Pull on your bell bottoms, zip up your go-go boots, and break out the Aquanet because the seventies are back! As the 2020s march gleefully on, a 50 year nostalgia cycle is coming right back around. What was old is new again, and people all over the world are discovering the joys of big, bouncy, beautiful seventies hair.
Tiktok’s Vintage Obsession
As we’ve come to expect from gen Z, young people are bringing a style and aesthetic thought dead back into the mainstream. Rather than reinventing the wheel, gen Z tend to pull on styles of the past and bring attention to the fact that “older” isn’t the same as “worse”. Tiktok, everyone’s newest obsession, is absolutely flooded with tutorials on how the everyday person can capture the effortless charm of the 70s. One such video, made by user @70srose, has gained over 2 million likes since she shared it last December.
The video shows in a series of simple steps how @70srose styles and maintains her hair. The video highlights the quirky simplicity of the aesthetic, as well as how accessible it can be. @70srose has found a niche for herself, dedicating her account to her love of this era. She seems to have found an appreciative audience among her 348 thousand followers. She is far from the only one to have found an audience for this kind of content. Searching “70s hair” on the platform will yield countless videos. Each video has thousands of views, and shows in a minute or less how to achieve a Farrah Fawcett fantasy.
The simplicity of these videos and of this hairstyle speaks for itself. The style is highly flattering to a variety of face shapes and hair types. Compared to many modern methods, 70s hair is relatively uncomplicated and easily attainable. Most tutorials utilize little more than a heat tool (usually a straightener), a brush, and hairspray. Some make it even simpler, like user @emilyriboflavin. She showed her audience how to achieve a hippy-inspired hairstyle using only a brush, water, and a scarf.
The Appeal of the 70s Style
The look is distinctive in a way you would never expect from a such a simple style. Many methods take advantage of the natural properties of human hair, working smarter rather than harder. Additional volume is often created by curling the hair in the opposite direction of where it naturally wants to lay. This causes the follicles to force the hair up, creating . Methods like that demonstrated by @emilyriboflavin have you wrap your wet hair in a cloth and let it dry overnight (a method also known as “hair plopping”) rather than using a curling iron . The simplicity isn’t a coincidence, it’s a feature.
Hair styles such as this hit several demographics that usually are hard to appeal to all at once. It’s perfect for working people, or students, or anyone who needs to get ready in a limited amount of time. It’s perfect for the free spirited hippy in every crowd, the one who wants to stand out and be memorable. It’s perfect for the classic stylist, someone who admires the aesthetics of the past. It’s for someone who may not know a lot about hair and wants something they can pick up easily and run with.
Finally, and most importantly, this style is for anyone who thinks it looks beautiful. So break out the hair rollers and the hairspray and embrace big, beautiful, 70s curls.
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