Entry · catalog no. 1196
finger waves
/ /ˈfɪŋɡər weɪvz/ /FING-gur wayvz
noun · originally general salon practice; sustained and revived in Black shops nationwide · 1920s
✓ Verified
1.
A setting technique and the style it produces: damp hair heavy with gel is pinched between two fingers and combed the opposite way, ridge after ridge, until a flat ribbon of S-waves lies against the scalp, then clipped and left to dry hard. No iron touches it. Done well it reads as sculpture, and the work shows.
“She sat there two hours getting her finger waves laid and would not turn her head the whole ride home.”
2.
Specifically, the short gelled wave-set that Black women carried through the 1980s and made a signature look of the 1990s, worn cropped and glossy and often with a strong lip.
“Finger waves, red lip, and she is not asking anybody's opinion.”
Origin & Attribution
The technique dates to the 1920s and early 1930s, developed to soften the hard line of the bob, and the entry does not claim it as a Black invention. What is Black is the long custody of it: Black women kept finger waving alive in shop practice for seventy years after the flapper era ended, and brought it back in the 1990s as a distinct and unmistakable look. The traditional setting agent was karaya gum; modern versions use gel or spray.
1930
The technique is at commercial peak; a comb designed specifically for producing finger waves is patented in the United States
1994
The Los Angeles Times, 25 February, surveys Black women's hair and records finger waves in the mix as the revival begins
1997
Missy Elliott appears in The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) in cropped, deeply gelled waves styled by June Ambrose — the anchor image of the 1990s revival
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
originally general salon practice; sustained and revived in Black shops nationwide · 1920s
Spoken by
Black women and the shops that serve them, nationwide
$FINGERThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady106 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
58/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1920
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
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Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
Alpert, Altenburg and Bailey, Milady's Standard Cosmetology, 2002, Horizontal Finger Waves, pp. 354–58
textbook · printed
■
Maureen Sajbel, The Long and the Short of It, Los Angeles Times, 25 February 1994
newspaper · printed
■
Missy Elliott, The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly), Elektra, 1997, styled by June Ambrose
video · released
■
+ Cite a sourcePaul Compan, US Patent 1,988,866, Comb — a tool for producing finger waves
patent · filed
See also