.  If you are starting out determine to be your own hairdresser, it is a good idea to watch an expert do your hair in order to see just where the waves are placed and how the curls are made.  Then buy a good wave-set, some fine hairpins, a net, and some curlers.  Wash your hair, and while it is still wet, apply the wave lotion generously.  Now puts the waves in place, fasten them with pins, curl up the ends – if you have the short curly coiffure so much in vogue – slip on the net and pin it tight, and let your hair dry thoroughly.  The first time may not be a complete success, but try it again.  Before long you will be waving your hair as naturally as you now shampoo it.”

I like the last part – “the first time may not be a complete success, but try it again.”  So true!

Happy Styling!

~Aimee

Source: Good Housekeeping: Volume 95 Number 3, September 1932