How My 90s Heat Styler Led to a Beauty Breakthrough and a Friendship Breakup
Main Image – Connect Images/Adobe
Welcome to Blasts From My Beauty Past, our monthly column written by journalist, and Live That Glow Beauty Editor, Philippa Pearne. For the last 17 years, Philippa has written about her own beauty wins, fails and everything in between. Today, she’s looking back on the classic Babyliss Heat Styler that changed her beauty habits – and her friendship – for life.
I recently gave my goddaughter a pair of crimping irons for her 11th birthday. It was something she’d been wanting for a while which I was pretty surprised about considering crimpers were, I thought, locked up in the 80s/90s with the key well and truly thrown away.
It took me back to the memory of my first pair, circa 1994. A clunky pink and white device made by Babyliss which required a lot of patience to use.
I’d plug it in and have to wait a good 20 minutes before it was hot enough. Sometimes I would tie an elastic band around the plates so that they were clamped together during the heating up process. This made it only marginally quicker.
There was no light or ‘beep’ to notify me that it was ready and definitely no digital screen telling me how hot it was. One bonus though was that it came with interchangeable plates which you could slide on and off – one plate for thick waves, one for the crimped look and a smooth one for straight hair.
If you changed your mind halfway through on what style to go for though, you’d have to wait for it to completely cool off before sliding the plates out because – ouch! And it was so heavy, it felt like you were participating in a hardcore weightlifting session.
Poor us, eh? What hell we went through for the sake of, er, ‘stylish’ hair. I jest, because we clearly managed just fine and knew no different. Nowadays, styling tools are lighter, quicker and safer. But equally, I do often crave using my old crimper again, just to be transported back to my childhood – a simpler time.
Or not, at times. After my crimping phase, I entered my straightening era (and, let’s face it, I’ve never really left it.) I swapped out the crimper plates for the smooth ones and never looked back. Back then, straighteners had hardly been spoken of, so I was rather ahead of the curve, even if I do say so myself.
Image – Pinterest
Aged 16, I straightened my hair most nights and, as someone who had always shown up to school with frizzy, feral hair, riddled with flyaways, it was a pretty defining moment when, one Monday, I turned up with sleek, glossy locks instead.
Now, all hair types are beautiful, don’t get me wrong. My natural frizz has been handed down to my own daughter and I wouldn’t have her any other way. It’s part of her character.
But aged 14, 15 and 16, I thought my hair type was the devil. All my friends had long straight hair that did as it was told whilst mine would just sit awkwardly. I would constantly fiddle with it in class and attempt to mould it into the shape I wanted it to go in, all the while knowing it would never play ball.
All this touching my hair would also make it terribly greasy. I was fighting a losing battle – with myself.
So, that Monday, a newly straight-haired-me walked through the classroom door and I can still picture my then ‘best friend’’s double take when she saw me. She was a teen model (great), 6ft something and the list of boys who adored her was as long as my arm. The only ‘boy’ who adored me was my dad.
“Oh my god, your hair,” she said, almost riled. “You look so different!” It helped that I had developed a slight tan over the sunny weekend too, meaning that I was nearing her signature ‘sun-kissed, leggy blonde’ look. But not quite because my legs weren’t as long as hers and the acne on my face was, begrudgingly, taking the edge off my weekend glow.
And then she said, “I’m jealous.”
SORRY, WHAT? Life made, throw away the school textbooks, cancel the school bus fees, get me a job. My education era, as I cared for it, was now complete. No need for any more lessons thank you very much, my work here was done and I’d officially made it. This 6ft tall blonde babe was jealous. Of me.
Image – Connect Images/Adobe
It was a fleeting moment, of course, one that she never allowed to happen again I might add. And, not to be outdone, she got her mum to buy her the same straighteners the very next day. But her comment finally made me feel accepted, liked, powerful and as if I could just let out one long deep breath. And all because of one straightening iron – who knew?
In that moment in time, I’d found my way a little. This is the style I’d strived so hard to achieve, this was the reaction I’d been looking for and all I needed to do was plug something in to make it happen. Mind. Blown. And it inspired me to keep looking for what else was out there that I could try.
Whilst by no means did I ever look like a teen pageant queen, that day triggered a tiny dose of newfound confidence. But it came at a price. Finding my own style, discovering makeup and sporting *apparently* a more socially acceptable hairstyle made my friend lose power over me.
I still made (huge) mistakes. But I was getting braver. A few boys started to turn their heads towards me for a change (though, not many) and I began to have a decent eye for fashion too. The old me – a bit of a doormat and completely at my friend’s mercy – was clearly more appealing to her than this evolving one. I was useless to her now.
Sure enough, soon afterwards, my gorgeous friend ended up not being so gorgeous on the inside. She and a few others took to bullying me slap bang in the middle of taking our GCSE exams, the trauma of which was so bad, that it still surprises me that I passed them.
And, sadly, the story of our doomed friendship doesn’t end with ‘I knew better than to be friends with someone who didn’t value my worth and who didn’t build me up.’ More like, ‘I wish I had been enough for her’ in the early days (sigh), followed by years and years of insecurities and feeling worried about how I looked every single damn day.
I guess in a roundabout way, all of this probably led to my career as a beauty editor. But my old acquaintance won’t be taking credit for it. No way. Because writing about beauty for a living is for the purpose of helping, guiding and relating to others. Not giving up on them at the first sign of confidence. Burn.
No harm intended though – teens will be teens, we’ve all grown up and I’ve moved on (ish) – but it’s interesting, looking back. And kind of heartbreaking too.
As teens, we often categorise ourselves as things like ‘the pretty one’ or ‘the ugly one’. My friend was the pretty one, I was the ugly one, blah blah blah. As sad as it is, it’s only natural for young girls to adopt this mindset.
But, whether they use makeup and hair products to enhance their ‘pretty’ girl persona or use them to improve what they think is ugly about themselves, everyone finds their way in the beauty world, eventually. I just never thought finding my way would start with a clunky Babyliss straightening iron.
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