Sixteen-year-old Tracy Turnblad stepped up to prove that big is beautiful and the color of your skin doesn’t matter as long as you can Pony. In the six years since the chubby Twister first shattered the racial and social barriers of 1962 Baltimore, the 2003 Tony Award-winning Best Musical has energized audiences around the world.

The evolution of Hairspray is no big tease — from the 1988 campy John Waters hometown celluloid tribute to a cult classic that caught the eye of Broadway Producer Margot Lyon a decade later. When Waters gave his blessing for a Broadway musical treatment, Lyon secured the rights from New Line Cinema and put together a creative team. The message of tolerance and diversity underlying Waters' original film was not lost but sugarcoated by book writers Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan and composer and lyricists Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman then served up as a great big, fun, toe-tapping musical chock-full of clever songs and rousing dance numbers.

Since it opened in the summer of 2002, Hairspray continues to thrill audiences on Broadway, on London’s West End and in South Africa. The show has played throughout the United States and Canada, in Finland, Japan, South Korea, Italy and Switzerland. There are plans for engagements in Brazil, the Philippines, Argentina, China, Israel, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Last year’s star-studded movie was adapted from the Broadway musical and featured four new songs. It currently holds the record for biggest sales at opening weekend for a movie musical and is the third highest grossing musical movie in US cinema history. It stars John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Amanda Bynes, Jams Marsden, Queen Latifah, Brittany Show, Zac Efron, Elijah Kelley and Allison Janney, and introduces newcomer Nikki Blonsky as Tracy. Whether on screen or live on stage, this retro musical with swinging moves, sky’s-the-limit dreams and mile high hair sends a powerful message in the music.

Matt Lenz, associate director of the original Broadway production and director of the current national tour, explains that the appeal of Hairspray comes from its teenage rebellious nature naively facing off with universal issues of discrimination and acceptance. “You think you’re going to see this crazy, fun musical, but what we’re sneaking in there under the surface is not only the John Waters moments of questionable taste but the M word, ’the message,’ and the wacky characters.”

True character is defined by what’s inside, your inner qualities, not your race, gender, appearance, social status or any of the myriad characteristics that may invite prejudice and misunderstanding. That’s the message of Hairspray and it remains relevant today. Given the current political and social climate, maybe even more so now.

“We can all continue to not talk about it (race) or we can talk about it, but we’re not there yet, we’re not done,” Lenz said. “I thought, how amazing to be affiliated with Hairspray, the show that is out there talking about it every night.”

TAKE A TOUR OF THE 60s

More than a third of women work outside the home, up from 25 percent in the 1940s. Some two thousand computers are at work in American businesses, performing tasks that were once human functions.

Felt-tip pens, artificial tanning cream, Astroturf, the electronic toothbrush, the touch tone telephone, the cassette tape recorder, Diet Pepsi, Diet Right, Polaroid color film, Tab, Pop-Tarts, Lucky Charms and the Ford Mustang are among the new products of the decade. The birth control pill, silicon chips, the laser for eye surgery, the Kennedy half dollar, Go Go girls in boots on dance platforms, Afro and corn-row hairdos, wide ties and zip codes enter the culture.

New words and phrases coined include:
Anchorman, Beatle mania, black power, bluegrass, command module, compact car, corner-back (football), cosmonaut, discotheque, downers, dude, fake out, flashcube, flower children, flower power, glitch, groupie, headhunter, high-rise, hippy, hunk, kook, laser, microsurgery, no way, Peace Corps, pop, rat fink, sit-in, soul, splashdown, status report, uppers, zap and zonked.

For a year-by-year view of the decade, click here.

Photos by Phil Martin, Chris Bennion

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