When it comes to hair, most men stick with the same style they’ve always worn without ever contemplating a new look.

But not women. We embrace change and we follow celebrity trends.

Remember Meg Ryan’s shaggy-dog look? There was Princess Di’s short sweptback and Farah Fawcett’s long sweptback, which sold a lot of curling irons.

Jackie Kennedy’s chic bob went perfectly with hats. And who can forget Pricilla Presley’s enormous ultra-bouffant for her wedding to Elvis? Some wag journalist quipped, “Seven people could live in her hair.”

The lengths we’d go

Well, I tried them all. I tried them all.

To achieve these styles meant utilizing various coiffure tools. Bobby pins, which, early on, were used to set hair, eventually were replaced by rollers – including the dreaded “brush rollers” that caused considerable scalp pain (and even a little hair loss).

Regular applications of generous quantities of Dippity-do gel became a must to keep the style in place. I wrapped toilet paper around my head at bedtime until I discovered that a satin pillowcase, which lets hair slide around and not flatten out, worked better.

Indeed, keeping up with stylish hairdos took time and effort.

But of all the styles I tried, the beehive was the highest maintenance. (It also was the most outlandish.) It required me to sleep with my hair set with large, empty frozen lemonade cans. In the morning I’d backcomb it to within an inch of its life, pile it high atop my head and spray it solid with Aqua Net.

I was Marge Simpson!

I was The Supremes!

Happy anniversary, beehive

The beehive turned 65 this year. It came about when Modern Beauty Shop magazine asked award-winning hair stylist Margaret Vinci Heldt, operator of Margaret Vinci Coiffures on Chicago’s ritzy Michigan Avenue, to design a new hairstyle to usher in the 1960s.

The flip, the pageboy and the French twist had run their course; it was time for something really different.

A little fez-style cap, decorated with beaded bees, inspired Heldt.

“I liked the hat because when I took it off, my hairstyle stayed in place,” she said. “It stayed in good. You could recomb the style, and it would come right back.”

Following the trend

And with that, the beehive became all the buzz. Women were growing their hair long to accommodate it. Movie stars sashayed across red carpets at gala premieres showing it off.

Audrey Hepburn gave it her usual classy touch as the character Holly Golightly in the movie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by adding jewels.

Indeed, the beehive so revolutionized styling, the Chicago History Museum considered adding Heldt’s famous fez to its collections.

It even inspired an urban legend: It seems a high school girl wearing a beehive used a pencil point to scratch inside it, not realizing a black widow spider had nested there. She poked the spider with the pencil. It bit her, and she died in history class.

Forgive me, Chicago History Museum. Forgive me, Margaret Vinci Heldt!

Carol Hall lives in Woodbury. She’s a longtime freelance writer, a University of Minnesota graduate and a former Northwest Airlines stewardess. Hall’s book, Stewardess, relives the golden age of airline travel in the 1960s when she was a stewardess for Northwest Airlines. It is available for sale on Amazon.com.

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