Bad Y2K Hair Trends That Won’t Be Coming Back

When we talk about hair trends from the 2000s, it’s easy to blur the lines between what was hip in the late ‘90s and what was still trying to find its way heading into Y2K. At a time when MTV was king and red carpets were meant to shock and awe us with over-the-top looks, hair trends were reaching a fever peak.

This meant tacky hair accessories, loud highlights and a sad attempt at reviving the long-lost crimper of the ‘80s were front and centre anywhere a camera was lurking. Today, it’s easy to romanticize hair trends of the early 2000s thanks to a new generation of fans that are either not-so-sweetly mocking older millennials or choosing to embrace these former fads as their own sincerely. In any case, we encourage you to dig up your old photos and get ready to relive them all.

S Club 7 member, Hannah Spearritt holds her head set mic on stage

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Bandan-a-rama

Kicking things off with the least cool hair accessory of the decade is the multi-purpose bandana. This piece of fabric can still be found draped around wrists and necks to catch sweat at music festivals, but if you were looking to complete your outfit in the early 2000s, you were more likely to tie a bandana around your head like a headband, like S Club 7's Hannah Spearritt does here. In fact, hair bandanas became so popular that retailers began fashioning strings to triangular pieces of fabric so that we could easily secure them without struggle. Genius!

Christina Aguilera smiling for the cameras at the 2000 MTV Video Awards

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Chunky highlights

Hair colouring had its moments leading into Y2K, but chunky highlights were most prominent at the time. One celebrity who really leaned into this look was our favourite genie in a bottle, who decided to make bold style moves as she danced her way into the Stripped era. Christina Aguilera clearly had a professional stylist in tow when she decided to add large chunks of black and red beneath her signature platinum blonde tresses. As for us common folk, we resorted to vibrant clip-in hairpieces or the forever beloved L'Oréal Chunking kits for those who took DIY very seriously.

Aaliyah with thick side bangs posing for the camera

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Bangs on the side

We loved Aaliyah for so many things, and that includes every hairstyle we were lucky enough to witness. What was arguably the most common was her long side bangs that were large enough to hide one side of her face at any given angle. Long and thick side bangs were certainly of the time, and we’d be so bold as to say nearly every celebrity (and regular human!) tested the weight of this hairstyle at least once during the decade. If done well, the big side bang created a sexy look that kept everybody wondering what exactly it was you were trying to hide.

Pink smiling for the camera at the 2000 MTV Video Awards

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Perfectly punk

As the year 2000 approached, pop-punk was leaving its mark all over the music scene, and with it was a very specific sense of style. From Gwen Stefani to Pink, there was simply no shortage of neon tresses and emo bangs to get our creative hair wishes flowing. And in some cases, there were colourful nods to punk trends from the past, like Pink’s modern take on the spiked mohawk. All you needed was some industrial gel and the will to stand out to make this spiky trend come to life in your very own bedroom.

Nicole Polizzi (Snooki) staring at the camera at an event in the late 2000s

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The big pouf

The pouf deserves a section all of its own. Trying to narrow down exactly where the hair pouf thrived is up for wide debate, but it’s fair to assume it was well before the level Nicole Polizzi (Snooki) later took it to. While it began rather modestly in the early 2000s with mini poufs that were constructed of the small front middle section of our hair, which we then forced to “pouf” at the front of our crown, Snooki met us at the end of the 2000s with a sky-high pouf that seemed to defy gravity. Wherever you land on the pouf spectrum, we applaud you but also hope that you’ve left that trend exactly where you found it — in the past.

Jennifer Aniston laughing on a red carpet in the 2000s

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A twisted mess

Crimpers were a coveted tool of the time, but it wasn't the same aesthetic your mom was rocking in the ‘80s. Instead, celebrities brought a new twist (literally) to the crimping game by selecting only some pieces of hair to wave, kink, crimp or bend in what appeared to be the bedhead-to-daytime style. It looked knotted and messy, but at the same time, it was oozing with a cool factor that none of us were truly confident we could take off the red carpets or centre stage of an award show performance. Still, we loved seeing celebrities pose for the cameras with a hairstyle that both confused and delighted us.

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Front and centre

In the ‘90s, we proudly donned our butterfly clips in twisted updos. As we inched towards a new millennium, we ditched the clips but kept the twists, as seen here with Days of Our Lives star Kirsten Storms. In this new journey of pulling back the front of our hair, we used tiny bobby pins to twist or braid our front hair strands or bangs in a well-kept row of perfection. It felt like an upgrade from where we started. As time wore on, we continued to revolutionize how we style the front of our hair, which eventually took on the shape of a pouf thanks to popular stars of the time like Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff, and, of course, Snooki from Jersey Shore.

Gabrielle Union smiling for the camera while in public in the 2000s

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Flipping out

Cropped cuts that flipped out at the ends were a big deal during the 2000s as well. Even medium haircuts could be seen with flipped ends that were stark and pointy. Gabrielle Union took this trend for a spin shortly after leading the Clovers in the forever important film Bring It On, but she wasn’t alone. Geri Halliwell, Mandy Moore, the Olsen twins, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Kelly Rowland are just a small number of others who were quick to hop on this train. But something tells us it all started with the pop-rock prom queen of our generation, Josie from Josie and the Pussycats, whose transformation to rock stardom began with a flipped-out bob that had teens rushing to the salon the moment they left the theatre.

Kirsten Dunst showing off a dragon fly on the back of a gown while standing on a red carpet

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Updo-not

This is a hair flex that still confuses us. Twisted updos that should have been reserved for prom somehow became synonymous with everyday hairstyles. As Kirsten Dunst demonstrates here, there were no rules with this popular choice of hairdo. You could curl it, flat iron it or twist and kink it, so long as you fastened it in a way that looked like you were ready to toss a corsage on your wrist. We're not saying this is a part of the bad hair trends of the 2000s, but it’s not exactly the best either.

Jennifer Lopez wearing a bedazzled bandana and pigtails in the 2000s

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Pretty pigtails

Baby Spice made baby pigtails cool again when the Spice Girls emerged in the mid-90s, and by the 2000s, we had once again evolved the trend to make it seem less childish by taming the height and the accessories that secured it. Jennifer Lopez is an excellent example of 2000s anything-trends as she seemingly tried them all on for size, but this look from the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards will forever live rent-free in our minds. It was a simpler time when J.Lo and P.Diddy were still dating, and N’Sync and Limp Bizkit could somehow host TRL without making it feel as weird as it does now. And honestly, we wouldn’t have had it any other way.