We had the same hair!

It is truly lucky that I wasn't a teenager in the 80's - I would never have been able to master the techniques to achieve cool hair. You clearly had it down :)

Northern gals weren't too different! I had short (short!) hair in 1989 and I still used hairspray to hold the look. But you look lovely!

WoW.. what a flashback there.. I went from a similiar look to much to my mothers horror a punk / siouxsie and the banshees look. all black only red lipstick and dark eye liner.. a goth now a days I guess.. I always smile when I see those kids.. it was old when I was doing it.. its even older now.. and now they have that bad rep of killing classmates and all.. sigh.. its all about timing.. I guess.. maybe this look will make a comeback when my daughter is a teen then I can help her do her hair..

Wow! You were (and are) so pretty.

I entertained the "wall o'curls" back then. Every 3 months I plopped myself into my hairstylist's chair and asked her to cut and curl me. (Every once in a while I kind of miss that wash and go style. Shhh. Don't tell anybody.)

Oh, my suburban Connecticut junior high school in 1989 was filled with the same bangs... I used to call them "umbrella bangs" because it looked like they'd keep the rain off your face.

Amazingly, I never had bangs... SO NOT COOL.

How about everyone sending in their 80's hair pics like they did with the knitting spots? That only took you 10, 20 hours to get on here, right? :)

I used to hold my permed bangs up and spray with aerosol hairspray for a count of 8. 12 if I really needed some staying power.
Your hair really didn't look too bad. At least you didn't have a perm!!

Oh, that ain't just a Southern girl thang! You pretty much look like me and most of my classmates in Ohio, too! And Megan, if I, She of No Hair Fashion Talent To Speak Of, could acquire the skills to do this, trust me, you could've also. You would've developed good arm strength as well, holding your arms over your head with the curling iron for minutes on end.

But man, am I glad those days are over!

I think this look is coming back. I thought I saw Reese Witherspoon slowly teasing up her hair lately!

I think this look is coming back. I thought I saw Reese Witherspoon slowly teasing up her hair lately!

I think this look is coming back. I thought I saw Reese Witherspoon slowly teasing up her hair lately!

I think this look is coming back. I thought I saw Reese Witherspoon slowly teasing up her hair lately!

I think this look is coming back. I thought I saw Reese Witherspoon slowly teasing up her hair lately!

I think this look is coming back. I thought I saw Reese Witherspoon slowly teasing up her hair lately!

OMG!! Well in 1989 the summer before my senior year I cut my hair and do the whole asymetrical hairstyle. You know High up one side and low on the other side. I looked like a peacock in mating season. Ugh

LUCKY!! All my parents let me have was a tiny "waterfall", as I called it. Basically, I had straight hair, with bangs, and what I did was comb a few of the bottom layers' bangs flat, and then spray a little arch of hair in place on top of them. I thought it looked hot. I don't know about anyone else.

Ha, I had the same bangs.... and somewhere there's the same pose in a strand of pearls and a drape for my high school photo

remember living in FEAR of rain or a breeze? The whole architecture would just come a-tumblin' down.

Glad those days are over, and I'm old enough to not care about fashion anymore!

I am too lazy to do anything at all with my hair. If I am going somewhere super-fancy (ha!) I might scrunch a little to encourage it to dry curly. I am totally in awe of everyone who has ever put such effort into their hair. Total. Awe.

By the time that trend reached Hawaii in the early 90's, the bangs had gotten a little higher on top and a little sparser on bottom and the look was called Wave Bangs. But it was pretty much the same thing-- curling irons, hairspray, holding one's bangs up for minutes at a time....

We called them hair nests. I could not pull it off due to utter lack of interest and a hair styling genetic disorder.

You are still gorgeous Laurie.

Just so you know, this look has never gone out of style with some individuals. Have you been to the Inland Empire lately??

I remember my own big hair days. I would go through a bottle of Sebastian's Spritz Forte a month.

I agree that this hair style is coming back. If I saw you now, I wouldn't even blink, except of course -- to check you out.

This is the reason I wasn't cool as a young girl. My hair was too fine and couldn't hold up the wall-o-bangs no matter how much hairspray I used. Even my perm fell flat! Thank goodness flat hair is in now. I can finally pretend to be stylish!

So awesome!! I had a basic preppy little girl haircut in the 80s, until I persuaded my parents to let me cut my hair short, with WINGS. Oh yeah. Somehow there was gel involved, although I could not tell you how. I also had giant pink glasses to complete the look.

LOVE THE HAIR.

I myself rocked the same style in the early nineties and was wildly envious of my friends whose parents let them have perms. I sometimes compensated for lack of perm by sleeping with my hair in braids so it would be wavy the next day. I graduated to sleeping in foam rollers. And yes, I anxiously watched the weather because humidity wreaked havoc upon the nest!

ahem...that would be Idaho High Hair. nice....

LOVE THE HAIR.

I myself rocked the same style in the early nineties and was wildly envious of my friends whose parents let them have perms. I sometimes compensated for lack of perm by sleeping with my hair in braids so it would be wavy the next day. I graduated to sleeping in foam rollers. And yes, I anxiously watched the weather because humidity wreaked havoc upon the nest!

OMG...I have a MATCHING composite picture from my college years, too!!! Hairspray was SO my friend during the formative hair years. :)

I had those same bangs! And here's the scary thing -- THAT'S THE ONLY WAY I KNOW HOW TO DO BANGS. After high school (I'm a year behind you) I gave up doing anything but brush'n'go. So for the last 15 years I've either had flat bangs or occasionally grown them out to merge with the rest of my hair.

Lately, I've felt the need to primp. And so I drug out the curling iron and the spray (non-aerosol -- luv ya ozone!). Because I know no other way to do bangs. But maybe, if the Curling Wall is coming back, I can get away with it.

Aw, kee-YOOOOOOOOOOO-t!!!

P.S. DH calls that hairdo the Frightened Squirrel.

now THAT is the hair I wanted. But alas, was born with a head of naturally curly poodle hair. Try as I might I could not straighten it enough to curl it. (curlyheads know what I mean). I so wanted Farrah hair. I could do it too, for a few minutes, but as soon as my head hit the outdoors it went *boing* and frizzed right back up.
Laurie, you were a hot mama back then and are still beautiful :)

Wow, I am not worthy of such bang-tastic styling. I could never manage that - back in high school, my hair mostly stuck out at right angles to my head. I was the Frizzmastah, truly. You think I'm kidding? Listen to my ill-conceived foray into roller sets (you know, using those pink foam rollers).

I bet I'm the only girl in the world who wore them to sleep, squashed them into unrecognizable shapes, and woke up with parallelogram hair. I kid you not.

Oh my. The Wall O' Bangs resembles the Kentucky Claw.

You're so pretty!

Ah yes, I had the 80's do, too. It involved a LOT of Aqua net, a curling iron AND curling brush, a blow dryer and really strong gel. It still fell after an hour :-( My hair isn't good for the big hair look. It killed me back then.

Oh my. The Wall O' Bangs resembles the Kentucky Claw.

You were and are pretty, and also talented in a way that I will never be. Long live The Bun!

What strikes me is not the hair but the classic off-the-shoulder black top with pearls. I've seen it in high school and college yearbooks from the 50's onwards, classic sorority look too. I never even saw tops like that for sale in the stores in upstate NY. Do they still dress like that for yearbook pictures?

Did you ever wear the big bow barette high on the crown behind the wall o' bangs? On the campus of the University of Alabama ca. late 80's/early 90's there were two main female fashion factions: The Bow-Heads and the Bo-Hemes. I had neither enough hair nor styling skills for either so I just had the permed curly bob.

Yes, that is the hair. And when a breeze came along, it lifted the whole thing up in one piece and gently bobbed up and down.

I just wish I had a photo of my hair in the early 90s when I had the spiral perm like the guess? model. :-P

Oh, I had those, and they were so sad... I never really mastered curling the top part back, it just sort of went... somewhere else. I was a bad southern girl.

I just came across this and thought of you, as I am also guilty of smelling yarn. Especially mohair. Although, the other night, my boyfriend nonchalantly picked up a ball of Rowan Big Wool and buried his nose in it. He said it smells nice...

My 80's hair was very similar in style, so I believe you and I are of the same genus, but of two different species, for I am Girlus paul-mitchell-freeze-and-shinus. It's probably good that those do's are now extinct.

You're beautiful! In college, I would've given so much for hair like that. And then I'd have put a big ole bow in it!

Oh, yes, and I had a spiral perm in the 90's, too. Scary.

Me too! Me too! Same hair! and not in the south, I was in Colorado!

when i was a seventh grader, my mom cut my bangs one time before school because they were too long....well, by the time she was finished, i had about a fourth of an inch of bang left. in an effort to preserve the look, she still tried to curl them for me. so, i had about a fourth of an inch of bangs sticking STRAIGHT up in the front and hair down to my butt in the back. come to think of it, i MAY HAVE ACTUALLY JUMP STARTED THE MULLET LOOK......

You're gorgeous, but I have to ask - how do you do anything with that hair? I wondered the same thing in HS but was too scared to ask. How do you go to the beach? Play vollyball? Play sports? Just curious.

This fabulous look was also known as "The Claw".

Is that also a fakus tannus?

The tan is 100% baby oil and sunshine... it is a miracle I do not look like a belt right now.

Monkey, the answer is "butane powered go-anywhere curling iron PLUS hairspray PLUS scrunchie." hehehehe

Hair posts always get lots of comments.

Extra Strength Aqua Net is STILL my favorite for those Santa Ana windy days! In the 80's I had a rockabilly girly pompadour, loaded with Aqua Net. I wonder what my lungs must look like after inhaling that stuff for over 30 years?

See...now...that was the hair I WANTED...but it sure wasn't what I got! No matter how much product or curling ironing I tried, my hair would go absolutely flat as soon as I applied anything beyond conditioner.

That hair was popular at my high school too!

I'm like a couple of the others, my hair will not hold much beyond a couple of hours, no matter what I do to it. But this was later after high school. I was lucky as a teen in the 70's what with the long straight part-in-the-middle hair everyone else had. In the 90's I got those spiral perms, too, which I loved but when they grew out, yikes! Stick straight hair at the crown, spirals the rest of the way. I could never get just a wave, all the stylists told me I had alot of hair, it was just too baby fine.

Oh. My. God. I SO Had that hair! Mine was more like a wave roof, you know where its at its pointiest and tallest at the middle.
My mom hated that hair. One she would mock me for laying a piece of toilet paper over the back top of my head so when I aquanetted the heck out of my bangs the spray off or spray over or whatever didn't make the back of my hair look crunchy and hard (just my bangs- how weird was I?!). She also was fond of gingerly grasping one tendril of hairsprayed bangage and shaking it so the whole architecture of bangs would shake.

I used to sleep on my back, with one eye open, so I could wear my hair the Same.Exact.Way to school two days in a row.

Oh. My. Gawd. I had very similar hair, only add the horrendous spiral curls that were so popular then. Add some turquoise eye shadow and I was the epitome of the late 80's.

My stylist calls those "mall bangs".

I've seen worse. In university no less. One girl had a mushroom of hair sprouting from her forehead.

wow. your 80's wall 'o bangs puts my 80's wall 'o bangs wanna be hair to shame.

Sue F - I don't know about Laurie's HS, but at my HS in NY I think our yearbook "tops" were not actual clothing - it was just a piece of black fabric that the photographer's assistant safety pinned in back - depending on what you were actually wearing you would have to either remove or adjust your "real" shirt so it didn't show.

My sister went through so much hairspray in the 80's and early 90's that my dad had to replace the floor in the bathroom. He couldn't get the built-up hairspray off the vinyl. I don't want to know what he had to do to repaint the wall by the sink.

My hair laughed at hairspray, even when feathered perfectly with the curling iron. J could add five inches to her height with just her bangs; I had to be happy just being my (real) 5'4".

HOW WEIRD!!!! But the pearls, the pearls... did the photog bring those too??!?? Or was it BYOP?

You've gotta admit...the big hair does make one look pretty! lol
Have you ever looked so good in any other hair-do?
I never did.

I had that hair for atleast 20 years, and even now...my kids STILL accuse me of having a mullet.
No, I don't. I just have thick hair with limp bangs.

p.s.

ooh!! you should have everyone send their "big hair' pictures, like you did with the knitting "spot"

you forgot to diagram "the wave" portion of this picture-- where one side of your bangs always hangs down in the middle of your forehead because we all cut them *straight across* yet steadfastly parted them to one side... i also poofed out the sides of my hair, we called 'em "monkey ears"

Do they still make Aquanet? I remember that stuff made it so your hair didn't move! It was also good for killing bugs you didn't want to get close enough to squish. ;)

That is actually a very cute picture of you.
And yes, JJ, they still make Aquanet here in the south. I saw it on a shelf somewhere and was surprised as hell.

I have seen SOOOO much worse (and by that I mean Berlin Wall worse). I believe "the higher, the cooler" would have been the motto back then. I was lucky to have moved over to California by the time I was really doing my own hair much, and went with the more natural look that was in style there. I did have a few years of the Aqua Net stage, though (definitely had the side wave going on) - but my hair seemed to eat that hairspray up and be flat pretty quickly. I guess I was not destined to have high bangs.

OhMyGosh, that is the best picture ever! Wow, I love it. How did you manage to make your bangs stay up that high??

Did you use cardboard to get your hair to stay? We used to put cardboard behind the bangs and *then* spray. New Jersey in the 80s. :)

I'm a 1986 high school grad from Michigan, and we all had the infamous Wall o' Bangs...My college roommate was from Tennessee, and she had the most amazing gravity-defying 'do I'd ever seen. She even revealed her hair-spraying, hair-teasing secrets to me, so that we could beat the humid St. Louis August heat with hardly any effect on our hairstyles!

We had that look in NorCal back then too --- I don't know about this "natural look" some people are mentioning for California. The bangs were more vertical and stood up higher. We called 'em "Double Deckers" or "Hair Bears" ---- although, that may have been the sprayed, teased, ratted out side poofs over the ears.

aquanet smells funky skunky. eh.

i have the *flattest* hair ever. i'm okay with it.

AHHHHHH!!! you are so cute!!

Class of '86 here. Need I say more?

With my superfine hair, I had to spray the bangs as they were being fried to oblivion on the hot, Hot, HOT curling iron. They were completely immobilized.

Worst part? I DID NOT comb them out for fear of losing the curl.

Thanks for the flashback. I remember how great I thought I looked. Happy (insane) days!!!

LOL!
I rocked the So. Cal "natural wall" that same year....aka- shorter, still hairsprayed, but with a twist that we all tortured our hair by gelling, spraying, brushing, then spraying again ever-so-lightly to assure that the hair was NOT "crunchy" - cuz you know, we wanted it to look like our hair did that NATURALLY. Yeah, geez, so when did reality and highschool beauty ideals ever really meet? My best friend was a little goth hottie with burgandy hair and the heavy eyeliner- and now that she's a respectable married attourney I like to threaten to pul out the picutres now and then.

It was Rave #4 in Lubbock Texas and just remember the higher the hair the closer to God!!!!

Oh, 80's bangs! I had those too!

I've got a very similar '86 grad photo! We called the back-o-the-head-clip look Bowheadus Vacuous, and I inherited dad's thin greasy mop...hooray for epen$ive volumizing product$ !!!

DOOD. I totally rocked that same hair, late '80s into early '90s, in NY. Not a Southern thing at all. We all wanted to look like we belonged in a Motley Crue video.

well those are nice, but you got nothing on me with height of wall o' bangs. :D i love that you posted this!

LOVE IT!!! And in sorority composite no less! Perfect.

I had REALLY BIG cripsy curled bangs. I used a curling that was no smaller than 3 inches to curl those suckers. I wanted people to be able to see clearly through them...really, that was my goal!

The higher the hair, the closer to God.

Amen.

You definitely had the quality I loved most about these hairdos: that the top part and the back part are such totally separate entities that you could cut the back part off and be left with exactly the same hair as those new wave girls who liked Echo and the Bunnymen and we all thought they were lesbians.

How cute were you in that picture, big bangs and all!

What a pretty girl you are!

My friend had bangs like that but then she tried to light a cigarette - no more bangs. Who know hair spray was that flamable!

Oh, and we totally had the same hair in Ontario too. Not me, though, too curly; bangs on me would shrink up ridiculously short. Instead I cut it all off short and let it go curly or cowlicky or whatever it wanted and secretly hoped they'd think I was a lesbian.

Three separate comments in a row, do I get some sort of dork achievement ribbon for that? Gayle, we had to watch a fire safety video in Girl Guides where a lady was smoking and building the bangs wall at the same time and whoosh! It scared the living daylights out of all of us aspiring hair-rock goddesses.

AQUANET!!! I used that hairspray last fall when I was in our school's production of "Steel Magnolias."

You were (are!) So Pretty! I would have been scared to even talk to you if I saw you on campus!

The scariest hairdo I ever had was in the early 80s. My (then) husband liked long hair, but I can't stand having hair on my forehead, not even bangs (I'm wearing a headband now just to keep it out of my eyes.) So I had this half-circle in front cut REALLY short, and long in the back. Sort of a punk-meets-mullet.

I have thick, naturally curly hair. Never have been able to get styling products to work.

truly, truly excellent! makes me want to unearth some of my own, but...oh for the eyebrows i had!!!

you need a book. period. you are an amazing and fabulous writer!

I LOVED crispy hair way back when. It's nice to see it again, and not just on my old pix!

In the 80s I thought that Aquanet Superhold was the greatest thing ever invented. Nothing like having your bangs move as one in the breeze. At least you didn't have that side ponytail thing going.

I too had similar hair but instead of having the sides of the hair "big" only my bangs were. They looked like a wave where they flopped over to one side and then they were hairsprayed to stand on their own. Kelly Bundy from "Married with Children" had this exact same hair in the early days of the show. My hair was also that blonde. It's funny because I never saw that show until the mid 90's so I was laughing hard when I saw her hair and remembered that mine looked much the same.

Looks just like my sorority composite picture, only my hair was shorter. Ah...the 80's.... When I was in my 20's, thin and thought I knew everything. :-)

girlus aquanettus

I'm from the south (good ol' east Texas) and not only do I recognize the hairstyle...

...I know two (yes, two) people with a name based on that hairspray. One from east Texas named "Aquanetta" and the other from Chicago (she lives in nor cal now) named Aquanette.

While I never had the wall o' bangs, I did don some other serious hair horrors including a perm. I'm Asian. My friends and I firmly believe that our use of AquaNet is solely responsible for the hole in the ozone layer. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

DANG!

oh yeah. I had thought-catcher bangs too baby. you are not alone.

I went the opposite way, my high school picture has short hair with a nest of permed curls on the front end. What was I thinking? At least you can say you didn't have the Big Hair, it would have to be teased more and really stick out on the sides. If you really wanted that hair to hold, Aqua Net is the way to go, it is like liquid shelac for hair. It will hold in 100% humidity.

That is rad! I was also rockin' this look back in the day, although I'm pretty sure the bottom portion wasn't lovely soft waves, but more of a crispy, curly ordeal to match the top.

You are awesome.

Y'know, that picture looks like you could have stepped out of a mall in the Dallas area today (or anytime between 1985 and now). I spent hours on my hair back in high school, but now I can barely be bothered to do more than run a brush through it. Hmmm... may have to reexamine priorities a bit since I'm living again near Dallas, home of the eternal big hair.

In Boston in the 80's, my hair was too flat for the wall of bangs and I was going shoulder length by then, but we were doing the "cobra". Big, swooping side fluffs that from the back looked just like a cobra's head. Sucked to sit behind a cobra-head at a concert!

I saw a show some time ago about a lady who's son was shot in the LA area and her name was Aquanetta. I love it and will name my next cat Aquanetta!

We always used to say, the smaller the town, the bigger the hair! :)

Quite similar to girlus jerseyus. The only difference is the accent.

OH.My.God.

I had a butane powered curling iron too.

And my hair is naturally curly/frizzy, and it held big bangs really well. I would mousse, then blow dry those puppies STRAIGHT up, then hairspray, then curl while the hairspray was still wet, accomplishing the amazing CRUNCHY, immovable WALL O BANGS.

And Aquanet was cool, but RAVE extra super strong was cooler.

I wanted to look like that but wasn't allowed. Maybe my parents were trying to save me from myself....

haha how cute were you!

Man I was so jealous of girls like you... you with the perfect bangs and curls and curls. My bangs never looked so good. They'd fall down and all I'd ever get was stupid outward curling bangs in my eyes. Not cute, and certainly not flattering. I should have used aqua net.

Oh my god. You totally stole my hair!

Would it have killed you to take my late eighties pimples, too?

You were (and still are) adorable! Pretty skin, nice smile, classy jewelry. What a great picture.

I see I'm a day late and a dollar short with this comment, but what the hell: OH MY GOD WE HAD THE SAME HAIR. IN 1989. Mine is brown, but that was exactly my hairstyle, so you didn't have to explain the Wall o'Bangs to me, sister. :)

Are you kidding me? That's hardly "wall o' bangs". I think you look nice!! And my goodness girl, no crazy-color makeup, no stiff hair (really, this is not nearly as bad as many others in the late 80s!) no glittery lipstick, look, you are even wearing nice earrings and a pearl necklace! Me? I had a Mullet (!)for my Senior Pic!

Oh man, I wrote about my "upper" and "lower" bangs earlier this week. Oh, how I would CRY if I couldn't get them to go the way I wanted them to go! haha

At least we'd stopped caking on the blue eyeshadow by then.