I REMEMBER AQUA NET

It was August 1961 just before my freshman year at Fairfax High School, Fairfax, VA which was a suburb of Washington DC.  My good friend Kathy Lamb called and invited me to go on the Buddy Dean Show, a teen dance show in Baltimore, MD similar to American Bandstand in Philadelphia and The Milt Grant Show in Washington, DC.  Kathy's dad was a  record promoter for Decca Records and got us tickets for the Buddy Dean Show.  This is the show that film producer John Waters, who grew up in Baltimore, based his film Hairspray on.

Kathy's date was Billy Hawke and my date was Danny Snider and we were all great friends.   All but Billy had been going to my neighborhood's Ardmore Teen Club Saturday night teen dances for two years.  Kathy and Danny and I were teen dance show pros having been on The Milt Grant Show with our teen club the fall of 1959.  

Kathy had very short dark curly hair and I had a long pony tail with a pompadour of bangs a la Connie Stevens as Cricket on the Hawaiian Eye tv show.  We both wore broomstick skirts which were gathered skirts with a thick black belt around the waist and white shirts with the collar turned up and rolled sleeves.  Danny and Billy wore what we would now call chinos and white shirts and thin ties with their collars turned up, too.  I can't remember our shoes but we girls because we were "dressed up" probably had on black flats (otherwise it would be tennis shoes with turned up bobby sox) and the guys wore regular guy shoes with white socks.  White socks!

The show was fun and we two couples were in the spotlight dance!

Okay, I guess you understand that Kathy and I, 14-15 years old, were the country bumpkins from the little town of Fairfax, VA. in the big city of Baltimore, MD.  Even Washington, DC was still just a little southern town then.  The kids that were regulars on this dance show were very sophisticated compared to us.  Although Jackie Kennedy had been first lady for a year and wore a bouffant hairdo this was the first time we'd seen hair teased and pouffed to gigantic proportons.  The one girl that sticks in my mind now for over fifty years was tall and very thin, dark haired, and wore a pencil thin black skirt and a black sweater tucked at the waist, again, with a big thick black belt.  Her hair was enormous.  ENORMOUS.  Teased to a height and a width I would never, ever be able to achieve and held with  hairspray.......Aqua Net!

Looks like Kathy is dancing on air!

That fall BIG HAIR came to my little town.  By the next spring even I had cut my pony tail and teased a little and highlighted with a homemade mixture of one part ammonia to two parts peroxide (or was it the other way around!)  In another year the bouffant was out and the flip was in.  A year from that long straight hair was in and curly hair was being ironed straight on our Mother's ironing boards.  As a history of hair in the 1960's I may as well finish by saying long straight or curly unprocessed Hippy Hair finished the decade....and this is without even mentioning what the Beatles did for men or what the Afro did for everyone.