The history of orange juice can curlers is still being written
There's a very important reason I picked this topic!
"Once it was ‘keen’ to paint a heart-shape on your forearm with nail polish. Then came spring clothespins on the nose during sleeping hours to avoid nostril ‘flare.’ But today, if you're a teenage girl and you want to be with the In Crowd, you'l roll your hair in empty frozen juice cans."
So wrote the Olathe News in July of 1965, interviewing a handful of Kansas teens who swore by the pracice, including 16-year-old Marie Rush, above.
“It took a while to accumulate enough cans to roll up all my hair,” she said. “But at least I don't get TOO much curl in my hair when I use them.”
The aim was body, not curls: “Long, swinging tresses with only a hint of upturn at the bottom.”
Marie, unlike other teens, refused to sleep with cans in her hair. She wore them while she was running errands around town, which shocked her neighbors. Did she care? No. Teens be teens.
The trend was so popular, companies rushed to introduce their own large-size curlers to market. In the summer of 1966, Ray Sanchez of Tip-Top Products told the Omaha World-Herald that beehive hairdos were out, but that he hadn't seen a decline in hairspray sales. And his company was now selling “orange-juice sized”curlers “so teens with long hair can dispose of the cans they have been using,” which included beer cans.
Well, they didn't stop with the cans; in fact, teens are still using cans for curlers. Now, they just teach each other perfect technique on TikTok:
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Itsbrinkley’s inspiration was this image of Naomi Campbell, circa 1991. Lady Gaga is another can-curler fan; she wore them in 2010 in her “Telephone,” video:
Last year, #cancurls went viral on TikTok. The 21st-century technique is a little trickier than the ol’ Walking Around Downtown Olathe With Orange Juice Cans Secured With Bobby Pins method of 1965. One of the most-viral tutorials was posted by stylist Jonathan Monroe, which set off a tizzy of posts in beauty mags, where high-end stylists turned up their noses and dissed on DYI can curlers. Hordes of kids on social media disagreed, and continued to post their experiments and their tutorials, including this drag queen, who also re-created Naomi Campbell’s 1991 curls:
How can you knock a DIY practice that’s been going strong for more than a half-century? I have my own reason for being eternally grateful for orange-juice can curlers.
My mom’s birthday is April 10, and my dad’s birthday is today, April 16. He’s celebrating a milestone one, so I’m wishing ’em both happy Aries birthdays. Several years ago, they began to beg off on physical gifts, because they live in a big old rambling Victorian house full of stuff, and they want objects going out, not in.
About the time they started putting up their hands at physical gifts, I saw a Kansas singer-songwriter named Katlyn Conroy post on Facebook — she offered to write a custom song for you, for a really reasonable fee. She just needed some background info for the lyrics, and in couple of days, voila, she’d send you a sound file by email.
Here’s the li’l love ditty she wrote about my parents in 2015. Cheers to Aries birthdays, chance encounters, and orange-juice can curlers — if they didn’t exist, I might not either.
Leslie and John
Salt Lake City, Leslie is born
ever pretty, but something was missing
a chance encounter with a stranger was destined to be
when John was travelin’, coast to coast
in search of a life in San Francisco
one of freedom one of truth and love
he stopped for a visit, one with a friend
that wound up endin' at Leslie’s apartment
where true love took no more than one quick look
’cause her hair was all rolled up with
orange juice cans and bobby pins
she looked just like a space person
no need for bells and the bride
just get the paper and we'll go for a pie
cause love is a strange encounter
that imprints on a lifetime
How sweet. My Mom and Stepdad were more of an "In Spite of Ourselves" couple. Speaking of orange juice cans... for a summer treat I would buy a can of Hawaiian Punch frozen concentrate and eat it right out of the can. My dentist loved it.
Because I am old, I find most things on TikTok improbable and beverage cans as curlers are no exception! OJ cans are totally doable because they were/are cardboard and have some "teeth" for hair to stick to and also have an open end to pin. But a Coke can? Slippery as hell and nowhere to secure the hair to it! I absolutely remember my sister using the OJ cans.