You are flipping through channels. Suddenly a woman comes into view that has huge bangs. You can't help it. You shout "'80s Hair!" Be it the Jheri curl, wanton crimping, the feathered, hairsprayed and volumized big hair, the box cut, a Spiky Hair punk cut or the mullet, hair from The '80s sticks out.
As one can see from the photographs displayed at right, there never has been one standard template for '80s Hair, and the trend evolved along with the decade itself. The earliest examples were, at least for women, an outgrowth of '70s Hair, after ladies switched from the long, straight, long "hippie" style of the late Sixties to the voluminous, wavy style (think Farrah Fawcett) starting about 1976. In the early '80s, bowl cuts and other longer styles from the '70s remained popular among boys and young men. Later, as the Punk Rock aesthetic went mainstream, males also joined the fun, and both sexes increased the height and/or curliness of their hair and dyed it blond or other vibrant colors and made it stick up with Spiky Hair.
In the Black community, the Afros of the 70's gave way to box fades reaching the heavens, along with the Jheri curl (named after hair chemist Jheri Redding), hair that's been chemically relaxed and laden with enough grease to make Exxon jealous. Think Michael Jackson. These looks were primarily popular with Black men; while some women adapted them too, most others went with the feathered and teased look mentioned above.
At the same time, the rise of the yuppie, the influence of the "preppie" look, and the resurgence of cultural conservatism under Reagan and Thatcher caused white-collar professional men to favor a clean-cut, slicked-back look harkening back to '50s Hair. The closing years of the decade then saw a gradual phasing out of the style, especially for men, with boys' hairstyles getting shorter than they had been at any point since the mid-1960s, but often retaining the 1983-1987 glossiness and puffiness.
As a result of the decade's relevance in pop culture, these hairstyles have been constantly featured in many works on the ensuing decades, being notoriously portrayed in The '90s and The Aughts as impossibly tacky, and with the growing awareness and eventual removal of ozone-tearing chemicals in hair products, harmful to the environment. The New '10s' fascination with everything '80s however led to a brief public revival of the same 'dos that no one would want to get caught dead with ten years prior. But thankfully this wasn't done to the same extremes as it was in the 80's, and the ozone-damaging CFC chemicals present in aerosol cans back then have been banned in most countries today.
