May 29, 2025 • 45 mins
Whether we're talking jet black, stunning platinum or fire engine red, there's just something fascinating about hair as a fashion statement. And, of course, forms of hair dye have been used since antiquity to help people maintain a youthful appearance... even when the ingredients caused tremendous physical harm. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive into the fascinating (and surprisingly dangerous) history of hair dye.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the one,
the only, the natural haired super producer mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Max Midnight Williams. Because that's the deep, deep color of
his luscious locks.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Do how do you all think my hair is? Can
I tell you that's outside of the scope of his episode?
Max Fright?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
No, it's sound dear butt. I seen it? Is it?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Holy cow?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah, it's made up that word. I like holy cow.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I wasn't wrong about the lusciousness. So I wish y'all
could see it. If only it weren't just any nice.
It looks like a commercial fabyo locks, Fabio locks.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Just so. That's Noel Brown. They call me Ben Bullen
in this part of the world.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
We are.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
We are three dudes here in the United States, and
we have a ton of questions about history. Now, Noel,
you and I and our God I love. The fabio
thing is not going to leave my head.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
You nailed it. I'm very aroused.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
We are we are three dudes with again, an enormous
interest in weird, weird stuff, and thanks to the help
of our research associate, the legendary Wren, today we're going
to talk about.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Hair dye for sure.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
And you know, it's something that I have always somewhat assumed,
at least in terms of the way it's used today.
Been sort of a modern thing, which isn't that far off,
But in the world of fashion, hair has always been
kind of a symbol of vitality. If we would talk
about Samson, for example, the biblical character who's you know,
(02:16):
magical strength, Apparently the power resided in his hair, and
it was I believe Solomme, who was sort of his
arch that cut his hair off and deprived him of
his strength. So I mean, it's definitely in the lore
that that hair. Having a good head of hair indicates
some form of vitality, not to mention a form of
(02:37):
self expression, as evidenced by Max's aerial style headthrow, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
And thank you for not doing dreadlocks.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Max.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
If this podcasting thing doesn't work out for us, I'm
gonna I'm clearly gonna ride Max's coattails.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Or pony tails, uh.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Of what he becomes the new face of Claial Herbal essences.
I love the point you bring up, knowl about the
idea of hair as power in those old biblical stories,
(03:21):
true true story. Once upon a time a girl I
was dating used to get so mad when I got
a haircut, and she told me that my hairdresser was
robbing me of my power.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
It's very body fluid, very weird.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
It is a little weird, yeah, I mean, but there
certainly are religious sects I guess you call them where
you know. I believe it's Pentecostal, where cutting the hair
is a no no, and there is a certain reverence
associated with the hair. So although beauty standards have certainly
evolved and changed and cyclical things kind of come and
(04:00):
go and then come back over time, one thing that
certainly remains to some degree is that too many gray
hair is seen as a sign of aging and therefore
perhaps been a sign of weakness, which is wild. I
don't care does love a silver fox. I would much
rather go gray than go bald. And that is no
(04:22):
shades any of our bald community out there, any receding
hairline folks or widows peaks, what have you. I personally
pride myself on having a pretty good head of hair
that will definitely one day be entirely gray. But I
don't think the hair itself is going anywhere. And that's
a bargain that I can be on board with.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Widows. Peaks are awesome. They make you look smarter, They
make you look a little bit like a vulcan munster,
all right, So I wore a hat for this one. Look, folks,
we know the hair dye industry is boomy right now.
In the current global economy, the hair dye industry alone
(05:04):
racks up about twenty three point one point five billion
US dollars. And for a lot of people, you know,
this is a very sensitive thing. Hair can be challenging,
It can be a statement, it can be it can
be something people judge you for.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
And while I am on.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Record loving gray hair, a lot of people do get
bothered by this. So hair dye by modern standards is
way more recent than you might imagine, folks. It's existed
in a modern industry for about a century. But even
(05:50):
in its early days, the iterations were relatively simple. Maybe
some of us in the audience remember the idea of bluing,
you know, like Mark Simpson, there.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Was all blue thing.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I don't know if I know about that, I guess
I've I've heard of older ladies sometimes referred to as
blue hairs. There is a shade of gray that has
a bit of a bluish hue that I've always found interesting.
But man, we gotta do it because every time we're
talking about the history of pigments and fashion and and
you know, fabric, for example, we always end up back
with the ancient Egyptians, who were huge innovators in many
(06:30):
many ways, and industrialization, irrigation, farming techniques, construction, and of course, yes,
one hundred percent weaponry, myths making.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Let's just say a lot of we always talk about.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I mean, I don't know if you've seen them film heretic,
but there is some interesting There's an interesting part where
the character pedantically talks about how some of the ancient
myths of Egypt have a lot of parallels with biblical stuff.
There is this sort of hero's journey repeated story, and
there is some truth to that dating as far back
as the ancient Engines.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Shout out to Joseph Campbell, thank you of cambell A,
thou still exactly right, Ben, A really good one.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
If you're into Star Wars, and you're seeing some of
these tropes that begin to start to seem a little
bit recognizable.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
There's a reason for that.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
But one thing the ancient Egyptians pride themselves on was
looking good, fine, smelling good.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Especially as the royal family became increasingly habsburg esque. I
said it, yeah, just look, come on, man, you get it.
Look at King Tu.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, King indeed.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Indeed, So going back to like fifteen hundred BCE, uh,
the well to do people in ancient Egypt would use
heada to give their hair a reddish brown hue. It
would also help obscure gray hair, because we have to remember,
for a long time in human history, gray hair was
(08:03):
not cool. Now, I want to be clear here, Max
is a brownie. My pal Nola and I have various
streaks of gray. Nole's got a cool roguish from the
X Men streak of gray and nice gray goatee. I
got these two gray stripes that.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Make me look like ros al Ghoul.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
And I've got the gray at my temples like Reed
Richards from Fantastic four.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
What do they call those polly walnuts in and they
call them wings? Actually some people dye them that way
on purpose. Well, it's like a thing. Yeah, Polly talks
about getting his wings done, and it's like it's like
maybe an Italian kind of thing, a little bit dated,
but very funny for that character. But the ancient Egyptians
used kind of, like you said, to dye their hair
(08:55):
this reddish brown color. And it certainly there was an
aspect of max sking, you know, the signs of aging,
because we know the Egyptians were a pretty vain people,
and I think that's too much of a hot take.
But it was also like kind of a societal flex
in a way too, a way of differentiating the haves
(09:15):
from the have nots. It was popularized, as often the case,
by a great ruler, a very prominent figure, Pharaoh Rameses
Rameses rather the Great. A nineteen seventy six study of
his mummified remains concluded that he did not, in fact
have black hair, but rather.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Red or auburn hair. What a flex.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
That's very interesting. So wait, he had black hair, like
when it was? He was his hair naturally red or auburn?
Is that what they're saying?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
What?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, it was it was natural? Like how I'm a
semi ginger? Dave Walker, did we call it. Yeah, it's
being a not quite ginger was a huge social flex.
Really at that time, you were associated with royalty, you
(10:09):
were associated with the deity of the desert sands, Set,
who was not a bad guy at that time. Going
back to our earlier song of Ice and Fire Habsburg jokes,
this pharaoh in particular probably got his red hair via genetics.
(10:30):
His father had also been born as a guy with
red or auburn hair. The issue is that they wanted
to maintain that red hair can go gray early, and
gray at that time meant you were running towards the grave.
So you always wanted to have your hair unique and
(10:55):
you wanted it to be a statement. You could also,
at this time in ancient Egypt, use indigo as a
dye to achieve that kind of blue black, silky shade.
Or sure you could go blonde. Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
That's what I was a little confused about. I'm trying
to find some more specific mentions. But the indication was
that it was thought that Ramses had black hair, but
in fact he had red or auburn hair that was
genetically inherited from his father, who was named after Set.
You know, for this this unique tray, this familial trade.
(11:31):
So I'm guessing that perhaps he used a he died
over that.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Co I think as he went gray, he died over it. Okay, Okay,
I got it.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
I'm just wondering if he was using indigo, because certainly,
if you already got the red and people are using
this stuff to get the red fakely, he'd be just
rocking it all naturale. But I guess you're right he
could have used the hanna to cover up some of
those grays. And of course, if anyone's ever messed with
turmeric in the kitchen, you know that that spice can
stain your fingers pretty bright yellow pretty quick. And that
(12:05):
was actually used to create kind of a quasi blonde
shade of yellow.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
And we got to think too, they didn't really have chemical.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Lightning techniques yet at this point, so it's not going
to be the same like platinum blonde type look as
we're going to get to a little further down the line.
So by three twenty three BC, ancient Egypt, Rome and
Greece were kind of co occupying the Greco Roman period
collectively and contributing various bits, you know, to culture and
(12:36):
history with a lot of parallel thinking going on as well.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Right, Yeah, absolutely, Look there's another great and this guy
is named Alexander, the Great, super humble dude Greek general
conquered Egypt. When he dies, he's got an employee, a
real up and comer named Ptolome related to Cleopatra, and
(13:00):
takes over Egypt. Everything carries on for about three hundred
years until Julius Caesar has the worst work meeting of
his life. Then Cleopatra loses control of Egypt in a
battle to the Romans because she chose the wrong side,
and that post Caesar power vacuum these cultures. The reason
(13:23):
we're telling you this, folks, is that these cultures reach
a confluence of hair dye. The ancient Greeks and Romans
look at this jet black hair that most people are
rocking in Egypt, and they go, oh, man, this is
so cool. Let's be like the cool people. And then
(13:45):
they make a series of just terrible choices in creating
their hair dye. Can we name some of the ingredients here?
Speaker 3 (13:53):
We can?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And I just want to say, I think maybe where
I was getting off with the whole Ramsey's hair color
thing was that, Yeah, it's really the good points that
you make ben Egyptians were typically born with jet black hair,
so for Rameses to have that red hair was super
unusual and remarkable and perhaps even what people looked to
in wanting to.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Use that hennah to kind of match that freak, you
know what I.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Mean, divinely inspired. Also, I like the nomenclature, match that freak.
That's what the Romans were trying to do. They mixed
lead oxide, bad stuff, calcium hydroxide water. This is the
first permanent black hair dye. This is not that stuff
you would buy at gadzooks or a hot topic.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
And we know even today that a lot of hair
lightning products and hair dyes can be pretty gnarly. You
gotta be careful, you know, and you got to have
a professional do it. You can literally set your hair
on fire, yes, if you're not careful, yes.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
And you can fry your You can fry your scalp.
The thing is, neurology was not really a science at
this point, so the formula these Greeks and Romans cooked
(15:10):
up was bad for you. It could cause brain damage,
It would corrode your scalp eventually. Without being neurologists, the
Greco Romans figured this out and they said, all right,
here's what we're gonna do, a much more healthy option.
We're gonna ferment leeches in vinegar, and we're going to
(15:32):
apply that so that we look more look like an Egyptian.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
No you want to They're definitely the cool kids. They're
definitely the trendsetters of history at this point, leaving behind
a lot of pretty cool stuff that got kind of,
you know, styled on.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Let's just sit later on down the line, dude.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Also, some of the Greeks, who were obviously trying to
be edgy, I guess, trying to do their met Gallas stuff,
they leaned into their lighter hair. To your excellent note
about lightning hair color, they used potassium pollen and crushed
yellow flower petals to kind of make their hair lighter.
(16:13):
They made a paste or really, if we're being honest,
a poultice, because we love that.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Weird Hannah would be similarly thick and pasty, and I
think it would honestly be almost something that you would
apply to the hair, because without bleaching it, you're not
You can't dye black hair a color. It just doesn't
really work. It doesn't take. That's why you have to
bleach it first. So I'm wondering if they would rub
this stuff in their hair. And the color kind of
came from the fact that this was like in there. Yeah,
(16:41):
the salt is reacting with the keratin in the hair.
They knew the process, they didn't have the same words
we have for it now, and they knew that the
sunshine would touch the hair when you had this pasty
stuff on it. It's kind of like how red points out.
It's kind of like how if you park a car
(17:03):
in the sun for a long enough time. Yeah, the
energy from the sun will have an effect on the paint.
So you can use the sun to like expose photographic
plates and things like that, you know, I mean, like
whatever you know obviously, But if you leave say a
drawing out like on a on a piece of regular
(17:23):
art paper long enough, it will lighten over a time.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
And now fast forward Greeks Egyptians. Sorry, guys, the Romans
are running stuff now. And when the Romans are running stuff,
they steal from the Egyptians. They steal from the Greeks.
This is not a hot take. This is how their
culture worked. They started creating this one percent or class
(17:48):
in a different way, such that if you are a
woman of significant means or a person of significant means, honestly,
you got blonde hair, you want to look blonde, right,
you want to stay blonde, And so if you have
the means at this point in time, you will apply
(18:08):
literal powdered gold with a special comb so you get
a sparkly hair.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
You know, I don't know if you know it's been
but a hair glitter is apparently back in a big way.
It was big and I think the late nineties and
early two thousands, and apparently that movie Honora kind of
brought it back into fashion a little bit. So this
is like the og hair glitter, very very expensive hair glitter.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Are you doing hair glitter?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Not?
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I No, glitter is insidious. I mean, if it's around,
you get it there on you.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Oh gosh, we don't even want to mention it. It's
like saying the quist's name thrice.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I learned a really funny term recently. It's called divorce glitter.
It's like something women who are going on dates in
order to ward off married men who are lying to them,
They wear glitter so that it gets on the men
and then their wives will know that they've been stepping
out on them.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Well, first off, I am impressed, and secondly, that's really
sad that you can't trust people.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
It is said, but divorce glitter, you gotta. It's a
trap and you deserve it, you heal. But there's another
In addition to the gold powder, there was like you know,
that was only for the one percent of the one percent,
as you mentioned, Ben, but for those in that lower
echelon of society.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Yeah, they weren't really rocking the gold powder.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
They were basically using a lie, right, more or less,
with ash with vinegar and soap liquor. Isn't that basically
lie to a degree? It's some it's it's something along
those lines. Yeah, ash and soap liquor.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Imperium romatum, it was called right, it's uh, it's weird
and it did have a bad smell and it did
burn people's skin. Also, if you left it on your
head too long, your hair would become brittle. It would
(20:09):
start falling out or breaking when you touched it. So,
of course, as we mentioned in the very first episode
of Ridiculous History, low these several years ago, wigs come
into play. The fancy version is the Peruke.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Remember that episode.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I do, But Ben, I have to ask you a question. Yeah,
do you wear wigs?
Speaker 3 (20:31):
No? Have you won wigs for costumes? Yes?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
That's not actually George Washington in those videos.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Will you wear wigs? I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
I don't think it's me.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
It may be, and I don't get to my last question,
which is when will you wear wigs?
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Sorry? Oh no, what about you? What about you know?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I bet this is a delightful exchange between Elijah Wood
and the other dude from who played one of his
Hobbit buddies. Apparently he the guy that was in Lost.
He apparently was punking Elijah Wood because it was like
a phone only interview with a German journalist.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
And he's a talking to will you wear wigs? I
guess the ends it with when will you wear winks?
I hear you?
Speaker 2 (21:13):
But you look great in that George Washington wig. Ben,
you strike a dashing figure and wigs are really a
cool thing, and there's still very much around today as
a fashion statement, especially folks in the drag community and beyond.
I mean, you can really say a lot with a wig.
Not to mention the theatrical aspect of.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
It, yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
And back in this time period, wiggs were especially I
don't want to be a jerk about it, but wigs
were for sex workers in some communities because they would
have these yellow haired wigs that would let prospective customers know, hey,
(21:52):
the store is open.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Lit wink wink, not non Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, yeah, And that comes to us from Devin Hopp
writing for Birdie The Extraordinary History of Hair Color. People
liked blondes, dude, People liked blonde hair, especially in vettics.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
And it's interesting because we get obviously into some pretty
gnarly racist tropes when it comes to.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Blonde hair, blue eyes, airyan kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
So it is interesting that this early on there is
this sort of obsession with those things, right.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, one hundred percent. According to the Journal of the
American Academy of Dermatology, by the fifteen hundreds, female identifying
folks in vetics had a pensiont for bleaching their hair
in the sun, often wearing broad brimmed hats without a
crown when sitting out on their rooftop. Verandas I have
(22:50):
a question for you, nol broad brimmed hat without a crown,
is that just like a visor that goes around.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
I think it is, dude, which is interesting and I
gotta wonder too. I'd love to see some stats from
this era about skin cancer. I certainly don't think people
were wearing sunscreen right, right.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
We're still before neurology and we're before dermatology. So if
we fast forward a little bit further, it's the seventeenth
century in England and people are not as into blonde hair.
They want to have dark hair. It's associated with youth.
So women would make a a paste. See it called
(23:37):
a potion, but I think it's a paste elderberries and
red wine. You could also use radish extract to get
that red hair.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Again, just a quick question.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
A poultice would be when you're starting to add more
solid materials like leaves.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
And sticks and stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. Gosh, I'm still what
trying to remember what that temporary hair dye was in
gad zooks or a hot topic.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Oh, we're gonna get to that. Well, it's not temporary.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
We're gonna get to the kind of I guess og
funky hair color. But there certainly I know what you're
talking about, and there was a temporary solution, you know,
for folks that didn't want to go the full nine.
But unfortunately, you know, for all the good intentions and
fashionistaeness of it all, if that's the word, this stuff
was still very, very toxic.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
You know, people were not experts in lead either. We're
going to go to further fast forward, the chemically challenged
origins of modern hair dye. It's eighteen fifty six. Malaria
is very much in play. There's a thing called queenine quinine.
(24:51):
How do you say it?
Speaker 3 (24:52):
I sometimes say quinine.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
I've heard it many different ways, though I don't think
there's I think it's totally dealer's choice. Still learning English
as brothers, we all are. But yeah, quinnying, we know,
as you know. I think that's probably the little fun
fact people often drop about this.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
It is what makes tonic water taste the way it
does tonic.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
So yeah, your gin and tonic does have quiney in it,
or at least it used to. But it is a
very important remedy for malaria, which was, like you said,
wide rife at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
I love the phrase wide rife, So okay, it comes
from this substance, comes from the trees in southeast Asia.
So it's a it's a real pickle to get this
stuff out and derive it and make it oh from
the sourcer, right, yeah, yeah, you got it. So there's
this guy named William Henry Perkin. He is eighteen years old.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
He'll start.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, he's a chem student, and he says, look, I
got to make some alternative to this substance so that
more people can have it. He was not successful in
making an anti malarial treatment, but he did accidentally create
another compound from coal tar, mauvine. It becomes the first
(26:15):
successful synthetic hair dye or dye is regular dye.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
He should have been on our list of well, I mean,
we wouldn't happen for this discussion, but we did an
episode recently on accidental inventions, and this is certainly one
of the Like you said, derived from coldtar, this stuff
is actually called mauvine. It also was referred to as
analine purple. And it was marketed in a burst of
genius kind of to take this byproduct, this trash product.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
And sell it. Weave it into gold not gold powder.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
It was sold as the first mass produced, commercially available
synthetic hair dye.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah, ed at the beginning, it was mostly used for
dyeing fabric, not hair, and Perkin.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Things were a little prim and proper during this, like
funky colors. We're kind of right out.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Killed me not to remember the name of that temporary
hair dye anyway, So our buddy Perkin, he is a kiddo,
as you said, Noel, He has professors, and one of
his professors is a guy named doctor August Hoffman, and
Hoffman looks at his student's invention and he creates a
(27:27):
color changing molecule called here we go.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Max.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Parafinyl diaman.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Is called.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Thank you, para fenneline diamine para diamine Me.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Yeah, what is it? Ballerina?
Speaker 1 (27:50):
So okay, this is the foundation for most permanent hair
dyes today and today still yeah, thanks again to Birdie.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Our source on this.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Uh nol, Can you introduce us to the first guy
who figured out how to make hair dye that we
got poisonous?
Speaker 3 (28:06):
That'd be cool. Let's figure that one out.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Eugene Shuller nineteen o seven, a French chemist who did
invent the first non toxic. I love that term, like
they used to print it on stuff all the time.
Oh yeah, non toxic like it used to be on
like magic markers. You know, I wonder if that term
has fallen out of favor, because it's sort of like
everything should be assumed at this point to be non toxic.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
But I guess that's not true.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
It's it's like when you go to a gas station
in the U s assign unlet a gas, or you
drive by a school and it says drug free school zone. Well,
where's the cool zone, Where's the cool school? Yeah, exactly
too cool for school.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Was French chemists Eugene Shuller who did invent the first
non toxic hair dye in the sense that it wasn't
lead based, so it was a synthetic hair dye had
a range of subtle hues, which in the Victorian era
was key because they weren't trying to go hog wild
and tissi and snooky themselves, like we're going to get
to it a bit. The idea of using synthetic hair to, however,
was not particularly well known and it hadn't achieved popularity
(29:07):
among French women yet, so he was going to have
to kind of spread the word if he wanted to
capitalize on this development.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yo, man, he is exactly like Edward Burnett. He is,
he is pushing the problem then shows up to solve.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, So he starts a company called this is the
real name in English, the French company of Inoffensive hair Dyes.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
That is, it is so inoffensive man.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Which Benign later translates to or changes.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
To laoreal loreal, which I'm not sure that does that. Actually, No,
it's a homonym, right for a popular hair style which
is orial at the time, a play on words of
oriole and halo. So it is a made up word,
but it just boy, does this sound fancy and French?
Doesn't that he kind of was onto something already, right.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
You know, we're from the United States. We speak English,
we're still learning it candidly. But I would say that
anytime we see a word with an apostrophe in there,
you know, and a nice string of vowels, we automatically
go oh, fancy, oh hoggin DAWs.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Indeed, which is also a totally BS word. It is
made with all those It just looks proper.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
I don't even think of Germans as like being particularly
up on ice cream, which is an odd choice, and
I think of that more as maybe like a French
thing as well.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Dude, just soft note the Austrians. I never want to
go back to Austria again.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
But the time they do, how did they hurt you?
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Well, well, unrelated outside of the scope of this cowgo.
Those guys love ice cream, Yeah, I had weirdly into it.
I had some really good ice cream in Berlin as well.
I can't remember the name of the place, but when
I grew up in Germany, one thing I remember and
I'll never.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Forget is this thing called spaghetti ice which is yeah, yeah,
I think we talked about it before. It's like ice
cream that looks like spaghetti noodles, and then it's got
covered in strawberry sauce that looks like Mariner.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
It's super weird. Yeah, it's a texture thing. It's interesting.
So here we are.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
We just gave you the quick skinny on the giant Laoreal.
It is worth over two hundred and thirty eight billion
US dollars today.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Which is I believe rivaling, if not a little surpassing,
the number we mentioned the top for the entire hair
dye industry, which was two hundred and no twenty three billion.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
That's for hair dye alone.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Loreal has its little Myts, Little Glove, Myts and all
kinds of stuff right and owns subsidiaries and spinoff brands
and all of that as well.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
And they all all the success began with that hair
dye innovation kind of how you know, Nintendo started as
a playing card and bicycle company.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Pivoted with the times.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
They pivoted with the times, nol and look, now we're
outside of World War what we see that there is
finally suffrage for women in some countries. There are more
employment opportunities, there are options for birth control. So people
(32:33):
are feeling like they're more recognized as people, they have
more agency to express themselves. And this is where we
see the flapper movement leaning into hair dye as an expression, right,
a statement. So you know, now you don't have to
be scared of having bright red hair or platinum blonde hair.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
For sure, and while not toxic, you know, poisonous let's
just say, I mean certainly would be if you ingested it.
But these still did contain irritants that would, like you said, Ben,
could fry out your scalp, frizz out your hair, do
long term damage to it, things like oxidizing and alkalizing
agents such as hydrogen peroxide an ammonia and hydrogen peroxide,
(33:19):
of course, is something that we still hear about today
as part of some of these hair but as we know,
folks are often willing to suffer for fashion and roll
the dice in order to look cool, to look fashionable. However,
it wasn't until nineteen thirty that the actress Gene Harlow
popularized probably one of the most gnarly and damaging processes
(33:46):
to date, the bleaching of the hair.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, Gene Harlow the first Platinum Blonde, and we have
to go to Howard Hughes, who was the manager of
Gene Harlow at the time. So they are working on
a rom com a romantic comedy called Platinum Blonde. And
for this Howard Hughes, in classic soulless producer fashion, says,
(34:15):
we need something that really pops, and so uh he
goes deep into uh figuring out how to make her
the blondest of blonde. After Platinum Blonde the film releases,
Hughes is, Uh, he's kind of up his own butt
(34:36):
about this. He's very arrogant and proud of it.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
So he's a bit of an oddball that Howard Hughes saying,
if anyone's ever seen the Aviator, he had his hands
in a lot of different stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
And his fingernails were long. He hated, he hated nail clippers.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Piano or the milk jugs or something like that.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
The guy was troubled and near the end, it is
definitely a bad downwards spir for old Howard Hughes. At
the time, he is a Hollywood magnate man of Mogul, Aviator,
et cetera. And we do need to point out that
what the medium in which this hair dye needed or
this hair coloring needed to pop was black and white.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
It had a certain contrast that lent itself.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
To the way black and white film looked, and that
differentiated her from like, you know, the average sort of
more mop water blonde, as Wren describes it in her
incredible outline brief Howard Hughes, Actually you can also add
to his list of accomplishments kind of a.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Hair dye an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
I guess he was working on mixing up the right
combo to get that look that they were trying to
do it.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
She Yeah, it was definitely yelling at the people who
knew what they were doing.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
That's true. Back, that's a good point I'm giving Howard
Waits so much sort of a you know, sort of
a ep. He was delegating harshly.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
It was delegated aggressive.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
But where do they land, Ben, It's a really odd
concoction of materials.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah, they make this mix of hydrogen peroxide, sodium hypochlorite, bleach, ammonia,
and essentially laundry soap. And after platinum blonde releases, Hughes
is so into this effect. He offers ten thousand US
(36:25):
dollars to anyone who can replicate the look of platinum
blonde gene Harlow. And we have to do an inflation calculator.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Maybe it booop.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Ten thousand dollars at that time is roughly two hundred
and seven thousand dollars in twenty twenty five money.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
And he wasn't not expecting to have to pay that
money out. No, wonder what that bizarro list of ingredients
that you rattled off, including what was it then, lux
laundry flakes.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yes, yes, the last word in laudry soap.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
This is super bad for our hapless gene Harlowe. It's
so toxic that later researchers think it may have this
treatment for her hair may have contributed to her death
from kidney failure at We are sorry to report folks
the young age of twenty six.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Was she a drinker too? I'm not trying to victim Lamy.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
I'm just wondering if there are any exacerbating it seems
like everybody was in those days.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
What is it for kidneys? Right? I know alcohol is
bad for the.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
List, it's bad for liver. You're right, I don't know.
There could be alcohol.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Alcohol can basically take out age.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
It ain't good for kid Kidney's are purifiers as well.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
It's not great. We're saying kidneys make water not poisonous
to humans. That's it.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Yeah, kidneys are the little filters that you can't change.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Out right exactly. Yeah, So that is sad rip Gene
Marlow for sure. However, Howard Hughes's influence carried on into
probably the blonde bombshell that most people think of, Marilyn
Marilyn Monroe, Marrion Monroe.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yes, yes, from earlier and now we fast forward once more.
This is how we're wrapping up the episode. It's nineteen fifty.
There's a guy named Lawrence Gelb. He's got a wife
named Jing Claire. They create the first single step hair
dye that can lighten your hair without also destroying your
(38:33):
head and possibly your kidneys.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Man, Man, you were delivering that with such intensity, I
was sure they were gonna pull off some sort of heists.
But they sort of did though, a heist of young
women's money. The couple's company, Claire All, you might have
heard still around today, and in fact, our research associate
Wren is a real booster of that brand, uses that
brand of hair dye, and it's not a shame to
(38:57):
admit it, she says. Their flagship product was called Miss
Claire All Color Bath and became a huge hit with
housewives because it could kind of boost their natural hues
hair colors without being too obvious and making it look
like they were trying too hard. So it really was
more of like a an enhancement than a total makeover, right.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah, yeah, And I'm doing that because I don't love
the name.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
I get the history the color bath.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Yeah, it's just I don't know, man, Miss Claire All
Color Bath is whatever worked for the time.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Sure it did, And of course Toren's point, Claire All
very much still around, So who are we.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
To cast dispersion?
Speaker 1 (39:37):
I think another great point Red makes here is that
women at the time, in post World War two had
experienced a greater degree of agency in US society, and
then people in power try to pull the rug from
beneath them. So the idea here becomes a concept of
(40:03):
self expression and retaining one's agency. Now you don't have
to go to a specialist an expert. You can you
can mess with your hair in your own house. Still
haired eye is not a mainstream beauty product at this point,
(40:23):
and advertising companies pull another Bernets, just like our French
buddy who created loreal, and they try to normalize this,
and they say, look, you know, nobody can tell if
you're actually using this. There's a nineteen fifty six clareal
Ad that just says does she or doesn't she?
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Which is she or won't she?
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Bothers nice, which is bothersome nole because it reminds me
of maybe it's makeup. Maybe it's Mabeline exactly yeah, or no,
well maybe she's born with it.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
They may have evolved it, but that's the that's the
the intent behind it.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
You got it, you got it, And we see the
results over time. In the nineteen fifties, something like less
than ten percent of women in the US eye their hair,
or something between you know, four and seven percent. By
the seventies, that figure has risen to a little north
of forty percent.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
So by twenty fifteen, an estimated seventy percent of American
women we're using hair dye, according to CNN Women and Men. Now,
of course it is you know, all bets are off.
There's all kinds of new techniques and you know, gradient
dye jobs and multi colored things, split dye.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
I mean, like, it's so cool.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
My kid is a huge fan and changes their hair
every couple of weeks, and I am here for it.
And this is in no small part thanks to Titian Snooky.
We're getting to them Bellamo. That was my first exposure
to kind of punk rock hair color. I actually was
known to have some funky hair colors when I was
a little youthful upstart myself. These were two punk sisters
(42:01):
which use that in the positive turn.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
They weren't saying.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Punk kids from the rocks, and they founded a company
called Manic Panic.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
That's the one man. It's not temporary, it's highly permanent.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
No I'm thinking of a different thing that but manic panic.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
Yeahic panic is the big one.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Tish Snooky's Manic Panic is how it's still branded today.
They started this creative hair color line back in nineteen
seventy seven.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Mm hmm. Yeah. And this is.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Hair is fashion, right. This is not meant to impersonate
a natural hair color. This is to say I have
chosen bright blue or something like that.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
And we have to note again the first thing we
said at the top, your body is your own. You know,
your choices are your own, and that's a very important thing.
So don't let people bully you about it, you know,
embrace your impirans. If you choose to dye your hair,
at least you won't get lead poisoning, now.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
That's for sure.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
And I did want to say I remember very distinctly
growing up, at least one of the schools that I
went to, it was not allowed to have funky colored hair.
It was very much for boten, which is kind of
interesting we think back on it now it doesn't seem
to be the case, at least to the school that
my kid goes to. But that was a form of
kind of shutting down a form of creative expression because
(43:27):
I can't think.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
But what are they going to say? It's distracting, Like,
give me a break.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
It just seems to me to be a way of
keeping the drones in line.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Yeah, and everybody's childhood is unique. Every person is unique.
We hope that you found this episode as fascinating as
we did. We are not beauticians, We are not a
cosmetologist nor hair dressers, but we are big fans of
ridiculous history. We hope you are as well. Big big
(43:56):
thanks to everyone for tuning in. Big thanks to our
super producer, mister Max Williams, as well as our research
associate for this, the legendary Wren.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Indeed, this is a really fun one, and we actually
have a bunch of tangents and trivia that we're not
going to get to today that we are absolutely gonna
snip out and put in a upcoming kind of compilation
episode that I'm very excited to get to. Huge thanks
to Chris Frasciotis and needs Cheff codes here in Spirit
not the strickle on the quiz storin Jay Bahama Sjacob's
(44:27):
the Puzzler.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Big big thanks to our rude dudes over ridiculous crime
who recently made an appearance on the Puzzler. So no spoilers,
not going to tell you the answers to the puzzles
Bahamas poses, but you should tune in. It is a
treat as always to the hear suit and non here
(44:48):
suit alike. Thanks for joining us, you know, send us
your weirdest haircuts. Have you seen that subreddit beat me
here Max, just my shit up?
Speaker 3 (45:00):
I don't know about that one. Check it out, check
it out, see you next step folks.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the one,
the only, the natural haired super producer mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Max Midnight Williams. Because that's the deep, deep color of
his luscious locks.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Do how do you all think my hair is? Can
I tell you that's outside of the scope of his episode?
Max Fright?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
No, it's sound dear butt. I seen it? Is it?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Holy cow?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah, it's made up that word. I like holy cow.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I wasn't wrong about the lusciousness. So I wish y'all
could see it. If only it weren't just any nice.
It looks like a commercial fabyo locks, Fabio locks.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Just so. That's Noel Brown. They call me Ben Bullen
in this part of the world.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
We are.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
We are three dudes here in the United States, and
we have a ton of questions about history. Now, Noel,
you and I and our God I love. The fabio
thing is not going to leave my head.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
You nailed it. I'm very aroused.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
We are we are three dudes with again, an enormous
interest in weird, weird stuff, and thanks to the help
of our research associate, the legendary Wren, today we're going
to talk about.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Hair dye for sure.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
And you know, it's something that I have always somewhat assumed,
at least in terms of the way it's used today.
Been sort of a modern thing, which isn't that far off,
But in the world of fashion, hair has always been
kind of a symbol of vitality. If we would talk
about Samson, for example, the biblical character who's you know,
(02:16):
magical strength, Apparently the power resided in his hair, and
it was I believe Solomme, who was sort of his
arch that cut his hair off and deprived him of
his strength. So I mean, it's definitely in the lore
that that hair. Having a good head of hair indicates
some form of vitality, not to mention a form of
(02:37):
self expression, as evidenced by Max's aerial style headthrow, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
And thank you for not doing dreadlocks.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Max.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
If this podcasting thing doesn't work out for us, I'm
gonna I'm clearly gonna ride Max's coattails.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Or pony tails, uh.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Of what he becomes the new face of Claial Herbal essences.
I love the point you bring up, knowl about the
idea of hair as power in those old biblical stories,
(03:21):
true true story. Once upon a time a girl I
was dating used to get so mad when I got
a haircut, and she told me that my hairdresser was
robbing me of my power.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
It's very body fluid, very weird.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
It is a little weird, yeah, I mean, but there
certainly are religious sects I guess you call them where
you know. I believe it's Pentecostal, where cutting the hair
is a no no, and there is a certain reverence
associated with the hair. So although beauty standards have certainly
evolved and changed and cyclical things kind of come and
(04:00):
go and then come back over time, one thing that
certainly remains to some degree is that too many gray
hair is seen as a sign of aging and therefore
perhaps been a sign of weakness, which is wild. I
don't care does love a silver fox. I would much
rather go gray than go bald. And that is no
(04:22):
shades any of our bald community out there, any receding
hairline folks or widows peaks, what have you. I personally
pride myself on having a pretty good head of hair
that will definitely one day be entirely gray. But I
don't think the hair itself is going anywhere. And that's
a bargain that I can be on board with.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Widows. Peaks are awesome. They make you look smarter, They
make you look a little bit like a vulcan munster,
all right, So I wore a hat for this one. Look, folks,
we know the hair dye industry is boomy right now.
In the current global economy, the hair dye industry alone
(05:04):
racks up about twenty three point one point five billion
US dollars. And for a lot of people, you know,
this is a very sensitive thing. Hair can be challenging,
It can be a statement, it can be it can
be something people judge you for.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
And while I am on.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Record loving gray hair, a lot of people do get
bothered by this. So hair dye by modern standards is
way more recent than you might imagine, folks. It's existed
in a modern industry for about a century. But even
(05:50):
in its early days, the iterations were relatively simple. Maybe
some of us in the audience remember the idea of bluing,
you know, like Mark Simpson, there.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Was all blue thing.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I don't know if I know about that, I guess
I've I've heard of older ladies sometimes referred to as
blue hairs. There is a shade of gray that has
a bit of a bluish hue that I've always found interesting.
But man, we gotta do it because every time we're
talking about the history of pigments and fashion and and
you know, fabric, for example, we always end up back
with the ancient Egyptians, who were huge innovators in many
(06:30):
many ways, and industrialization, irrigation, farming techniques, construction, and of course, yes,
one hundred percent weaponry, myths making.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Let's just say a lot of we always talk about.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I mean, I don't know if you've seen them film heretic,
but there is some interesting There's an interesting part where
the character pedantically talks about how some of the ancient
myths of Egypt have a lot of parallels with biblical stuff.
There is this sort of hero's journey repeated story, and
there is some truth to that dating as far back
as the ancient Engines.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Shout out to Joseph Campbell, thank you of cambell A,
thou still exactly right, Ben, A really good one.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
If you're into Star Wars, and you're seeing some of
these tropes that begin to start to seem a little
bit recognizable.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
There's a reason for that.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
But one thing the ancient Egyptians pride themselves on was
looking good, fine, smelling good.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Especially as the royal family became increasingly habsburg esque. I
said it, yeah, just look, come on, man, you get it.
Look at King Tu.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, King indeed.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Indeed, So going back to like fifteen hundred BCE, uh,
the well to do people in ancient Egypt would use
heada to give their hair a reddish brown hue. It
would also help obscure gray hair, because we have to remember,
for a long time in human history, gray hair was
(08:03):
not cool. Now, I want to be clear here, Max
is a brownie. My pal Nola and I have various
streaks of gray. Nole's got a cool roguish from the
X Men streak of gray and nice gray goatee. I
got these two gray stripes that.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Make me look like ros al Ghoul.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
And I've got the gray at my temples like Reed
Richards from Fantastic four.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
What do they call those polly walnuts in and they
call them wings? Actually some people dye them that way
on purpose. Well, it's like a thing. Yeah, Polly talks
about getting his wings done, and it's like it's like
maybe an Italian kind of thing, a little bit dated,
but very funny for that character. But the ancient Egyptians
used kind of, like you said, to dye their hair
(08:55):
this reddish brown color. And it certainly there was an
aspect of max sking, you know, the signs of aging,
because we know the Egyptians were a pretty vain people,
and I think that's too much of a hot take.
But it was also like kind of a societal flex
in a way too, a way of differentiating the haves
(09:15):
from the have nots. It was popularized, as often the case,
by a great ruler, a very prominent figure, Pharaoh Rameses
Rameses rather the Great. A nineteen seventy six study of
his mummified remains concluded that he did not, in fact
have black hair, but rather.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Red or auburn hair. What a flex.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
That's very interesting. So wait, he had black hair, like
when it was? He was his hair naturally red or auburn?
Is that what they're saying?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
What?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, it was it was natural? Like how I'm a
semi ginger? Dave Walker, did we call it. Yeah, it's
being a not quite ginger was a huge social flex.
Really at that time, you were associated with royalty, you
(10:09):
were associated with the deity of the desert sands, Set,
who was not a bad guy at that time. Going
back to our earlier song of Ice and Fire Habsburg jokes,
this pharaoh in particular probably got his red hair via genetics.
(10:30):
His father had also been born as a guy with
red or auburn hair. The issue is that they wanted
to maintain that red hair can go gray early, and
gray at that time meant you were running towards the grave.
So you always wanted to have your hair unique and
(10:55):
you wanted it to be a statement. You could also,
at this time in ancient Egypt, use indigo as a
dye to achieve that kind of blue black, silky shade.
Or sure you could go blonde. Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
That's what I was a little confused about. I'm trying
to find some more specific mentions. But the indication was
that it was thought that Ramses had black hair, but
in fact he had red or auburn hair that was
genetically inherited from his father, who was named after Set.
You know, for this this unique tray, this familial trade.
(11:31):
So I'm guessing that perhaps he used a he died
over that.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Co I think as he went gray, he died over it. Okay, Okay,
I got it.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
I'm just wondering if he was using indigo, because certainly,
if you already got the red and people are using
this stuff to get the red fakely, he'd be just
rocking it all naturale. But I guess you're right he
could have used the hanna to cover up some of
those grays. And of course, if anyone's ever messed with
turmeric in the kitchen, you know that that spice can
stain your fingers pretty bright yellow pretty quick. And that
(12:05):
was actually used to create kind of a quasi blonde
shade of yellow.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
And we got to think too, they didn't really have chemical.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Lightning techniques yet at this point, so it's not going
to be the same like platinum blonde type look as
we're going to get to a little further down the line.
So by three twenty three BC, ancient Egypt, Rome and
Greece were kind of co occupying the Greco Roman period
collectively and contributing various bits, you know, to culture and
(12:36):
history with a lot of parallel thinking going on as well.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Right, Yeah, absolutely, Look there's another great and this guy
is named Alexander, the Great, super humble dude Greek general
conquered Egypt. When he dies, he's got an employee, a
real up and comer named Ptolome related to Cleopatra, and
(13:00):
takes over Egypt. Everything carries on for about three hundred
years until Julius Caesar has the worst work meeting of
his life. Then Cleopatra loses control of Egypt in a
battle to the Romans because she chose the wrong side,
and that post Caesar power vacuum these cultures. The reason
(13:23):
we're telling you this, folks, is that these cultures reach
a confluence of hair dye. The ancient Greeks and Romans
look at this jet black hair that most people are
rocking in Egypt, and they go, oh, man, this is
so cool. Let's be like the cool people. And then
(13:45):
they make a series of just terrible choices in creating
their hair dye. Can we name some of the ingredients here?
Speaker 3 (13:53):
We can?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And I just want to say, I think maybe where
I was getting off with the whole Ramsey's hair color
thing was that, Yeah, it's really the good points that
you make ben Egyptians were typically born with jet black hair,
so for Rameses to have that red hair was super
unusual and remarkable and perhaps even what people looked to
in wanting to.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Use that hennah to kind of match that freak, you
know what I.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Mean, divinely inspired. Also, I like the nomenclature, match that freak.
That's what the Romans were trying to do. They mixed
lead oxide, bad stuff, calcium hydroxide water. This is the
first permanent black hair dye. This is not that stuff
you would buy at gadzooks or a hot topic.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
And we know even today that a lot of hair
lightning products and hair dyes can be pretty gnarly. You
gotta be careful, you know, and you got to have
a professional do it. You can literally set your hair
on fire, yes, if you're not careful, yes.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
And you can fry your You can fry your scalp.
The thing is, neurology was not really a science at
this point, so the formula these Greeks and Romans cooked
(15:10):
up was bad for you. It could cause brain damage,
It would corrode your scalp eventually. Without being neurologists, the
Greco Romans figured this out and they said, all right,
here's what we're gonna do, a much more healthy option.
We're gonna ferment leeches in vinegar, and we're going to
(15:32):
apply that so that we look more look like an Egyptian.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
No you want to They're definitely the cool kids. They're
definitely the trendsetters of history at this point, leaving behind
a lot of pretty cool stuff that got kind of,
you know, styled on.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Let's just sit later on down the line, dude.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Also, some of the Greeks, who were obviously trying to
be edgy, I guess, trying to do their met Gallas stuff,
they leaned into their lighter hair. To your excellent note
about lightning hair color, they used potassium pollen and crushed
yellow flower petals to kind of make their hair lighter.
(16:13):
They made a paste or really, if we're being honest,
a poultice, because we love that.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Weird Hannah would be similarly thick and pasty, and I
think it would honestly be almost something that you would
apply to the hair, because without bleaching it, you're not
You can't dye black hair a color. It just doesn't
really work. It doesn't take. That's why you have to
bleach it first. So I'm wondering if they would rub
this stuff in their hair. And the color kind of
came from the fact that this was like in there. Yeah,
(16:41):
the salt is reacting with the keratin in the hair.
They knew the process, they didn't have the same words
we have for it now, and they knew that the
sunshine would touch the hair when you had this pasty
stuff on it. It's kind of like how red points out.
It's kind of like how if you park a car
(17:03):
in the sun for a long enough time. Yeah, the
energy from the sun will have an effect on the paint.
So you can use the sun to like expose photographic
plates and things like that, you know, I mean, like
whatever you know obviously, But if you leave say a
drawing out like on a on a piece of regular
(17:23):
art paper long enough, it will lighten over a time.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
And now fast forward Greeks Egyptians. Sorry, guys, the Romans
are running stuff now. And when the Romans are running stuff,
they steal from the Egyptians. They steal from the Greeks.
This is not a hot take. This is how their
culture worked. They started creating this one percent or class
(17:48):
in a different way, such that if you are a
woman of significant means or a person of significant means, honestly,
you got blonde hair, you want to look blonde, right,
you want to stay blonde, And so if you have
the means at this point in time, you will apply
(18:08):
literal powdered gold with a special comb so you get
a sparkly hair.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
You know, I don't know if you know it's been
but a hair glitter is apparently back in a big way.
It was big and I think the late nineties and
early two thousands, and apparently that movie Honora kind of
brought it back into fashion a little bit. So this
is like the og hair glitter, very very expensive hair glitter.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Are you doing hair glitter?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Not?
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I No, glitter is insidious. I mean, if it's around,
you get it there on you.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Oh gosh, we don't even want to mention it. It's
like saying the quist's name thrice.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I learned a really funny term recently. It's called divorce glitter.
It's like something women who are going on dates in
order to ward off married men who are lying to them,
They wear glitter so that it gets on the men
and then their wives will know that they've been stepping
out on them.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Well, first off, I am impressed, and secondly, that's really
sad that you can't trust people.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
It is said, but divorce glitter, you gotta. It's a
trap and you deserve it, you heal. But there's another
In addition to the gold powder, there was like you know,
that was only for the one percent of the one percent,
as you mentioned, Ben, but for those in that lower
echelon of society.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Yeah, they weren't really rocking the gold powder.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
They were basically using a lie, right, more or less,
with ash with vinegar and soap liquor. Isn't that basically
lie to a degree? It's some it's it's something along
those lines. Yeah, ash and soap liquor.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Imperium romatum, it was called right, it's uh, it's weird
and it did have a bad smell and it did
burn people's skin. Also, if you left it on your
head too long, your hair would become brittle. It would
(20:09):
start falling out or breaking when you touched it. So,
of course, as we mentioned in the very first episode
of Ridiculous History, low these several years ago, wigs come
into play. The fancy version is the Peruke.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Remember that episode.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I do, But Ben, I have to ask you a question. Yeah,
do you wear wigs?
Speaker 3 (20:31):
No? Have you won wigs for costumes? Yes?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
That's not actually George Washington in those videos.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Will you wear wigs? I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
I don't think it's me.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
It may be, and I don't get to my last question,
which is when will you wear wigs?
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Sorry? Oh no, what about you? What about you know?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I bet this is a delightful exchange between Elijah Wood
and the other dude from who played one of his
Hobbit buddies. Apparently he the guy that was in Lost.
He apparently was punking Elijah Wood because it was like
a phone only interview with a German journalist.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
And he's a talking to will you wear wigs? I
guess the ends it with when will you wear winks?
I hear you?
Speaker 2 (21:13):
But you look great in that George Washington wig. Ben,
you strike a dashing figure and wigs are really a
cool thing, and there's still very much around today as
a fashion statement, especially folks in the drag community and beyond.
I mean, you can really say a lot with a wig.
Not to mention the theatrical aspect of.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
It, yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
And back in this time period, wiggs were especially I
don't want to be a jerk about it, but wigs
were for sex workers in some communities because they would
have these yellow haired wigs that would let prospective customers know, hey,
(21:52):
the store is open.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Lit wink wink, not non Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, yeah, And that comes to us from Devin Hopp
writing for Birdie The Extraordinary History of Hair Color. People
liked blondes, dude, People liked blonde hair, especially in vettics.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
And it's interesting because we get obviously into some pretty
gnarly racist tropes when it comes to.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Blonde hair, blue eyes, airyan kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
So it is interesting that this early on there is
this sort of obsession with those things, right.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, one hundred percent. According to the Journal of the
American Academy of Dermatology, by the fifteen hundreds, female identifying
folks in vetics had a pensiont for bleaching their hair
in the sun, often wearing broad brimmed hats without a
crown when sitting out on their rooftop. Verandas I have
(22:50):
a question for you, nol broad brimmed hat without a crown,
is that just like a visor that goes around.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
I think it is, dude, which is interesting and I
gotta wonder too. I'd love to see some stats from
this era about skin cancer. I certainly don't think people
were wearing sunscreen right, right.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
We're still before neurology and we're before dermatology. So if
we fast forward a little bit further, it's the seventeenth
century in England and people are not as into blonde hair.
They want to have dark hair. It's associated with youth.
So women would make a a paste. See it called
(23:37):
a potion, but I think it's a paste elderberries and
red wine. You could also use radish extract to get
that red hair.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Again, just a quick question.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
A poultice would be when you're starting to add more
solid materials like leaves.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
And sticks and stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. Gosh, I'm still what
trying to remember what that temporary hair dye was in
gad zooks or a hot topic.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Oh, we're gonna get to that. Well, it's not temporary.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
We're gonna get to the kind of I guess og
funky hair color. But there certainly I know what you're
talking about, and there was a temporary solution, you know,
for folks that didn't want to go the full nine.
But unfortunately, you know, for all the good intentions and
fashionistaeness of it all, if that's the word, this stuff
was still very, very toxic.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
You know, people were not experts in lead either. We're
going to go to further fast forward, the chemically challenged
origins of modern hair dye. It's eighteen fifty six. Malaria
is very much in play. There's a thing called queenine quinine.
(24:51):
How do you say it?
Speaker 3 (24:52):
I sometimes say quinine.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
I've heard it many different ways, though I don't think
there's I think it's totally dealer's choice. Still learning English
as brothers, we all are. But yeah, quinnying, we know,
as you know. I think that's probably the little fun
fact people often drop about this.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
It is what makes tonic water taste the way it
does tonic.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
So yeah, your gin and tonic does have quiney in it,
or at least it used to. But it is a
very important remedy for malaria, which was, like you said,
wide rife at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
I love the phrase wide rife, So okay, it comes
from this substance, comes from the trees in southeast Asia.
So it's a it's a real pickle to get this
stuff out and derive it and make it oh from
the sourcer, right, yeah, yeah, you got it. So there's
this guy named William Henry Perkin. He is eighteen years old.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
He'll start.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, he's a chem student, and he says, look, I
got to make some alternative to this substance so that
more people can have it. He was not successful in
making an anti malarial treatment, but he did accidentally create
another compound from coal tar, mauvine. It becomes the first
(26:15):
successful synthetic hair dye or dye is regular dye.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
He should have been on our list of well, I mean,
we wouldn't happen for this discussion, but we did an
episode recently on accidental inventions, and this is certainly one
of the Like you said, derived from coldtar, this stuff
is actually called mauvine. It also was referred to as
analine purple. And it was marketed in a burst of
genius kind of to take this byproduct, this trash product.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
And sell it. Weave it into gold not gold powder.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
It was sold as the first mass produced, commercially available
synthetic hair dye.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah, ed at the beginning, it was mostly used for
dyeing fabric, not hair, and Perkin.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Things were a little prim and proper during this, like
funky colors. We're kind of right out.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Killed me not to remember the name of that temporary
hair dye anyway, So our buddy Perkin, he is a kiddo,
as you said, Noel, He has professors, and one of
his professors is a guy named doctor August Hoffman, and
Hoffman looks at his student's invention and he creates a
(27:27):
color changing molecule called here we go.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Max.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Parafinyl diaman.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Is called.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Thank you, para fenneline diamine para diamine Me.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Yeah, what is it? Ballerina?
Speaker 1 (27:50):
So okay, this is the foundation for most permanent hair
dyes today and today still yeah, thanks again to Birdie.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Our source on this.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Uh nol, Can you introduce us to the first guy
who figured out how to make hair dye that we
got poisonous?
Speaker 3 (28:06):
That'd be cool. Let's figure that one out.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Eugene Shuller nineteen o seven, a French chemist who did
invent the first non toxic. I love that term, like
they used to print it on stuff all the time.
Oh yeah, non toxic like it used to be on
like magic markers. You know, I wonder if that term
has fallen out of favor, because it's sort of like
everything should be assumed at this point to be non toxic.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
But I guess that's not true.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
It's it's like when you go to a gas station
in the U s assign unlet a gas, or you
drive by a school and it says drug free school zone. Well,
where's the cool zone, Where's the cool school? Yeah, exactly
too cool for school.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Was French chemists Eugene Shuller who did invent the first
non toxic hair dye in the sense that it wasn't
lead based, so it was a synthetic hair dye had
a range of subtle hues, which in the Victorian era
was key because they weren't trying to go hog wild
and tissi and snooky themselves, like we're going to get
to it a bit. The idea of using synthetic hair to, however,
was not particularly well known and it hadn't achieved popularity
(29:07):
among French women yet, so he was going to have
to kind of spread the word if he wanted to
capitalize on this development.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yo, man, he is exactly like Edward Burnett. He is,
he is pushing the problem then shows up to solve.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, So he starts a company called this is the
real name in English, the French company of Inoffensive hair Dyes.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
That is, it is so inoffensive man.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Which Benign later translates to or changes.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
To laoreal loreal, which I'm not sure that does that. Actually, No,
it's a homonym, right for a popular hair style which
is orial at the time, a play on words of
oriole and halo. So it is a made up word,
but it just boy, does this sound fancy and French?
Doesn't that he kind of was onto something already, right.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
You know, we're from the United States. We speak English,
we're still learning it candidly. But I would say that
anytime we see a word with an apostrophe in there,
you know, and a nice string of vowels, we automatically
go oh, fancy, oh hoggin DAWs.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Indeed, which is also a totally BS word. It is
made with all those It just looks proper.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
I don't even think of Germans as like being particularly
up on ice cream, which is an odd choice, and
I think of that more as maybe like a French
thing as well.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Dude, just soft note the Austrians. I never want to
go back to Austria again.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
But the time they do, how did they hurt you?
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Well, well, unrelated outside of the scope of this cowgo.
Those guys love ice cream, Yeah, I had weirdly into it.
I had some really good ice cream in Berlin as well.
I can't remember the name of the place, but when
I grew up in Germany, one thing I remember and
I'll never.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Forget is this thing called spaghetti ice which is yeah, yeah,
I think we talked about it before. It's like ice
cream that looks like spaghetti noodles, and then it's got
covered in strawberry sauce that looks like Mariner.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
It's super weird. Yeah, it's a texture thing. It's interesting.
So here we are.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
We just gave you the quick skinny on the giant Laoreal.
It is worth over two hundred and thirty eight billion
US dollars today.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Which is I believe rivaling, if not a little surpassing,
the number we mentioned the top for the entire hair
dye industry, which was two hundred and no twenty three billion.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
That's for hair dye alone.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Loreal has its little Myts, Little Glove, Myts and all
kinds of stuff right and owns subsidiaries and spinoff brands
and all of that as well.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
And they all all the success began with that hair
dye innovation kind of how you know, Nintendo started as
a playing card and bicycle company.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Pivoted with the times.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
They pivoted with the times, nol and look, now we're
outside of World War what we see that there is
finally suffrage for women in some countries. There are more
employment opportunities, there are options for birth control. So people
(32:33):
are feeling like they're more recognized as people, they have
more agency to express themselves. And this is where we
see the flapper movement leaning into hair dye as an expression, right,
a statement. So you know, now you don't have to
be scared of having bright red hair or platinum blonde hair.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
For sure, and while not toxic, you know, poisonous let's
just say, I mean certainly would be if you ingested it.
But these still did contain irritants that would, like you said, Ben,
could fry out your scalp, frizz out your hair, do
long term damage to it, things like oxidizing and alkalizing
agents such as hydrogen peroxide an ammonia and hydrogen peroxide,
(33:19):
of course, is something that we still hear about today
as part of some of these hair but as we know,
folks are often willing to suffer for fashion and roll
the dice in order to look cool, to look fashionable. However,
it wasn't until nineteen thirty that the actress Gene Harlow
popularized probably one of the most gnarly and damaging processes
(33:46):
to date, the bleaching of the hair.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, Gene Harlow the first Platinum Blonde, and we have
to go to Howard Hughes, who was the manager of
Gene Harlow at the time. So they are working on
a rom com a romantic comedy called Platinum Blonde. And
for this Howard Hughes, in classic soulless producer fashion, says,
(34:15):
we need something that really pops, and so uh he
goes deep into uh figuring out how to make her
the blondest of blonde. After Platinum Blonde the film releases,
Hughes is, Uh, he's kind of up his own butt
(34:36):
about this. He's very arrogant and proud of it.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
So he's a bit of an oddball that Howard Hughes saying,
if anyone's ever seen the Aviator, he had his hands
in a lot of different stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
And his fingernails were long. He hated, he hated nail clippers.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Piano or the milk jugs or something like that.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
The guy was troubled and near the end, it is
definitely a bad downwards spir for old Howard Hughes. At
the time, he is a Hollywood magnate man of Mogul, Aviator,
et cetera. And we do need to point out that
what the medium in which this hair dye needed or
this hair coloring needed to pop was black and white.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
It had a certain contrast that lent itself.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
To the way black and white film looked, and that
differentiated her from like, you know, the average sort of
more mop water blonde, as Wren describes it in her
incredible outline brief Howard Hughes, Actually you can also add
to his list of accomplishments kind of a.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Hair dye an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
I guess he was working on mixing up the right
combo to get that look that they were trying to
do it.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
She Yeah, it was definitely yelling at the people who
knew what they were doing.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
That's true. Back, that's a good point I'm giving Howard
Waits so much sort of a you know, sort of
a ep. He was delegating harshly.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
It was delegated aggressive.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
But where do they land, Ben, It's a really odd
concoction of materials.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah, they make this mix of hydrogen peroxide, sodium hypochlorite, bleach, ammonia,
and essentially laundry soap. And after platinum blonde releases, Hughes
is so into this effect. He offers ten thousand US
(36:25):
dollars to anyone who can replicate the look of platinum
blonde gene Harlow. And we have to do an inflation calculator.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Maybe it booop.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Ten thousand dollars at that time is roughly two hundred
and seven thousand dollars in twenty twenty five money.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
And he wasn't not expecting to have to pay that
money out. No, wonder what that bizarro list of ingredients
that you rattled off, including what was it then, lux
laundry flakes.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yes, yes, the last word in laudry soap.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
This is super bad for our hapless gene Harlowe. It's
so toxic that later researchers think it may have this
treatment for her hair may have contributed to her death
from kidney failure at We are sorry to report folks
the young age of twenty six.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Was she a drinker too? I'm not trying to victim Lamy.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
I'm just wondering if there are any exacerbating it seems
like everybody was in those days.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
What is it for kidneys? Right? I know alcohol is
bad for the.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
List, it's bad for liver. You're right, I don't know.
There could be alcohol.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Alcohol can basically take out age.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
It ain't good for kid Kidney's are purifiers as well.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
It's not great. We're saying kidneys make water not poisonous
to humans. That's it.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Yeah, kidneys are the little filters that you can't change.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Out right exactly. Yeah, So that is sad rip Gene
Marlow for sure. However, Howard Hughes's influence carried on into
probably the blonde bombshell that most people think of, Marilyn
Marilyn Monroe, Marrion Monroe.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yes, yes, from earlier and now we fast forward once more.
This is how we're wrapping up the episode. It's nineteen fifty.
There's a guy named Lawrence Gelb. He's got a wife
named Jing Claire. They create the first single step hair
dye that can lighten your hair without also destroying your
(38:33):
head and possibly your kidneys.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Man, Man, you were delivering that with such intensity, I
was sure they were gonna pull off some sort of heists.
But they sort of did though, a heist of young
women's money. The couple's company, Claire All, you might have
heard still around today, and in fact, our research associate
Wren is a real booster of that brand, uses that
brand of hair dye, and it's not a shame to
(38:57):
admit it, she says. Their flagship product was called Miss
Claire All Color Bath and became a huge hit with
housewives because it could kind of boost their natural hues
hair colors without being too obvious and making it look
like they were trying too hard. So it really was
more of like a an enhancement than a total makeover, right.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah, yeah, And I'm doing that because I don't love
the name.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
I get the history the color bath.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Yeah, it's just I don't know, man, Miss Claire All
Color Bath is whatever worked for the time.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Sure it did, And of course Toren's point, Claire All
very much still around, So who are we.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
To cast dispersion?
Speaker 1 (39:37):
I think another great point Red makes here is that
women at the time, in post World War two had
experienced a greater degree of agency in US society, and
then people in power try to pull the rug from
beneath them. So the idea here becomes a concept of
(40:03):
self expression and retaining one's agency. Now you don't have
to go to a specialist an expert. You can you
can mess with your hair in your own house. Still
haired eye is not a mainstream beauty product at this point,
(40:23):
and advertising companies pull another Bernets, just like our French
buddy who created loreal, and they try to normalize this,
and they say, look, you know, nobody can tell if
you're actually using this. There's a nineteen fifty six clareal
Ad that just says does she or doesn't she?
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Which is she or won't she?
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Bothers nice, which is bothersome nole because it reminds me
of maybe it's makeup. Maybe it's Mabeline exactly yeah, or no,
well maybe she's born with it.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
They may have evolved it, but that's the that's the
the intent behind it.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
You got it, you got it, And we see the
results over time. In the nineteen fifties, something like less
than ten percent of women in the US eye their hair,
or something between you know, four and seven percent. By
the seventies, that figure has risen to a little north
of forty percent.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
So by twenty fifteen, an estimated seventy percent of American
women we're using hair dye, according to CNN Women and Men. Now,
of course it is you know, all bets are off.
There's all kinds of new techniques and you know, gradient
dye jobs and multi colored things, split dye.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
I mean, like, it's so cool.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
My kid is a huge fan and changes their hair
every couple of weeks, and I am here for it.
And this is in no small part thanks to Titian Snooky.
We're getting to them Bellamo. That was my first exposure
to kind of punk rock hair color. I actually was
known to have some funky hair colors when I was
a little youthful upstart myself. These were two punk sisters
(42:01):
which use that in the positive turn.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
They weren't saying.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Punk kids from the rocks, and they founded a company
called Manic Panic.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
That's the one man. It's not temporary, it's highly permanent.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
No I'm thinking of a different thing that but manic panic.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
Yeahic panic is the big one.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Tish Snooky's Manic Panic is how it's still branded today.
They started this creative hair color line back in nineteen
seventy seven.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Mm hmm. Yeah. And this is.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Hair is fashion, right. This is not meant to impersonate
a natural hair color. This is to say I have
chosen bright blue or something like that.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
And we have to note again the first thing we
said at the top, your body is your own. You know,
your choices are your own, and that's a very important thing.
So don't let people bully you about it, you know,
embrace your impirans. If you choose to dye your hair,
at least you won't get lead poisoning, now.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
That's for sure.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
And I did want to say I remember very distinctly
growing up, at least one of the schools that I
went to, it was not allowed to have funky colored hair.
It was very much for boten, which is kind of
interesting we think back on it now it doesn't seem
to be the case, at least to the school that
my kid goes to. But that was a form of
kind of shutting down a form of creative expression because
(43:27):
I can't think.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
But what are they going to say? It's distracting, Like,
give me a break.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
It just seems to me to be a way of
keeping the drones in line.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Yeah, and everybody's childhood is unique. Every person is unique.
We hope that you found this episode as fascinating as
we did. We are not beauticians, We are not a
cosmetologist nor hair dressers, but we are big fans of
ridiculous history. We hope you are as well. Big big
(43:56):
thanks to everyone for tuning in. Big thanks to our
super producer, mister Max Williams, as well as our research
associate for this, the legendary Wren.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Indeed, this is a really fun one, and we actually
have a bunch of tangents and trivia that we're not
going to get to today that we are absolutely gonna
snip out and put in a upcoming kind of compilation
episode that I'm very excited to get to. Huge thanks
to Chris Frasciotis and needs Cheff codes here in Spirit
not the strickle on the quiz storin Jay Bahama Sjacob's
(44:27):
the Puzzler.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Big big thanks to our rude dudes over ridiculous crime
who recently made an appearance on the Puzzler. So no spoilers,
not going to tell you the answers to the puzzles
Bahamas poses, but you should tune in. It is a
treat as always to the hear suit and non here
(44:48):
suit alike. Thanks for joining us, you know, send us
your weirdest haircuts. Have you seen that subreddit beat me
here Max, just my shit up?
Speaker 3 (45:00):
I don't know about that one. Check it out, check
it out, see you next step folks.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
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