MOUSSE°

noun and verb (Lifestyle and Leisure) noun: A foamy substance sold as an aerosol or in a pressurized form, usually for applying to the hair to give it body and help to set it in a style. transitive verb: To apply mousse to (the hair or some other part of the body). Etymology: Mousse was originally a French word meaning 'froth'. It has been applied in English cookery to frothy pur÷es using whipped cream or egg since the nineteenth century; the beauty preparation has a similar consistency to an edible mousse, but it may represent a fresh borrowing from French (see below). History and Usage: Hair-styling products in the form of a pressurized foam (for home perming, for example) have been on the market for fifteen years or more, but were not generally known as mousses; the impetus to develop a non-sticky setting foam that could be used outside salons came from the increased popularity of blow-dried women's hairstyles in the late seventies. The first mousse for the general market was developed at the beginning of the eighties by the French firm l'Or÷al; their marketing of the product using the untranslated French word mousse was probably the deciding factor in the establishment of mousse as the generic term for hair-styling foams. Mousse was so popular in the eighties (especially in creating the sculpted, swept-up styles that were fashionable then) that manufacturers of other pressurized beauty products also began using the word mousse, and combinations such as body mousse started to appear on labels and in advertising. 'People will try to mousse everything,'predicts stylist Louis Licari. People 10 Sept. 1984, p. 79 All these looks were created on one permed head and styled using a selection of mousse, gel, and spray. Hair Flair Sept. 1986, p. 10 See also gel