Picture this: it's 1960, and women are backcombing their hair into towering domes that require an entire can of Aqua Net to stay airborne. The bouffant wasn't just a hairstyle—it was architectural engineering on your head. The name comes from the French word "bouffer," meaning to puff out, which is exactly what this gravity-defying style did with magnificent excess.

Jackie Kennedy turned the bouffant into a cultural phenomenon when she became First Lady, though she preferred a more refined version than the sky-high styles that would come later. By the mid-1960s, women were teasing their hair to such extreme heights that some couldn't fit into cars without tilting their heads. Hair salons sold special sleep pillows designed to preserve bouffants overnight, and women actually slept sitting up to protect their masterpieces. The bigger the hair, the closer to God, as the saying went.

Here's the kicker: the bouffant required so much hairspray that in 1989, concerned scientists actually studied whether all that aerosol was damaging the ozone layer. They weren't entirely wrong to worry—a proper bouffant could go through a can of hairspray per week. The style made a hilarious comeback in the 1980s with even more extreme proportions, proving that everything old becomes new again. Even today, prom season brings out the bouffant, though modern versions use significantly less petroleum-based products.