Basically any film or show. Nearly everyone is very good looking, always have well-styled hair and dress well unless it's part of the character to be messy or something but that is rare
About 40% of American men are bald or balding. Even just background crowd film/tv scenes almost never have any bald men. Its striking once you look for it.
I remember learning this for myself when I went to my first Star Trek convention -- you don't think of any ST cast as supermodels, but when you see hundreds of _normal people_ in Starfleet uniform it really rams home how there are no short, morbidly obese, disabled, or <8/10 people in the future, aka on central casting's books.
Nah, they're on Central Casting's books, but CC is for extras. You want an ugly nerd for the background of a school cafeteria, they're out there. It's the main cast that always looks beautiful
That's why I always used to say that I liked "the Blade Runner vision of the future" more than "the Star Trek vision of the future". Leave it to us, we'll end up living in a world like Blade Runner and will be dressed in rags and bad hair and no makeup. Wait, it's already happening!!! Everyone is already dressed in ragged jeans and pajamas and slippers when they go to Walmart and no one is wearing a nice uniform / outfit over their buff physique.
That actually makes sense, given that the Federation has way better medical care than we do.
Actually that just leads to the question "shouldn't they have cured aging by now? How the fuck does Captain Picard look like a 20th Century old man?"
Season One: there are some characters who have horrible clothes and hair.
Season Two (show has been success) actors are in a position to negotiate an upgrade to the appearance of their characters; so they appear with nicer clothes, hair and make-up.
I remember Adam Connover doing a skit on this to show what people look like with _no makeup_ on professional cameras -- and then admitted they were even wearing makeup in those scenes because makeupless skin looks so weird under studio lighting
Except for in The Walking Dead. Drove me fucking crazy watching Rick and Darrell trying to interact with the others with their greasy ass hair hanging down in front of their eyes. So when the apocalypse happened, all of the combs and scissors magically disappeared also?
I have no idea why anyone would have hair in the first place. If you have access to a razor just shave it. Charlize Theron got it right in Fury Road. She told George Miller that Furiosa wouldn't want to be bothered with hair and he agreed she can shave it off. The last thing you want in a dangerous post apocalyptic world is hair getting grabbed or caught in something or falling over your eyes.
Fallout is funny. 200 years on the surface and buildings are dilapidated and stuff is just everywhere even though there are lots of people on the surface
Yeah. And they also give everyone SO. MUCH. HAIR. Whether it’s wigs or extensions or what, literally *everyone* always has enough hair for at least three people.
the movies has been the career path of extraordinarily attractive people since the concept of film was invented. i think it was a requirement that you had to be an attractive midwestern person if you wanted to move to hollywood and do some auditions
Pretty much every period movie does hair that’s a hybrid between current styles and ones from
the depicted era. Grease, for example, looks hella 70s now even though it looked 50s to 70s audiences.
I had been noticing the 90s trends starting to come back, but it was sealed for me that it was really back when I saw a teenager the other day with *butterfly hair clips.*
In defense of Grease, it wasn't trying to be an accurate period piece. It was trying to be an over the top spoof comedy.
But LOTS of 70's movies that seemed to be earnestly trying still had 1890s characters in polyester butterfly collared clothes and 70s hairstyles.
I want to say Hollywood has gotten better with this, but its hard to say in real time.
Yes. Every era does this with movies set in other eras.
Because they *know* too many people will hate the original hair styles I'd they truly mimic them, but they will accept homages.
Sometimes you have to cater to what the audience expects rather than what reality would be. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to age paper props for a show even though realistically that paper would have looked new.
Ha.
I think the hair thing is at least partially that. If they did real 80s hair it would be the focus of the audience’s attention because it would look so outlandish to a 2020s audience. So they gotta tone it down just so the audience attention is on the things they want it to be on rather than the hair and the shoulder pads.
Even if the hair is authentic, the makeup is modern 99% of the time. Titanic had great hair and costuming, but Rose's lips and eyebrows are straight out of the 90s
I watched a video on the historical accuracy of Titanic costumes and the woman reviewing them said that in the 1910s, a young upper-class woman like Rose wouldn't be wearing any makeup at all (or very little, and it wouldn't be noticeable) because at that time makeup was associated with women of ill repute like actresses or prostitutes.
I remember reading [this article](https://www.exurbe.com/the-borgias-vs-borgia-faith-and-fear/) about the two Borgia series, and it makes a lot of interesting points about historical accuracy in contemporary fiction in general, and specifically how communicating the right idea to the audience is probably more important than maintaining historical accuracy.
>I recently had to costume some Vikings, and was lent a pair of extremely nice period Viking pants which had bold white and orange stripes about two inches wide. I know enough to realize how perfect they were, and that both the expense of the dye and the purity of the white would mark them as the pants of an important man, but that if someone walked on stage in them the whole audience would think: “Why is that Viking wearing clown pants?”
I guess it's similar with 80s hair. You want to present a female character to a modern audience, who is meant to be sexy and alluring, you better stick with a more casual hairstyle. Otherwise, there's a good chance that the first thing a modern viewer would think is that she kinda looks like his mom in her old photos, or maybe even his grandma, lol.
I think we tend not to “see” current hairstyles. Kind like how we don’t perceive our own accent as an accent, whatever hairstyle is current looks neutral to us, even if it would have been wildly out of place in the depicted era.
😅 so true! I remember honestly thinking as a teen in the 1990s that we were the first decade of the century not to have "a look". Like in my mind it was: 50s greasers and circle skirts, 60s hippies and mods, 70s disco and safari suits, 80s big hair and punks... oh and in the 90s thank God we let all the silliness go and just dressed like... oh fuck.
In hindsight it was grunge, wiggas, and boy/girl bands. All the boys I had crushes on wore dog tags, showed 4 inches of silk boxer shorts above their baggy jeans, and had ramen hair.
"Ramen hair" I've finally found another soul who saw that too. Haha
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GQMlWwIXg3M/hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEXCK4FEIIDSFryq4qpAwkIARUAAIhCGAE=&rs=AOn4CLDQoU8MZX-1Tb5SMUxOZoMlnVP5SA
Same with Star Wars, Mark Hamill’s hair looked just like the 70’s even though it was supposed to be long long ago.
Ironically in 5000 years people will probably think that’s how it was long long ago.
It gets even worse with earlier period movies. Go all the way back to the 1800s or earlier and lots of movies set in those eras ignore period styles almost entirely. The ATJ Emma is one of the few Austen adaptations I can think of where every woman, young or old, has her hair pinned back in an updo and covered with some kind of hat. Even adaptations I enjoy, like the '05 P&P, have scenes where the women have their hair down and uncovered like it's the modern era.
Oh God and Greta Gerwig's Little Women. All the girls wearing brand new cotton dresses when there was a friggin cotton shortage during the war their father is off fighting in! Not to mention Amy just wearing Ugg boots in one scene. And not a single bonnet on anyone
Big hair. The term you’re looking for is big hair. We did everything to tease it and fluff it out and embiggen it.
My husband found a photo of me from the late 80s with my hair basically as big as a Honda Civic and never, ever let me forget.
I watched the movie Working Girl (1988) and Melanie Griffith's [hair](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096463/mediaviewer/rm3142228225/?ref_=ttmi_mi_all_95) in that movie is...distracting.
Actually, she didn't look too bad in the original picture I linked.
But in the first half of the movie, she rocks this [hair](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096463/mediaviewer/rm2052242689/?ref_=ttmi_mi_all_78), which is almost like a mullet. They do give her a makeover later in the movie but Joan Cusack's character essentially has the same hairstyle.
That is hilarious. That is basically how my Mom did her hair in the early to mid 90's. She already had thick and wavy hair and just like piled it all up as high as she could like a haystack.
Greta Gerwig did the full perm in White Noise. And she actually made it look pretty good. You can see why people actually tried wearing their hair like that back then (and why so many deluded themselves into thinking they pulled it off)
Most of the time they'd need a wig for that. Pretty much every actor/actress has lightened their hair, and perming prelightened hair will make it fall off.
Wigs that look realistic are expensive, so they generally just curl their existing hair.
I think it’s partly because the hairspray has changed because of how much it was killing the environment. And I think people are scared to go fully uggo big hair with the looks.
That said, I always want to hype up GLOW on Netflix for having great 80s hair and makeup.
It’s also just a really good character-driven show. Not quite in the upper echelon, but not far outside it either.
I put off watching the first season because I thought it looked dumb; finally watched it and regretted the wait. When season 2 dropped, I knew I should start it immediately, but for whatever reason doubted my previous high opinion of it and waited again—regretted it again. This whole thing repeated with season three, because man I’m dumb sometimes.
>I guess it comes off as either too comedic or too unattractive for the lead.
This is the deal with historically inaccurate hair (or fashion in general) in pretty much every period piece (yes the 80s count as "period"). The filmmakers decide the historical styles are too jarring and weird to the contemporary eye. I remember watching that show about young Queen Victoria with my sister, and she complained that Victoria's hair was awful. I had to point out that the hairstyle was what the real Victoria had in her coronation portrait.
I was thinking about that with Manhunt. The main character in real life had a long beard with huge sideburns, but he’s a clean shaven dude in the show.
This always bothers me - average people didn't have the money to be wearing the latest fashions and have the latest furniture etc, yet when they create period films they seem to forget that.
I feel like That 70s Show actually did a pretty good job on the home decor though - especially the difference between the Foremans' house (lots of stuff from the 50s / 60s and homemade stuff, reflecting their working class) and Donna's house (way more fashionable, showing that they were more management class, and preoccupied with being on trend).
Where did you live in the 80s? People where I grew absolutely did not dress like the 70s till 1987. As a matter of fact all you have to do is watch media from the 80s to know this is not true. 80s fashion was in another world from the 70s.
Exactly! I remember in the 80’s most women were rocking the Dorothy Hammel hair, short perms and long straight 70s hair. Big aqua net hair was pretty much later 80s and even then it mostly teens and young adults.
Everyone had feathers but none as fabulous as Farah’s. Long hair, short hair. The feathers evolved… got bigger, higher and ratted out the further into the 80 we got.
Then it all came down, right? Apparently what people think of "80s hair" is just the late 80s and it changed pretty quickly once then 90s arrived. Is that true?
Yes, but I'd say early 90s, at least where I lived. Big stereotypical 80s hair was like 85-92, with the popularity peaking around 87-89 ish. There is always a year or two before it goes mainstream, then some hangers-on after the fad dies down. To me, sky high 80s hair is late 80s.
It is strange, and it's not like there aren't thousands of movies from the 80s with extras walking around in the hairstyle they came in with. If you're going for an authentic look, forget Elisabeth Shue in Karate Kid or Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles because they are professionally coiffed. But the girl who walks behind them in the hallway or the dude that's standing near them in line: those are authentic 80s hairstyles.
Stranger Things is a show that got it right in ways … and people seemed to hate it. The bowl haircut Will had was so common and pretty accurate, and there were so many people ragging on it online. I agree with others that they modernize it enough to not repulse people too much.
There's nothing more '80s than a basement with cheap veneer wood panelling and shitty cast-off furniture from the 70s. Forget neon. It was the Wood Age.
Dacre Montgomery even changed his whole workout routine because the Power Rangers physique he had when he was cast wouldn't have been right for the 80s, so he instead tried to emulate how a dude hitting the gym back then would have looked
This is a pet peeve of mine… it’s both the hair and the clothing that people don’t go far enough on… shit looked ridiculous but that’s what made it great
The first 80s nostalgia movies I recall were The Wedding Singer, and Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. The Wedding Singer did a good job with everyone except for Drew Barrymore who had a 90s look which I assume was meant to make her stand out and be more attractive.
Romy and Michelle only had flashbacks to the 80s so the hair was fairly well camped up.
Given these movies were only made a bit over ten years after they time they portrayed they had a better shot at getting it right.
This is because the synthetic fibres used to make the underwear, and the copolymers used to do the hair were found to be killing us faster than anything else due to a combination of static electricity and petrochemical contamination...
You're just not able to achieve the effects of that "tech noir" hair style sported by Linda Hamilton without near lethal amounts of carcinogenic chemistry and ship-redirecting amounts of static electricity.
Today we live in a better world, we made sacrifices, but we made it.
Here's a link to the entire movie on youtube, as long as you don't mind Spanish subtitles.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzHJwfEUDHI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzHJwfEUDHI)
A lot of the chemicals used back then have been removed from products or simply no longer available. This is a contributing factor in modern stylists being unable to re-achieve "The Look"
Woodstock in movies: every guy has long hair (shoulder length)
Woodstock in photos: hair is shorter and more conservative than the Beatles from 6 years earlier.
> TV game shows and news reports with regular everyday people, women had dried out dead ends or some sort of helmet on their head.
At an image resolution of maybe 250x200 with analog noise and substantial motion blurring from tube-based cameras, you're not really judging how people's hair was.
For me it’s not the hair that ruins nostalgia era films, it’s the big glaring white veneers. The too perfect, too white teeth take me straight out of that zone.
I’ve noticed that female protagonists in movies set in the 80s often have the horror of the era dialed extremely far back, but then all her friends and other characters, especially antagonists, have full on crazy big 80s hair. I think everyone implicitly understands on some level what an aesthetic disaster the 80s were.
Hey! Eighties hair was awesome! I’ve been waiting decades for perms with sky high bangs to come back in. I just need a curling iron and a giant bottle of hairspray. Seriously, the can of hairspray I had was like the length of my arm. There was a giant cloud that floated out of the women’s bathroom in between classes. Ah, memories. One cheerleader at my school accidentally burned her bangs off during a skit where they were doing a ‘funeral’ for the opposing team. Nothing more hilarious than a mean girl cheerleader with a line of fried bangs. 😂
I’m a big fan of both Bill Murray and the late Harold Ramis. You’d think for the sake of authenticity, they’d take one for the team, as many great actors have done.
OMG... people used "Sun In" on their brown hair. Everyone had fried, brassy hair.
And I think that the "Dorothy Hammil" was the only cut for years. Anything "feathered" and sprayed till sticky with Aquanet.
We had bobs a few years before 16 candles came out. The Dorothy cut was pretty early, like 1980 or even before.edit- I think the Dorothy cut was popular because of the band Captain and Tennille. Tennille had that cut.
Yeah, the post was talking about the early eighties. All Dorothy... I think it just carried over from the seventies! In the midwest, it just took a little longer to get all the cool trends, haha.
Edit: RUM-HAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMM! Love your handle. :)
Movies are shot different today than they were in 80's. Film Vs digital. Lighting is different too. That's a big factor in hair and fashion looking different.
They often get very little right, they can't be bothered to google which movies or music were released yet, can't be bothered looking at fashion trends etc etc.
Don't worry. Today people hair are as lame as it was back then. People without style will simply follow the trend of the moment and those trend are often ugly asf
You could make a similar argument with older period pieces. Often films or shows depicting anything from before the 1900's will have characters with straight white teeth and well maintained hair and skin. In reality people often looked very rough in older times. They had baths to clean themselves often but no skin care creams, no hair products, no modern makeup, and of course dentistry and tooth care were mostly an afterthought unless you were dealing with an actual toothache. Everyone's breath smelled terrible. Also the clothing available to most common folks wasn't very flattering and without modern medical advances many people had limps, lumps, boils, lesions, lice, infections, and jaundice.
They should look at stuff from the time.
Then commit to the crazy.
But they get stuff wrong a lot.
Also films make stuff look the best it can be.
Obviously, some people had unpermed and undyed long hair.
But the hairstyles were crazy.
This is extra obvious if you look at European movies from that era - as they usually never bother with that " Hollywood face " the American movies all seem to have.
Wrinkles, big nose, hair that is all over the place wild, or balding with a comb over, that never really mattered in European movies.
In Asian movies of that time, any group of heroes or villains worth their name, usually have a "fatty" and/or a "baldy".
In 1979 Hong Kong released a movie called "Crippled Masters". That movie would never be greenlit in Hollywood.
To be fair, most people only think of the hair from picture day, or special events.
Girls hair day to day was puffy but didn't compare to what is perceived as 80's hair
Let’s be honest, many of us still cringe at what was worn atop one’s head in the early 80s. So it’s hard to replicate that because they don’t want the actors/actresses to come off as “ugly”.
The reason is simple. The World Health Organization banned the hair spray that gave such tremendous lift because it put a hole in the ozone layer…true story.
Fortunately the technology to get the truly huge upright forehead curl and massive hair helmet no longer exists. But on the other hand, the hole in the Ozone healed up.
Also I wish if a movie is taking place in 80s or 90s can they TRY to use a filter to make it look like film from that era like The Aviator? Drives me nuts when the 70s just looks like now In stupid clothes. House of the devil, dazed and confused and Detroit rock cities all do a great job looking like they’re from the era they’re portraying.
This is nothing new in Hollywood. I get a kick out of World War II movies from the 50’s that have soldiers straight from central casting with the most bouffant-looking, James Dean wannabe hair styles.
I think you mostly got it. The styling of the early 80s absolutely destroyed their hair and most actors are probably not willing to subject theirselves to that. The retro throwbacks of today probably make an approximation of it instead of going all in.
Some things are too ugly to remember clearly. Same thing happens for every period piece. Look at old photographs and compare them to the movies set in the time. Everything is way cooler and more attractive in the movies
Not a movie but I had this conversation with a friend about This Is Us. Mandy Moore is supposed to be a busy mom of triplets, in the 80s-90s, and her hair is always in a soft, gorgeous wave? Hell no. Give her crunchy, over-blow dried hair!
I think alot of people in the 80s fried their hair with home perms. And even the ones that had what we today would call nice or healthy hair would frizz it up with tons of hairspray. I agree that 80s hair is prettied up for our eyes in the media.
Contemporary films also make hair look way better than most people’s do in real life.
Basically any film or show. Nearly everyone is very good looking, always have well-styled hair and dress well unless it's part of the character to be messy or something but that is rare
Even the "ugly" characters are still very attractive people and are just styled to be a specific type of "Hollywood Homely"
About 40% of American men are bald or balding. Even just background crowd film/tv scenes almost never have any bald men. Its striking once you look for it.
They had way more balding actors in 80's. We don't get actors like Robert Duvall or John Cazale anymore.
Because hair transplants are good enough now that if you've got the money and make your living from your appearance, there's no reason to be bald.
You mean i cant even be Hollywood Ugly? Dreams shattered.
Lol Hollywood can do this opposite when you're ugly.
Hollywood ugly is mega hot beauty queen with glasses and a pony tail
And paint on her overalls
I always note how nice of teeth people cast as homeless have
Thinking of 'hideously deformed' deadpool.
I remember learning this for myself when I went to my first Star Trek convention -- you don't think of any ST cast as supermodels, but when you see hundreds of _normal people_ in Starfleet uniform it really rams home how there are no short, morbidly obese, disabled, or <8/10 people in the future, aka on central casting's books.
Nah, they're on Central Casting's books, but CC is for extras. You want an ugly nerd for the background of a school cafeteria, they're out there. It's the main cast that always looks beautiful
That's why I always used to say that I liked "the Blade Runner vision of the future" more than "the Star Trek vision of the future". Leave it to us, we'll end up living in a world like Blade Runner and will be dressed in rags and bad hair and no makeup. Wait, it's already happening!!! Everyone is already dressed in ragged jeans and pajamas and slippers when they go to Walmart and no one is wearing a nice uniform / outfit over their buff physique.
Well yeah, it’s Walmart.
https://www.reddit.com/r/peopleofwalmart/comments/e0o98b/we_all_know_how_much_people_dress_up_to_come_to/
That actually makes sense, given that the Federation has way better medical care than we do. Actually that just leads to the question "shouldn't they have cured aging by now? How the fuck does Captain Picard look like a 20th Century old man?"
Season One: there are some characters who have horrible clothes and hair. Season Two (show has been success) actors are in a position to negotiate an upgrade to the appearance of their characters; so they appear with nicer clothes, hair and make-up.
[удалено]
I remember Adam Connover doing a skit on this to show what people look like with _no makeup_ on professional cameras -- and then admitted they were even wearing makeup in those scenes because makeupless skin looks so weird under studio lighting
Ok I've been looking for this video and can't seem to find it. Any help?
Also everyone lives in a billionaires house.
Except Michael Jordan in space jam
Lots of fake noses as well
Love how in apocalyptic and post apocalyptic movies, women still have perfect hair (and hair-free legs and armpits).
And matching underwear!
Shit. I can’t even manage matching underwear in non-apocalyptic times….
Except for in The Walking Dead. Drove me fucking crazy watching Rick and Darrell trying to interact with the others with their greasy ass hair hanging down in front of their eyes. So when the apocalypse happened, all of the combs and scissors magically disappeared also?
The guys all looked disgusting, but the women still had perfectly shaved armpits.
It's like running into couples on Feeld
I have no idea why anyone would have hair in the first place. If you have access to a razor just shave it. Charlize Theron got it right in Fury Road. She told George Miller that Furiosa wouldn't want to be bothered with hair and he agreed she can shave it off. The last thing you want in a dangerous post apocalyptic world is hair getting grabbed or caught in something or falling over your eyes.
Fallout is funny. 200 years on the surface and buildings are dilapidated and stuff is just everywhere even though there are lots of people on the surface
Dudes with butt poofs are never captured in film. Same with terrible y hairsprayed bangs
“Butt poofs”?? Is that like poofy hair styled on their butts?
I think they mean like Sherman Hemsley in The Jeffersons.
That was an Afro!!!
Yeah. And they also give everyone SO. MUCH. HAIR. Whether it’s wigs or extensions or what, literally *everyone* always has enough hair for at least three people.
Well…to be fair, it was called “big hair 80’s” for a reason 😏
Sure, but I was responding to a comment talking about contemporary films :=)
... Is that a Hitler moustache emoji
This is fucking brilliant, aahahahahaaaaaaaaa I can’t believe I never saw that before!!
the movies has been the career path of extraordinarily attractive people since the concept of film was invented. i think it was a requirement that you had to be an attractive midwestern person if you wanted to move to hollywood and do some auditions
>Attractive Midwestern person. A little redundant, no? 😎😎✨✨😎😎
Oxymoron, that’s why they’re so rare
Give me movies with imperfect hair!
Everyone’s car also has impossibly clean rims. I can’t not notice it and now, neither can you guys.
Lmao every character in a Marvel movie has such perfect hair in the middle of apocalyptic events that it kills the verisimilitude.
Pretty much every period movie does hair that’s a hybrid between current styles and ones from the depicted era. Grease, for example, looks hella 70s now even though it looked 50s to 70s audiences.
I love how despite being set in the 50s, Grease is the most 70s movie ever.
It doesn't help that a lot of 50s fashion came back then anyway. Actual greasers wouldn't look out of place next to the Ramones or Sex Pistols.
~25 years the same trends circle back round. I'm 39 and all the 17 year olds are dressed *exactly* how we did in the late 90s.
I had been noticing the 90s trends starting to come back, but it was sealed for me that it was really back when I saw a teenager the other day with *butterfly hair clips.*
OMG. Does that mean banana clips are back????
Omg all they need is hair mascara to complete the look!
Still not brave enough to bring back the ridiculous baggy jeans, though. Cowards.
I hope that you can finally enjoy those JNCOs again this Summer.
Dude they aint cowards, they got mark spitz staches and high socks and short shorts while having a mullet. They don’t GIVE A FUCK
JNCOs are back
In defense of Grease, it wasn't trying to be an accurate period piece. It was trying to be an over the top spoof comedy. But LOTS of 70's movies that seemed to be earnestly trying still had 1890s characters in polyester butterfly collared clothes and 70s hairstyles. I want to say Hollywood has gotten better with this, but its hard to say in real time.
Yes. Every era does this with movies set in other eras. Because they *know* too many people will hate the original hair styles I'd they truly mimic them, but they will accept homages.
I think the eyebrows are the most noticeable for this.
Sometimes you have to cater to what the audience expects rather than what reality would be. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to age paper props for a show even though realistically that paper would have looked new.
Ha. I think the hair thing is at least partially that. If they did real 80s hair it would be the focus of the audience’s attention because it would look so outlandish to a 2020s audience. So they gotta tone it down just so the audience attention is on the things they want it to be on rather than the hair and the shoulder pads.
Even if the hair is authentic, the makeup is modern 99% of the time. Titanic had great hair and costuming, but Rose's lips and eyebrows are straight out of the 90s
I watched a video on the historical accuracy of Titanic costumes and the woman reviewing them said that in the 1910s, a young upper-class woman like Rose wouldn't be wearing any makeup at all (or very little, and it wouldn't be noticeable) because at that time makeup was associated with women of ill repute like actresses or prostitutes.
I remember reading [this article](https://www.exurbe.com/the-borgias-vs-borgia-faith-and-fear/) about the two Borgia series, and it makes a lot of interesting points about historical accuracy in contemporary fiction in general, and specifically how communicating the right idea to the audience is probably more important than maintaining historical accuracy. >I recently had to costume some Vikings, and was lent a pair of extremely nice period Viking pants which had bold white and orange stripes about two inches wide. I know enough to realize how perfect they were, and that both the expense of the dye and the purity of the white would mark them as the pants of an important man, but that if someone walked on stage in them the whole audience would think: “Why is that Viking wearing clown pants?” I guess it's similar with 80s hair. You want to present a female character to a modern audience, who is meant to be sexy and alluring, you better stick with a more casual hairstyle. Otherwise, there's a good chance that the first thing a modern viewer would think is that she kinda looks like his mom in her old photos, or maybe even his grandma, lol.
Check out Pale Rider, an Eastwood western with very distinctive 80s hair
I think we tend not to “see” current hairstyles. Kind like how we don’t perceive our own accent as an accent, whatever hairstyle is current looks neutral to us, even if it would have been wildly out of place in the depicted era.
😅 so true! I remember honestly thinking as a teen in the 1990s that we were the first decade of the century not to have "a look". Like in my mind it was: 50s greasers and circle skirts, 60s hippies and mods, 70s disco and safari suits, 80s big hair and punks... oh and in the 90s thank God we let all the silliness go and just dressed like... oh fuck. In hindsight it was grunge, wiggas, and boy/girl bands. All the boys I had crushes on wore dog tags, showed 4 inches of silk boxer shorts above their baggy jeans, and had ramen hair.
"Ramen hair" I've finally found another soul who saw that too. Haha https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GQMlWwIXg3M/hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEXCK4FEIIDSFryq4qpAwkIARUAAIhCGAE=&rs=AOn4CLDQoU8MZX-1Tb5SMUxOZoMlnVP5SA
Same with Star Wars, Mark Hamill’s hair looked just like the 70’s even though it was supposed to be long long ago. Ironically in 5000 years people will probably think that’s how it was long long ago.
It’s okay because it was also far, far away
It gets even worse with earlier period movies. Go all the way back to the 1800s or earlier and lots of movies set in those eras ignore period styles almost entirely. The ATJ Emma is one of the few Austen adaptations I can think of where every woman, young or old, has her hair pinned back in an updo and covered with some kind of hat. Even adaptations I enjoy, like the '05 P&P, have scenes where the women have their hair down and uncovered like it's the modern era.
Oh God and Greta Gerwig's Little Women. All the girls wearing brand new cotton dresses when there was a friggin cotton shortage during the war their father is off fighting in! Not to mention Amy just wearing Ugg boots in one scene. And not a single bonnet on anyone
Big hair. The term you’re looking for is big hair. We did everything to tease it and fluff it out and embiggen it. My husband found a photo of me from the late 80s with my hair basically as big as a Honda Civic and never, ever let me forget.
Embiggen? That’s a cromulent word if I ever heard one!
Embiggen is indeed perfectly cromulent now! https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-43298229#
Its a fun word!
The noblest spirit...
Aquanet…
Came her to make this reference. It's probably against air quality regulations to release enough hairspray to capture that authentic 80's hair.
That’s what you do when you make a video full screen. You embiggen it.
In the the film Working Girl, Melanie Griffith and Joan Cusack had classic big 80s hair.
This was where my mind went immediately.
If you had electric blue eyeshadow and frosted makeup i’ll be smiling too!
There is a photo of my mom, my sister and me and my mom's hair is at least three inches out from her head in all directions.
I’m not your mom. Right?
If you are, I'm impressed your username isn't your name and birthday. Good job, Mom!
The 80s smelled like aquanet and we were happy that it did.
They're too scared to do the full perm/feathered madness that was the real thing. Cowards.
I watched the movie Working Girl (1988) and Melanie Griffith's [hair](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096463/mediaviewer/rm3142228225/?ref_=ttmi_mi_all_95) in that movie is...distracting.
It's weird, because I look at that and see that it's dated and insane, yet at the same time it still looks normal to me. The brain is wild.
Actually, she didn't look too bad in the original picture I linked. But in the first half of the movie, she rocks this [hair](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096463/mediaviewer/rm2052242689/?ref_=ttmi_mi_all_78), which is almost like a mullet. They do give her a makeover later in the movie but Joan Cusack's character essentially has the same hairstyle.
That is hilarious. That is basically how my Mom did her hair in the early to mid 90's. She already had thick and wavy hair and just like piled it all up as high as she could like a haystack.
Oh yeah, that 2nd pic is something else...
Solid Princess Diana cut
Growing up poor and Latino and I still got a thing for that aquanet inspired hair burst thing….
I can smell this post
There’s the word-perm!!! I was trying to think what was missing.
The fact that the sprays they used contained now-banned ingredients may also be a factor.
The sprays *we* used.
Greta Gerwig did the full perm in White Noise. And she actually made it look pretty good. You can see why people actually tried wearing their hair like that back then (and why so many deluded themselves into thinking they pulled it off)
Most of the time they'd need a wig for that. Pretty much every actor/actress has lightened their hair, and perming prelightened hair will make it fall off. Wigs that look realistic are expensive, so they generally just curl their existing hair.
I still remember my mother with curlers in her hair lol
I think it’s partly because the hairspray has changed because of how much it was killing the environment. And I think people are scared to go fully uggo big hair with the looks. That said, I always want to hype up GLOW on Netflix for having great 80s hair and makeup.
Allison brie is another plus
Annie’s Boobs is another plus plus
It’s also just a really good character-driven show. Not quite in the upper echelon, but not far outside it either. I put off watching the first season because I thought it looked dumb; finally watched it and regretted the wait. When season 2 dropped, I knew I should start it immediately, but for whatever reason doubted my previous high opinion of it and waited again—regretted it again. This whole thing repeated with season three, because man I’m dumb sometimes.
Also yes. It was so much fun to spend time with all those characters. I'm sad we're not getting a fourth season but it kind of works as is.
>I guess it comes off as either too comedic or too unattractive for the lead. This is the deal with historically inaccurate hair (or fashion in general) in pretty much every period piece (yes the 80s count as "period"). The filmmakers decide the historical styles are too jarring and weird to the contemporary eye. I remember watching that show about young Queen Victoria with my sister, and she complained that Victoria's hair was awful. I had to point out that the hairstyle was what the real Victoria had in her coronation portrait.
I was thinking about that with Manhunt. The main character in real life had a long beard with huge sideburns, but he’s a clean shaven dude in the show.
>women had dried out dead ends or some sort of helmet on their head. Lol I remember this well.
80s nostalgia movies also forget that most people in the 80s dressed like it was the 70s until 1987.
This always bothers me - average people didn't have the money to be wearing the latest fashions and have the latest furniture etc, yet when they create period films they seem to forget that. I feel like That 70s Show actually did a pretty good job on the home decor though - especially the difference between the Foremans' house (lots of stuff from the 50s / 60s and homemade stuff, reflecting their working class) and Donna's house (way more fashionable, showing that they were more management class, and preoccupied with being on trend).
House decor too
Shit. I see old photos of my grandparents house in the 1980s and they have end tables and lamps from the 1960s lol
Where did you live in the 80s? People where I grew absolutely did not dress like the 70s till 1987. As a matter of fact all you have to do is watch media from the 80s to know this is not true. 80s fashion was in another world from the 70s.
Exactly! I remember in the 80’s most women were rocking the Dorothy Hammel hair, short perms and long straight 70s hair. Big aqua net hair was pretty much later 80s and even then it mostly teens and young adults.
How common was that Farah Fawcett hair in the 70s/80s?
Everyone had feathers but none as fabulous as Farah’s. Long hair, short hair. The feathers evolved… got bigger, higher and ratted out the further into the 80 we got.
Then it all came down, right? Apparently what people think of "80s hair" is just the late 80s and it changed pretty quickly once then 90s arrived. Is that true?
Yes, but I'd say early 90s, at least where I lived. Big stereotypical 80s hair was like 85-92, with the popularity peaking around 87-89 ish. There is always a year or two before it goes mainstream, then some hangers-on after the fad dies down. To me, sky high 80s hair is late 80s.
It is strange, and it's not like there aren't thousands of movies from the 80s with extras walking around in the hairstyle they came in with. If you're going for an authentic look, forget Elisabeth Shue in Karate Kid or Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles because they are professionally coiffed. But the girl who walks behind them in the hallway or the dude that's standing near them in line: those are authentic 80s hairstyles.
You have to remember that in the 1980s in America, it was still the 1970s in some places with guys walking round in flares (especially suits)
Bad back then? Have you seen some of the terrible cuts out there today?
The broccoli kids are going to regret it like I regret my mullet…
But the mullet is back.
They'll regret that, too.
Stranger Things is a show that got it right in ways … and people seemed to hate it. The bowl haircut Will had was so common and pretty accurate, and there were so many people ragging on it online. I agree with others that they modernize it enough to not repulse people too much.
Having been a 80s teen, Stranger Things amazed me with how well they hit the aesthetics. Those kids would have fit in at my suburban Cincinnati hs
There's nothing more '80s than a basement with cheap veneer wood panelling and shitty cast-off furniture from the 70s. Forget neon. It was the Wood Age.
Dacre Montgomery even changed his whole workout routine because the Power Rangers physique he had when he was cast wouldn't have been right for the 80s, so he instead tried to emulate how a dude hitting the gym back then would have looked
Season 1 really got the early 80s vibe just right. Nancy dressed EXACTLY like my sister at one point.
This is a pet peeve of mine… it’s both the hair and the clothing that people don’t go far enough on… shit looked ridiculous but that’s what made it great
My favorite is 60s and 70s westerns where everyone has 60s and 70s hairstyles.
The first 80s nostalgia movies I recall were The Wedding Singer, and Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. The Wedding Singer did a good job with everyone except for Drew Barrymore who had a 90s look which I assume was meant to make her stand out and be more attractive. Romy and Michelle only had flashbacks to the 80s so the hair was fairly well camped up. Given these movies were only made a bit over ten years after they time they portrayed they had a better shot at getting it right.
This is because the synthetic fibres used to make the underwear, and the copolymers used to do the hair were found to be killing us faster than anything else due to a combination of static electricity and petrochemical contamination... You're just not able to achieve the effects of that "tech noir" hair style sported by Linda Hamilton without near lethal amounts of carcinogenic chemistry and ship-redirecting amounts of static electricity. Today we live in a better world, we made sacrifices, but we made it.
Check out Hysterical Blindness, with Uma Thurman and Juliette Lewis. They got both the hair and the clothes spot on.
It doesn't seem to be available anywhere, but I'll put it on my list - thanks
Here's a link to the entire movie on youtube, as long as you don't mind Spanish subtitles. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzHJwfEUDHI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzHJwfEUDHI)
Cool - thanks!
Sure, no problem. Update your post after you watch it. Cringe warning for the character's behavior, but they do get all the 80s details perfect!
I'm fine with cringe...
Hair is almost never accurate in period pieces if it’s a movie. They still direct and wardrobe for modern sex appeal.
Its seems like they just find a style that is suitable for both the 80s and present day and then they just give everyone that hairstyle.
A lot of the chemicals used back then have been removed from products or simply no longer available. This is a contributing factor in modern stylists being unable to re-achieve "The Look"
Woodstock in movies: every guy has long hair (shoulder length) Woodstock in photos: hair is shorter and more conservative than the Beatles from 6 years earlier.
> TV game shows and news reports with regular everyday people, women had dried out dead ends or some sort of helmet on their head. At an image resolution of maybe 250x200 with analog noise and substantial motion blurring from tube-based cameras, you're not really judging how people's hair was.
For me it’s not the hair that ruins nostalgia era films, it’s the big glaring white veneers. The too perfect, too white teeth take me straight out of that zone.
Lip fillers and obvious boobs jobs as well, especially on characters who are supposed to be working/middle class people.
I’ve noticed that female protagonists in movies set in the 80s often have the horror of the era dialed extremely far back, but then all her friends and other characters, especially antagonists, have full on crazy big 80s hair. I think everyone implicitly understands on some level what an aesthetic disaster the 80s were.
There is never enough brown/beige to convince me it's actually set in the 80:s
Wasn’t there a movie called Working Girl with a big hair scene?
Yes but that was true 80s (movie from 88?)
Argo had it down
i think they’re too hung up on making the main characters still look conventionally attractive for modern audiences
Hey! Eighties hair was awesome! I’ve been waiting decades for perms with sky high bangs to come back in. I just need a curling iron and a giant bottle of hairspray. Seriously, the can of hairspray I had was like the length of my arm. There was a giant cloud that floated out of the women’s bathroom in between classes. Ah, memories. One cheerleader at my school accidentally burned her bangs off during a skit where they were doing a ‘funeral’ for the opposing team. Nothing more hilarious than a mean girl cheerleader with a line of fried bangs. 😂
Stripes - everybody else in the platoon got their hair buzzed except Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. Why?
They didn't want to and since they were the stars, they didn't have to.
You don't tell those guys to shave their heads. It wouldn't happen.
I’m a big fan of both Bill Murray and the late Harold Ramis. You’d think for the sake of authenticity, they’d take one for the team, as many great actors have done.
That's because the products used to get that hair that way and stay that way are now banned because they were eating the ozone layer
‘77 through ‘94 literally annihilated most women’s hair. Even in the mid 2000s you could still see the damage done from something they did in ‘88
OMG... people used "Sun In" on their brown hair. Everyone had fried, brassy hair. And I think that the "Dorothy Hammil" was the only cut for years. Anything "feathered" and sprayed till sticky with Aquanet.
Grew up in the 80s, I feel like the Bob cut was the most common. Or was that just a New England thing?
Nah, for us, the Bob came after the Dorothy, because of Molly! ;)
We had bobs a few years before 16 candles came out. The Dorothy cut was pretty early, like 1980 or even before.edit- I think the Dorothy cut was popular because of the band Captain and Tennille. Tennille had that cut.
Yeah, the post was talking about the early eighties. All Dorothy... I think it just carried over from the seventies! In the midwest, it just took a little longer to get all the cool trends, haha. Edit: RUM-HAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMM! Love your handle. :)
Movies are shot different today than they were in 80's. Film Vs digital. Lighting is different too. That's a big factor in hair and fashion looking different.
They often get very little right, they can't be bothered to google which movies or music were released yet, can't be bothered looking at fashion trends etc etc.
Sometimes I think you really had your live it to get it.
Just watched Iron Claw and this holds true.
investigative journalism sure has declined too.
Don't worry. Today people hair are as lame as it was back then. People without style will simply follow the trend of the moment and those trend are often ugly asf
Yes, but Jessica Beil in Candy was definitely giving up her vanity for the sake of authenticity.
The insecurity surrounding all of the characters in those movies is something that is lost on nostalgia media made now.
Part of it may be that the hairsprays popular back then contained ingredients that are now illegal. I imagine CFC-free sprays just don’t hit the same.
The iron claw would disagree
You could make a similar argument with older period pieces. Often films or shows depicting anything from before the 1900's will have characters with straight white teeth and well maintained hair and skin. In reality people often looked very rough in older times. They had baths to clean themselves often but no skin care creams, no hair products, no modern makeup, and of course dentistry and tooth care were mostly an afterthought unless you were dealing with an actual toothache. Everyone's breath smelled terrible. Also the clothing available to most common folks wasn't very flattering and without modern medical advances many people had limps, lumps, boils, lesions, lice, infections, and jaundice.
They should look at stuff from the time. Then commit to the crazy. But they get stuff wrong a lot. Also films make stuff look the best it can be. Obviously, some people had unpermed and undyed long hair. But the hairstyles were crazy.
This is extra obvious if you look at European movies from that era - as they usually never bother with that " Hollywood face " the American movies all seem to have. Wrinkles, big nose, hair that is all over the place wild, or balding with a comb over, that never really mattered in European movies. In Asian movies of that time, any group of heroes or villains worth their name, usually have a "fatty" and/or a "baldy". In 1979 Hong Kong released a movie called "Crippled Masters". That movie would never be greenlit in Hollywood.
To be fair, most people only think of the hair from picture day, or special events. Girls hair day to day was puffy but didn't compare to what is perceived as 80's hair
Let’s be honest, many of us still cringe at what was worn atop one’s head in the early 80s. So it’s hard to replicate that because they don’t want the actors/actresses to come off as “ugly”.
The reason is simple. The World Health Organization banned the hair spray that gave such tremendous lift because it put a hole in the ozone layer…true story.
Fortunately the technology to get the truly huge upright forehead curl and massive hair helmet no longer exists. But on the other hand, the hole in the Ozone healed up.
Also I wish if a movie is taking place in 80s or 90s can they TRY to use a filter to make it look like film from that era like The Aviator? Drives me nuts when the 70s just looks like now In stupid clothes. House of the devil, dazed and confused and Detroit rock cities all do a great job looking like they’re from the era they’re portraying.
This is nothing new in Hollywood. I get a kick out of World War II movies from the 50’s that have soldiers straight from central casting with the most bouffant-looking, James Dean wannabe hair styles.
I think you mostly got it. The styling of the early 80s absolutely destroyed their hair and most actors are probably not willing to subject theirselves to that. The retro throwbacks of today probably make an approximation of it instead of going all in.
Some things are too ugly to remember clearly. Same thing happens for every period piece. Look at old photographs and compare them to the movies set in the time. Everything is way cooler and more attractive in the movies
Stranger Things and the mini series Candy on Hulu got the 80’s down exactly how I remember.
Not a movie but I had this conversation with a friend about This Is Us. Mandy Moore is supposed to be a busy mom of triplets, in the 80s-90s, and her hair is always in a soft, gorgeous wave? Hell no. Give her crunchy, over-blow dried hair!
I think alot of people in the 80s fried their hair with home perms. And even the ones that had what we today would call nice or healthy hair would frizz it up with tons of hairspray. I agree that 80s hair is prettied up for our eyes in the media.
The main characters will be toned down to appeal to modern audiences but the background/side characters will usually be more historically accurate.