All Of The Most Iconic Celebrity Hairstyles From The 2000's
For those who remember, the 2000's was a wild time for fashion. The unforgiving nature of super-lowrise jeans coupled with the super-skinny beauty standard and midriff-bearing tops left plenty of millennials with a bitter taste in their mouths when recalling the fashion of the day. But there were some trends we can look back on with a bit more fondness, like frosted lip gloss, metallic eyeshadows, and butterfly hair clips.
And speaking of hair, the early oughts were quite the years where it came to some fierce, fun, and flirty hairstyles that actually do make us a bit nostalgic. Sure, some of them were maybe a bit ill-advised, but many were just edgy enough to make us feel like we were rebelling while still being versatile enough for everything from school to sports to jobs or dates. Here we look back at some of the most iconic hair looks inspired by celebrities in the early days of the new millennium (you know, back when people still used that word).
Bold, colorful streaks
In the early oughts, everyone from Christina Aguilera to Jessica Simpson to Avril Levine went through a phase of wearing bold streaks of red or pink or other bright colors in their otherwise-blonde locks (via Buzzfeed). Take Aguilera's music video for her song "Dirrty," in which she sported both bright red and deep black streaks in her platinum hair in an apparent effort to distance herself from the good-girl image of her first album (via Byrdie).
Jessica Simpson also attempted to appear a bit edgier after her initially super-sweet debut by chopping her long hair into a cute bob and adding some serious red highlights. Pop Punk Princess Avril Levine took it a step further by putting her bold pink streaks only on one side of her long, blonde hair, creating an eye-catching asymmetrical look (via Buzzfeed). Destiny's Child's Kelly Rowland also hopped on the trend, adding bright red streaks to her beautiful brown hair, creating a bold look.
Neon hair
While some celebs only went half-in where it came to dying their hair bright bold colors by adding streaks, others jumped in head-first (get it?). Take Gwen Stefani, for instance, who spent a fair portion of the early 2000's with a neon pink bob (via Byrdie). She was so committed to the color, in fact, that when she married former husband and Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale in 2002, she did so with a custom-made dress dyed neon pink at the bottom (via The Mirror).
Around the same time, rapper Eve opted for a super-short do that she dyed a shocking shade of neon red (via Byrdie). Pink, who we initially met with blonde hair and pink streaks, as you might have expected, strayed away from her namesake color and went electric blue for a while (via Bustle). Of course, attempting these same trends in our parents' bathroom sinks with boxed dye didn't quite yield such cool results, but who could blame us for trying?
Random crimping
If crimped hair conjures up images of the 80's for you, please allow us to remind you that in the 2000's, crimping had a resurgence, but only in the form of totally random fashion, rather than the whole head of hair (via Cosmopolitan). All it takes is a quick Google image search of celebs circa 2000-2002 or a viewing of the first Charlies Angels movie in which Drew Barrymore rocked this exact hairstyle to remind yourself of just how popular this strange trend was. It worked like this: you alternated curling your locks with a curling iron and crimping them with a crimping tool, so the results were piecey, edgy, yet super pretty and feminine.
Everyone from Britney Spears to Hillary Duff rocked the look, and while it was time consuming to do for yourself, we bet if you were the right age, you at least attempted it while getting ready for a dance or showed a photo of it to your hair stylist before a big event like prom.
Bleach blonde
It was pretty hard to tell "The Real Slim Shady" from all the dudes who looked just like him circa 2000 thanks to Eminem's signature hairstyle of the day catching on everywhere: super-short and bleach blonde. In fact, if you remember the 2000 VMAs, then you probably saw the perfect depiction of this when Eminem marched down the aisle of the theater performing "The Real Slim Shady" as an army of guys dressed just like him with the same bleach blonde hairstyle marched in behind and around him. And if you were in school at the time, your cafeteria probably didn't look too different from that performance: full of wanna-be Slim Shadies.
And whether you thought it was super-hot look at the time or whether you were steadily rolling your eyes at the whole thing, it appeared Eminem was right: "Maybe there's a little Slim Shady in all of us...Let's all stand up" (via Genius).