Come along as we trace hairspray's journey through the decades
We’ve all seen them. We’ve laughed at them. Some of us were actually in them, though we cringe when we look back now. I’m talking about old yearbook and prom photos where young women are pictured with with big hair—painstakingly teased, styled, and sprayed stiff. Some of us are old enough to remember having the best hairspray of the time, the big aerosol cans of Aqua Net or Alberto VO5, right there on our dressers back in the eighties, along with our curling irons, lip gloss, and blue eyeshadow palettes.
Hairspray has come a long way since the days when it shellacked our hair stiff and shiny, but it’s still a product most of us have on our dressers or in our bathrooms, and we count on it to keep our hair looking freshly-styled all day long.
But what is the history behind this beauty product? How was it developed? Who was the first to use it, and how has it improved since then?
Hairspray History
The story of hairspray begins in World War II when the first aerosol spray cans were developed as a method to disperse insect repellent to protect soldiers from mosquito-borne malaria. Chase Products was the first company to see additional potential in the aerosol spray can, and in 1948 they produced the first resin-based aerosol hairspray, as well as spray paint and spray-on snow. This early hairspray was similar to shellac, and held a hairstyle in place by bonding the hair shafts together.
It wasn’t until two years later when Helene Curtis released her “Spray Net” hairspray that this new product quickly became a best-selling women’s beauty product. In fact, it was this hairspray— and soon its competitor, Aqua Net—which were responsible for such hairstyles as the beehive, the bubble, and the bouffant, which couldn’t have existed without the best hairspray choices of the time to keep them in place.
Hairspray remained a wildly popular seller through the fifties and sixties.
Hairspray in the 1970s and 80s
Hairspray sales took a sudden decline at the very end of the sixties and through the seventies. This was partly because of the new, more natural look of the flower children and hippy hairstyles which did not require hairspray. This, combined with the new knowledge of danger to the ozone layer by the aerosol spray can’s propellant, chlorofluorocarbons, meant hairspray was suddenly on the back shelves. It was also revealed that the vinyl chloride included in hairspray’s propellent caused cancer, something manufacturers were aware of long before they removed this ingredient from their products.
With the safer design of aerosol cans, and dangerous ingredients removed from hairspray, it began to be a big seller again as disco reignited the hairspray fever at the end of the 1970s. It was a timely return to the front shelves, because as the 1980s moved forward, the hairstyles became bigger again. This time the best hairspray of the time was free of chlorofluorocarbons, with the first safer aerosol cans being produced by Alberto VO5.
As the 1980s progressed, hairspray usage increased, thanks partly to the rock and punk looks, which meant men were also spraying their hair into stiff spikes and mohawks, at the same time that women’s hairstyles were growing bigger, with perms, curling irons, and hot rollers requiring liberal amounts of spray to keep the hair big all day long.
Today’s Sprays
The best hairspray products today are much safer on both the environment and our bodies. Pump bottles offer an alternative to aerosol cans, though the droplets formed are larger, wetter, and less diffused, they still do a good job of spraying hairspray’s polymer solutions onto hair to help hold it in place. Pump style hairsprays are also safer on the lungs because the droplets formed by a pump are too large to be inhaled.
The hairspray brands that are still available in aerosol sprays are now propelled by environmentally safer ingredients such as hydrocarbons and compressed gasses. Hairspray formulas have also improved, with newer formulas being lighter, less sticky, and much more natural looking than the stiff sprays of the past which kept our beehives up in the air, or our long Farrah Fawcett locks flowing out in fluffy wings from our faces.
Today’s hairsprays are still considered a haircare essential for blowouts with a hairdryer or flatironed looks, even if we aren’t currently sporting hairstyle looks that require being shellacked into place. Today’s best hairspray options keep hair appearing natural but looking like it's been professionally done, but can still keep flyaways in place, help hold bobby pins secure, and hold a hairstyle all day, while still allowing hair to move in a natural way.
Resources— AOL.com, StyleCaster, Encyclopedia of Fashion, ScientificAmerican
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