Long Straight Hair!!!

Although women have had long hair for centuries, most women wore the hair styled in some manner, with curls, in buns, but not usually straight.  I remember I had older cousins who worked hard to get straight hair. In those days, they would lay their hair on an ironing board and literally iron it straight.

There are indications that women as long ago as the Egyptians straightened hair using heated flat iron plates.  One side effect of using this method is that hair often ended up singed or burned.  This tended to be the standard method used to straighten curly or frizzy hair over the centuries until the Nineteenth century when Marceau Grateau invented a heated rod with teeth used to straighten hair.

Two other inventors, improved upon Grateau's invention but these still required heated irons to relax the curl.  In the 1950's and 60's the most common implement used to straighten hair was the iron, a clothing iron, not a curling or straightening iron.  If it was not properly, the clothing iron could damage the hair.

Eventually, people began marketing flat irons that could be heated with electricity and had temperature controls much like the ones used today.  These provided a gentler way of straightening the hair with less chance of burns and scalding.

Parallel to the development of a straightening implement people also worked on developing chemical straighteners.  One of the first relaxers came about when someone noticed that the chemicals used to fix sewing machines could also be used to relax hair.  He marketed his alkaline product to relax curly hair.  Some of the early products could burn scalps so people had to be careful.

Around the same time, there were other creams released.  All one had to do was cover the hair with the cream and it was done.  Although they straightened the hair they all were considered dangerous because they could cause hair loss, or damage the hair or scalp.

It wasn't until the 1970's that several different types of relaxers were released.   Basically, the chemicals in these products break certain bonds in the hair so the curls "relax" into straighter hair.  Some of the non lye products weaken rather than break the bonds but the hair still straightens.  Any new hair that grows in is going to have the original curl until something is applied to it. Even these modern ones can damage the hair.

I hope you liked this short history of straightening hair.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.