{"id":13306,"date":"2014-03-19T02:44:11","date_gmt":"2014-03-19T02:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/03\/19\/azurelunatic-virtualclutter-hair-washing-and\/"},"modified":"2015-02-20T18:13:17","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T18:13:17","slug":"azurelunatic-virtualclutter-hair-washing-and","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/03\/19\/azurelunatic-virtualclutter-hair-washing-and\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-13306 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/03\/19\/azurelunatic-virtualclutter-hair-washing-and\/attachment\/13307\/'><img width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/files\/2014\/03\/tumblr_mewyuaduJi1rrjjv0o1_500-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/azurelunatic.tumblr.com\/post\/66505512910\/virtualclutter-hair-washing-and-care-in-the\">azurelunatic<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/virtualclutter.tumblr.com\">virtualclutter<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div>\n<div><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lydiajoyce.com\/blog\/?p=1022\">Hair washing and care in the 19th century<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"meta\">Hair washing is something that almost every historical writer, romance or not, gets wrong. How many times have you read a story in which a heroine sinks gratefully into a sudsy tub of water and scrubs her hair\u2013or, even worse, piles it up on her head to wash it? Or have you watched the BBC\u2019s Manor House and other \u201chistorical reenactment\u201d series, in which modern people invariably destroy their hair by washing using historical recipes?<\/div>\n<div class=\"storycontent\">\n<p>Historical women kept their hair clean, but that doesn\u2019t mean their hair was often directly washed. Those who had incredibly difficult to manage hair might employ a hairdresser to help them wash, cut, and singe (yes, singe!) their hair as often as once a month, but for most women, hair-washing was, at most, a seasonal activity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy?\u201d you might ask. \u201cWasn\u2019t their hair lank, smelly, and nasty?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And the writers who embrace ignorance as a badge of honor will say, \u201cWell, that just goes to show that people used to be gross and dirty, and that\u2019s why I never bother with that historical accuracy stuff!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And then I have to restrain myself from hitting them\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The reason that hair was rarely washed has to do with the nature of soaps versus modern shampoos. Soaps are made from a lye base and are alkaline. Hair and shampoo are acidic. Washing hair in soap makes it very dry, brittle, and tangly. Men\u2019s hair was shirt enough and cut often enough that using soap didn\u2019t harm it too much and the natural oils from the scalp could re-moisturize it fairly easily after even the harshest treatment, but in an age when the average woman\u2019s hair was down to her waist, soap could literally destroy a woman\u2019s head of hair in fairly short order.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, indirect methods of hair-cleaning were used. Women washed their hair brushes daily, and the proverbial \u201c100 strokes\u201d were used to spread conditioning oils from roots to tips and to remove older or excess oil and dirt. This was more time-consuming than modern washing, and this is one of the reasons that \u201cgood hair\u201d was a class marker. The fact that only women of the upper classes could afford all the various rats, rolls, and other fake additions to bulk out their real hair was another. (An average Victorian woman of the upper middle or upper class had more apparent \u201chair\u201d in her hairstyle than women I know whose unbound hair falls well below their knees.) Women rarely wore their hair lose unless it was in the process of being put up or taken down\u2013or unless they were having a picture specifically taken of it! At night, most women braided their hair for bed. Now that my hair is well below my waist, I understand why!<\/p>\n<p>The first modern shampoo was introduced in the late 1920s. Shampoos clean hair quickly and also remove modern styling products, like hairspray and gel, but the frequent hair-washing that has become common leaves longer hair brittle even with the best modern formulations. (From the 1940s to the 1960s, many if not most middle-class women had their hair washed only once a week, at their hairdresser\u2019s, where it was restyled for the next week. The professional hairdresser stepped into the void that the maid left when domestic service became rare. Washing one\u2019s hair daily or every other day is a very recent development.) That\u2019s where conditioners came into play. Many people have wondered how on earth women could have nice hair by modern standards before conditioners, but conditioners are made necessary by shampoos. Well-maintained hair of the 19th century didn\u2019t need conditioners because the oils weren\u2019t regularly stripped from it.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, the oils made hair much more manageable than most people\u2019s is today, which made it possible for women to obtain elaborate hairstyles using combs and pins\u2013without modern clips or sprays\u2013to keep their hair in place. This is why hair dressers still like to work with \u201cday-old\u201d hair when making elaborate hairstyles.<\/p>\n<p>There were hair products like oils for women to add shine and powders meant to help brush dirt out of hair, but they weren\u2019t in very wide use at the time. Hair \u201ctonics\u201d\u2013mean to be put on the hair or taken orally to make hair shinier, thicker, or stronger\u2013were ineffective but were readily available and widely marketed.<\/p>\n<p>If you have a heroine go through something particularly nasty\u2013such as a fall into a pond or the like\u2013then she should wash her hair, by all means. This would be done in a tub prepared for the purpose\u2013not in the bath\u2013and would involve dissolving soap shavings into a water and combine them with whatever other products were desired. Then a maid would wash the woman\u2019s hair as she leaned either forward or backward to thoroughly wet and wash her hair. Rinsing would be another stage. The hair would NEVER be piled on the head. If you have greater than waist-length hair and have ever tried to wash it in a modern-sized bathtub, you understand why no one attempted to wash her hair in a hip bath or an old, short claw foot tub! It would be almost impossible.<\/p>\n<p>A quick rundown of other hair facts:<\/p>\n<p>Hydrogen peroxide was used to bleach hair from 1867. Before that, trying to bleach it with soda ash and sunlight was the most a girl could do. Henna was extremely popular from the 1870s through the 1890s, especially for covering gray hair, to such an extent that gray hair became almost unseen in certain circles in England in this time. Red hair was considered ugly up until the 1860s, when the public embracing of the feminine images as presented by the aesthetic movement (Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) gained ground, culminating in a positive rage for red hair in the 1870s to 1880s. Some truly scary metallic salt compounds were used to color hair with henna formulations by the late 19th century, often with unfortunate results.<\/p>\n<p>Hair curling was popular in the 19th century and could either by achieved with rag rolls or hot tongs. Loose \u201csausage\u201d rolls were the result of rag rolling. Hot tongs were used for making the \u201cfrizzled\u201d bangs of the 1970s to 1880s\u2013and \u201cfrizzled\u201d they certainly were. The damage caused by the poor control of heating a curler over a gas jet or candle flame was substantial, and most women suffered burnt hair at one time or another. For this reason, a number of women chose to eschew the popular style and preserve their hair from such dangers! Permanents were first in use in the 1930s. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>(From:\u00a0http:\/\/www.lydiajoyce.com\/blog\/?p=1022)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Anne Shirley probably used indigo on her red red hair. Indigo will turn brown hair a lovely blue-black. Blue and orange? A most appalling green.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>azurelunatic: virtualclutter: Hair washing and care in the 19th century Hair washing is something that almost every historical writer, romance or not, gets wrong. How many times have you read a story in which a heroine sinks gratefully into a sudsy tub of water and scrubs her hair\u2013or, even worse, piles it up on her &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/03\/19\/azurelunatic-virtualclutter-hair-washing-and\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\"><\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[644,1333],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13306"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13308,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13306\/revisions\/13308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}