Bogus Vintage Beauty Claims

Since the dawn of time, new technologies, inventions, and fads have brought along with them tales of danger and health risks. It was thought at one time that watching television would actually hurt your eyesight. TV Lamps were sold in the 1950s and 1960s as a device that was suppose to counteract the potential harm of watching a tv screen.

Back before science understood hair loss, hats were often blamed for balding. This advertisement, from a June 1928 Woman’s Home Companion, blames the new fad of cloche hats, a style designed to wear well with the new bobbed hairstyle of the Jazz Age.

It claims that too tight of a hat will cause hair loss and their hair tonic and shampoo can help stave it off. Most experts agree today that hats don’t really have an effect on baldness. Here is an article from the Huffington Post that clarifies the myths a little bit.

The advertisement reads:

A Warning to Women who Wear Tight Hats

Bobbed hair has created a vogue of close fitting hats- and physicians say that tight hats are probably responsible for much of the baldness among men.

Here are two simple rules for keeping your hair vigorously healthy in spite of the injurious effect of tight hats.

• Keep the scalp clean! Shampoo regularly with Wildroot Taroleum Shampoo. Made from pure crude and pine tar oils, it cleanses deep down to the hair roots yet does not leave the hair harsh or dry.

• Massage and brush the hair vigorously every day. Once or twice a week saturate the scalp with Wildroot Hair Tonic. This reliable tonic stops dandruff, invigorates the hair roots and leaves the scalp antiseptically clean. The most widely used hair tonic in the world.

You can’t start these treatments too soon. Invest in these two bottles today. Wildroot hair preparations may be obtained at drug stores, barber shops and hair dressers’ everywhere. Accept no substitutes.­­