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Little kids don’t like soap much but I do recall liking playing with soap bubbles.
We had soap brands in the 1950s of Lifebuoy, Camay, Cashmere Bouquet, Palmolive, Ivory and Sunlight.

In the 1960s we also got Dove and Lux.

Teens  become more concerned about hygiene, personal body odor nearly to the point of obsession. We girls cared a lot about our hair and to look modern . That trend, to be different from the past, seems generally wired into our culture. Whatever your parents did, you do the same as them when you are little, and when you are a preteen the opposite seems much more interesting.

Hair

A few generations earlier a weekly bath was the norm but we now could have a daily bath.  Our hair shampoos were often in glass bottles or metal tubes.  In the 1960s we had Head and Shoulders and special dandruff shampoos. We had Tame Crème Rinse and even Dippity Doo hair gel .

My sister and I did our hair with metal pins and slept in them overnight, or hard curlers made of plastic. The soft ones with a plastic bar to seal them were a relief and the ‘hair net’ to keep them all on the head as we slept was the norm.

My mother had thin hair and genetically but as luck would have it, just really loved to work with hair. She was elegant and eventually bought wonderful real hair wigs and synthetic wigs, in latest styles   I was always proud of her. When she had my sister in the 1940s that little girl wore Shirley Temple type curls and ringlets. When I came along the style was long hair for girls and she had us in ponytails with ribbons, or pigtails and often dressed identically.

My cohort in the 1950s was well aware of ladies’ hair styles of the fifties but did not adopt them ourselves.   There were many beauty parlors for women in the 1950s. Reo Beauty Parlor was in the south east and famous.  We had a placed called Ev’s salon in the Marda loop area. Women would have a wash and set, sitting under the huge hair dryers, and to still take part in life they’d talk loudly and you could hear them down the hallway yelling to each other over the dryers.. There was a joke that a garage mechanic said to one lady coming to get her car that he could tell she had just had her hair done. She was shyly happy about it until he said “Yes I can always tell because people’s faces are flushed from the dryer”.

In the 1950s our mothers wore soft bobs like Marilyn Monroe or poodle cuts. There was the pixie cut of Audrey Hepburn and at one point the pageboy.

When our turn came to launch, to have our own generation styles, we embraced it.

We began wearing heavy bangs on the forehead and bouffant styles.

The sixties were a time for ‘big hair’ and we perfected ratting and  backcombing, pushing the hair back on the comb to vaguely knot it up and add bulk. The beehive literally did look like a nest on our heads.  One way to really depress yourself or to bring out raucous laughter is to look at old pictures of yourself as a teen decades ago and remember how cool you thought you looked.

The goal was for hair to look super coiffed and that meant solid. No hair out of place. The goal was to look like you had a football helmet on your head and we used copious amounts of hair spray to ensure it.
We tried the flip with the ends of the hair curled outwards. Many wore updos where the point was to sweep all the hair up on top to the crown, with of course a mass of bobby pins and as needed, hairspray.

We experimented also with color. I tried blonde over the counter dye and even had a few wigs. I wore hair pieces to enhance the height of my hair, and long additions we called ‘falls’ to add bulk to the length.  Hair was important. Even in the 80s when my kids were little they would see my various additions to the hair and even had nicknames for them. The long one was Hermie and the short one was Herm.

1961 – Grecian Formula

1961 – Head & Shoulders

1965 – Nice ‘n Easy

Men in the fifties were often wearing flat top cuts and crew cuts. When I look at photos of adult men from the era, they look so much older than they were. It seems like even teenage boys were expected to look quite neat and coiffed. With Elvis,  a new fad began of the pompadour but my dad did not adopt it, was too old for it, and my cohort did not for we were too young.  The slicked back grease enhanced look was popular for the group between the two generations.

In the sixties our cohort of boys started to wear the side part, the ducktail, and sideburns.  Beards were out and shaving was still mandatory..

Baths, hygiene, toiletries

In the 1950s soap was usually sold in solid bars but they differed in scent, color and often in floatability as if that was a virtue. There were new deodorant soaps marketed and ‘beauty bars’.We had Dove, Camay, Lifebuoy, Cashmere Bouquet, and Lux.

1955 – Zest  soap promises no sticky film after

1956 – Dove bar soap

1960s- Dial soap

1963 – Safeguard soap

1970 – Irish Spring

Liquid soap became popular in the 1980s but my cohort by then was already 31. I have a theory that people get kind of stuck in their generation and forever after.  Some men adopted an aftershave that became their signature scent for the next 50 years. Some women were identified by Chanel No. 5 and the scent of that perfume still reminds me of my gracious aunt.  People have special affection for the hair style they had as a young adult and tend to hang onto it for the next few decades with only small variations.  I know I have real trouble changing and why should we? Yet of course the fashion industry tells us to modernize.

Teeth

Our toothbrushes were no longer natural brushes in the 1950s. They had plastic handles and seemed more high tech.  In the 1960s there were new hard plastic Dr. West Oral B toothbrushes and electric toothbrushes seemed to be the wave of the future.

There was quite a debate about having fluoride in toothpaste to help prevent cavities. Some toothpastes had stannous fluoride in them and some even added chlorophyll.  Some tubes were at first of tin or lead. 

1952 – Gleem

1955 – Crest toothpaste

1961 – Sensodyne toothpaste

1967 – Close-Up toothpaste – has a red stripe

Make up

Facial care was a big focus as we became teens.

Again, I think a person’s sense of beauty is linked to what they believed as teens. Over the decades women have changed significantly their sense of how big the lips should look, whether to use pale or bright lipstick, what shade the skin should look on the face and how intense the cheek color should be and how far up any coloring should go.

The 30s for our mothers had Max Factor powder, rouge high on the cheekbones, very thinly plucked eyebrows and deep red lipstick. In the 40s (when we met our mothers) the style had changed to matte natural color, fuller eyebrows, pastel eyeshadow, bright red lips.
In the 50s when we watched them carefully from the counter level, they were applying  coral lipstick. Max Factor and Maybelline and Elizabeth Arden products were available and eyebrows were allowed to be wider and darker.

So when our cohort put on make up we were influenced by them and by new movie stars. It became common to have heavy mascara, not much blush on the cheeks at all, pale lipstick, and matte pale powder. Return to nature.

Shoppers Drug Mart opened in  1962 (we were 13) and it became very easy to purchase make up. There was a  big range of products.

It was a roller coaster and I got off in about the 1960s. My idea of beauty still is what it was then – pale skin, lightly colored blush on cheeks.  My mother used to apply rosewater and glycerin as a base and then put on powder with a powder puff . I did the same- for the next 50 years. That has become a challenge as make-up shifted to liquid and to no make up or foundation .  Not long ago I went to a drug store asking for a new powder puff and the young clerk had no idea what I was talking about.

Eye styles moved on also.  I had tried to use eyeliner and mascara. Some of us had even tried blue mascara and penciling around the lips. But I never did want my eyelids to be heavy with shadow. Lipstick of the 1970s in bronze and plum just did not look right to me. And so it went.  In the 2020s some women’s eye make up seems so heavy I am surprised they can lift their heads but that bias is a generational one.

There has always been a cosmetic industry telling women how to look better. The agenda is to convince us we are not good enough and need improvement daily.  Cosmetic surgery had been common post war to help soldiers get vital reconstruction.  McGill University and the University of Montreal had started offering residencies in plastic surgery for aesthetics in the 1950s. But it was not until 1973 that London Ontario hosted conferences about plastic surgery for beauty purposes.

In the 1980s there was liposuction and by 2000s botulinum toxin injections  were available to remove wrinkles,  and you could get dermal fillers, laser treatments. The candidates for such procedures were mostly women just entering middle age who wanted to resist the skin changes. The ones considering it were often only in their 40s.  However my cohort, now in our 50s ,was not universally rushing to do this. Maybe we were coming to terms with aging already. Admittedly there was huge pressure in some quarters, particularly in Hollywood and in visible professions like TV show hosts, to have such procedures.

The Kleenex had been invented in the US in 1924 and by 1956 we had Scotties tissues and softer tissues in a box. By 1965 there were even purse packs of Kleenex.

Our mothers sometimes used facial cleansers and cold creams. In the 1960s there was Pond’s cold cream and there was Noxzema medicated cream . Clearasil was to help with blemishes. We used 1006 cleanser to remove make up.

1950 – Clearasil

1952 – Olay

1952 – Deodorant  in roll on form – Ban

1956 – Secret deodorant

1963 – Speedstick

1968 – Clinique

Perfume and aftershave

Of course perfume was a huge industry even then.

In the 1950s popular ones for women were Evening in Paris, Chantilly, White Shoulders, and Chanel No.5. In the 1960s there were also Tigress, Blue Grass, L ’Air du Temps. In the 1960s Avon ladies would sell products door to door and musk perfumes became popular.
For men the aftershave names of the 50s may sound familiar about our dads. There were citrus, woody and menthol scents. Old Spice, Aqua Velva, Yardley of London were popular. In the 60s some of my cohort were using Mennen Skin Bracer or Faberge Brut. Scents are powerful triggers for memory. I’m just saying even in my seventies if I close my eyes, some scents can take me back.

Our cohort started shaving as teens in the 1960s and it was already twenty years since the electric razor had been invented. Few young men used a straight razor any more but the safety razor was very popular if you did shave by hand.  Our dads may have used shaving powder but my cohort was using shaving lather. Electric shavers made a happy buzz in our house most of my childhood.

Some of the slogans of the era still bring fond memories.

1920s – Often a bridesmaid, never a bride – Listerine Mouthwash

1950s – a little dab’ll do ya – Brylcreem

1955 – Promise her anything but give her Arpege  – Lanvin Parfums

1956 – Does she or doesn’t she? – Clairol hair dye

1956 – You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent

1. – Don’t squeeze the Charmin- Charmin bathroom tissue