A curly headed friend of mine recently posted a picture of herself as a young teen when she was trying to approximate the Vidal Sassoon-inspired geometric hairstyles of the era. Although her hair looked fairly straight in the picture, she reported that it was torture to keep it that way, a process involving copious amounts of scotch tape and clips.
The older woman in the photo above also went to great efforts to change her hair to fit the current styles, in this case making it curly instead of straight. She probably hoped she’d look like her beautician once she was done. It hope it worked. It think it looks like a good way to deliver electric shock therapy.
In the early 70’s we used orange juice cans as rollers to get that sleek look. (One burst of humidity and the curls sprang up again!)