Since moving to England, Bill has wanted to travel down south to visit Bletchley Park, the location where Alan Turing and other mathematical smarties helped break Germany's Enigma machine. Breaking thier secret code enabled the Allied troops victory in WWII. Many of our friends hadn't been either, so Bill looked into organizing a group trip for us all to visit. He found out Bletchley Park was hosting a "1940s day" where they talk about the history of the female workers at BP, and teach us about the make-up and hair of the time period.
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| Attempting 1940's hair and makeup |
Us gals were excited! We could do a bit of touring Bletchley, learn the history of the ladies, and get all glamed up in the process. We learned Hitler didn't like red lipstick, so British women took to wearing bright red lipstick as a great big ef-u to Hitler! Also, there was no shampoo to be found during the war, so women took to washing their hair once a week with laundry flakes. And they jerry-rigged eyeliner by burning cork, then using a stick to scrape the burnt cork off and apply it as eyeliner.
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| Colleen's a natural |
Our teacher said, although there weren't a lot of luxuries available, and what was available was very, very expensive, women took it as their duty to look nice for the boys fighting on the front line.
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| Is my hair done yet? |
Victory rolls, the big donut-shaped hair rolls, were a practical way to put hair up to work (as the women had to do while their men were off) and worked well on unwashed hair. Our hair was nice and washed, so we had to add loads of product (dry shampoo, mousse, hairspray) to get our hair to co-operate. Cindy was the fastest learner, and ended up doing most of our hair, while she only got small little pin-curls in her short hair.
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| Cindy styling Regine |
Regine's victory rolls turned out quite well for her medium-to-short hair.
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| Regine's victory rolls |
Reg was the last one to get her hair styled. Since my hair was done, she was the lucky lady to get photos taken during the process of getting her hair all curled up.
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| Finished! |
Our youngest co-hort, Colleen, took to the style quite naturally. She and her Mom both looked great!
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| A beautiful mom and daughter picture |
We were the last five ladies to leave Bletchley that day. I don't know if we were slow or just meticulous, but we had fun regardless.
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| Beauty is your duty! |
And when we left, the guys finally saw us in our finished style and laughed and laughed! They thought we looked great, just so very different. They made us line up against the wall for another photo. The picture below reminds me of the photo still for the movie The Usual Suspects.
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| The Usual Suspects... Who is Kayser Soze?!? |
At dinner that night at a fancy Indian restaurant, us gals got quite a few looks and questions. It was fun for a day, but I certainly wouldn't want to go through all that rig-a-ma-roll every time we had to get ready in the morning!
The only downside to the day was that the ladies only had a short window of time in which to explore Bletchley Park. The guys spent the whole day touring the park and the nearby Computer Museum, where Bill took the pictures below of the famous Colossus computer. Honestly, the gals had a lot of fun, but I think the guys geeked out big time and really had a blast as well.
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| The Colossus |
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| The Colossus |
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