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Wake up and smell the Aqua-net because in the 80’s making a statement was all about
the hair.
There were mullets, side ponytails, poofy fringe bangs, and my favorite, the spiral
perm, which many of us rocked so hard they even named a subgenre of music after it!
But how did we get curly, big hair that’s so bad it’s good?
A lot of teasing, and a little bit of chemistry.
Thanks, Ms. Beautyphile!
So a single strand of hair is made of tough proteins called keratin.
Now whether you have straight, or curly, or wavy hair, each strand is mainly held together
in two ways-- hydrogen bonds, and disulfide bonds.
And it’s these guys that let us create some outrageous hairstyles!
We don’t wanna be here All Night Long so we’ll make this explanation quick.
The name hydrogen bonds is kind of a lie.
They’re not actually bonds!
They’re just attractions between a slightly positive hydrogen atom and a slightly negative
atom like oxygen, fluorine, or nitrogen.
The bonds are relatively weak, so much so that they can be broken by something as innocent
as water.
On the other hand - disulfide bonds are real bonds!
It’s a covalent bond that shares electrons between 2 sulfurs -- duh!
It’s in the name!
These bonds are a lot stronger than hydrogen bonds, and hold the shape of hair in an iron
grip.
This means we’ll need something stronger than water to change them.
So here’s how the 80’s used these bonds to create some iconic looks.
Since hair strands are semi-permeable, water molecules from the atmosphere can jump in
between the hydrogen bonds of cross linked proteins.
These extra water molecules makes your hair more flexible, but harder to keep styled.
These crimps and curls you see here were all achieved by changing the hair’s hydrogen
bonds with heat.
When the heat of your crimper or curling iron is added, the heat evaporates the water molecules
out of your hair.
This allows the keratin to reform those bonds directly with one another, fixing your hairstyle
into place.
Just don’t leave your crimper plugged in, or you’ll end up “Burning Down The House!”
But this change is temporary.
Water molecules from a shower or just “In The Air Tonight” can sneak back in between
those hydrogen bonds, so instead of having a protein linked directly to itself or its
neighbor, water molecules disrupt the hydrogen bonds.
In high humidity, this can give us the frizz that’s the start of a bad hair day and it’s
why breaking a sweat in gym class causes your hair to lose its curl.
Super lame!
Chemistry solved this problem with permanent waves.
The glory of the perm is that it lasts!
So you spend less time doing hair in front of the mirror, and more time rocking out to
Tainted Love.
What made perms totally tubular is they use compounds like ammonium thioglycolate to break
those strong disulfide bonds in the hair’s natural structure allowing us to mold a new
style.
But that grody rotten egg smell when you get your hair permed?
Don’t wig out.
It’s just the unpleasant smell of the sulfur-containing thiols in the thioglycolate waving lotion
being released into the air.
Here’s how the perm works.
First the hair is wrapped in curling rollers.
These guys hold the hair into place, but more on that in a minute..
Next, we break out a thioglycolate perming solution to break those disulfide covalent
bonds.
Once they’re broken we need to reform them in a new place to get that permanent curl,
which is where those rollers come into play.
Hydrogen peroxide is used as an oxidizing agent to reform the strong bonds everywhere,
convincing the hair to hold that new curl, potentially for a long time.
Righteous.
Lest you think 80’s hair will make a comeback -- these styles could be really bad for your
hair!
While heat styling is considered temporary, the damage it can do to hair is permanent,
leaving your hair “Living On A Prayer!”
Drying hair for long periods of time at high temperatures can denature proteins making
your crimp limp!
And unfortunately every time you chemically perm your hair, a percentage of the disulfide
bonds don’t reform, leaving hair a little weaker and a little more damage, making you
prone to more bad hair days… at least until another decade brings another horrible hair
style into fashion.
Here’s looking at you, manbun.
And of course, it isn’t TRULY the 80’s until you finish everything off with half
a can of hairspray -- but for that, we’ve got another video, which we’ll link to below.
So that’s the chemistry of crimping, curling, and permanent waves.
If you’ve got more questions about the chemistry of beauty, send them to us or to our good
friend Ms. Beautyphile and maybe we’ll take ‘em on!
Thanks to Google for supporting PBS Digital Studios.
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We’ll see you next week.