Jennifer Garner sold scrunchies in college, was raking in the dough


Jennifer Garner was on the Late Show Tuesday night promoting Arthur, which comes out in the US today. It looks like a pale imitation of the original despite the involvement of Dame Helen. (I hope she at least says “May I wash your dick for you?” They need to work that line in there.) The movie is getting trashed on Rotten Tomatoes with a 24% rating, but critic opinions don’t seem to matter when it comes to box office so it could do well. I certainly see enough commercials for it on television.

Garner told a story on Letterman about how she made hair tie scrunchies in college and sold them door to door in the dorms. She said she was so successful and made so many of them that she still runs into people who say “I have your scrunchie.”

Jennifer Garner may be a successful actress, but back in college, she had other ways to pad her wallet. On the Late Show with David Letterman Tuesday, the actress revealed that her college ‘job’ was actually making scrunchies — those infamous ’80s-style hair ties covered in fabric. “My college roommate and I … we were theater geeks and we had a key to the theater department,” she admitted during an appearance to promote her new film, Arthur. “We would go in late at night and we would use their sewing machines and their elastic and we would make scrunchies. We would make boxes full of scrunchies in sorority colors or [ones that were] just cute.” And surprisingly, the gig actually paid the bills. “We went door to door in the dorms and said ‘One for $3, two for $5,’ and we raked it in! We made so much money!” But as it turns out, unfortunately, Garner wasn’t exactly an expert accessory maker. “We spent so much time on them, [but] we were so bad at them. I was constantly sewing the scrunchie to my clothes — I was a bad scrunchie maker. I’m sure half of them fell apart.”

[From People]

Garner is a year older than I am, I’ll be honest. I graduated high school and started college in 1991. At that point, I wouldn’t have been caught dead with a scrunchie in my hair. My crowd was listening to Nine Inch Nails, Peter Murphy and the Psychedelic Furs. (Some of us got turned on to then-new Nirvana at the time too.) We were wearing combat boots, long shaggy hair and thrift store clothes. Looking back at myself in college, I know I was a stereotype, but that’s what we did back then, we got involved with a group and we identified with them and we dressed like them. The sorority girls were trying to rock the scrunchies, so I guess we can assume Garner was a sorority girl. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it definitely fits with her personality.

Here’s Garner outside the Late Show. Credit: WENN.com

wenn5633407

wenn5633406

wenn5633402

wenn5633399

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

33 Responses to “Jennifer Garner sold scrunchies in college, was raking in the dough”

Comments are Closed

We close comments on older posts to fight comment spam.

  1. Chris says:

    So if any of us ever meet we shoud say “hey I’ve still got one of your scrunchies”. 🙂

  2. Sue says:

    My god she was boring and vanilla back then too.

  3. Lady Jane says:

    great hair in these pics! i bet goopy never had to sew anything to pay the bills, so this makes me like jennifer.

    and she didnt say she wore them. She just sold them to the soriority girls.

  4. mln76 says:

    Wow that Abrahms guy really is a genius. He made me think Jen was actually cool for a minute. Bleh.

  5. Amy says:

    She was in a sorority, I forget which one… I want to say she was a Pi Phi.

  6. Darlene says:

    I think it’s a cute story. I like her. I don’t care if she’s “vanilla”. She’s a good mom and a nice person. Too bad she married that douche Ben Affleck.

  7. manda says:

    I wore scrunchies till I graduated HS in ’95. And she’s from WV and I’m from Ohio. Maybe it was something the midwesterners stuck with longer.

    CB, where are you from?

  8. CooCooCatchoo says:

    Wow, she’s a gorgeous woman! That trench coat and those shoes… fantastic 🙂

  9. Celebitchy says:

    @manda I am from the East Coast, went to college in upstate NY.

  10. Jenny says:

    Between her and Affleck, the bland leading the bland. But if she is happy, then good for her.

  11. TG says:

    She looks great with that gray smokey makeup. And what happened to her career? She was on the way up and now she just plays lame supporting roles.

  12. Steph says:

    Just an FYI- I dislike Russell Brand…most of the time. Arthur was really really funny. Like laugh out loud hilarious. It stalls a little in certain areas, but it’s worthwhile to see.

  13. HotPockets says:

    Jennifer Garner can be so pretty when she dolls up. I just love her dimples. I sort of like the fact that when she is photographed running errands she dresses like any normal mom, never seems to try too hard to be this Hollywood bombshell all the time.

  14. Rhiley says:

    This reminds me of one of my favorite Sex and the City episodes, the one in which Carrie tells Burger that parts of his novel did not seem authentic because no woman from New York City would wear a hair scrunchy. Oh, and as vanilla as she is, Jennifer Garner is very pretty and you can tell she takes good care of herself. That said, she does look like she has had a little lip work done. Something seems pumped up on her face.

  15. TXCinderella says:

    God, isn’t anyone in Hollywood original? They have all started wearing the belts to their trench coats tied into a square knot instead of buckled. It seems like all the celebs jump on the same fashion bandwagon time after time, like what is the “it” color to wear to the Oscars this year.

  16. Delta Juliet says:

    I can’t hate her for being vanilla when I am pretty vanilla myself 😉

    Her hair is gorgeous.

  17. Leah No-No says:

    Peter Murphy forever! He was my second crush, he’s a hot piece of gothy 80’s dong. I remember reading a rumor somewhere that he was in talks to do a cameo in one of the Twilight movies, I hope that never happened.

  18. TG says:

    @TXCinderella – I must not be original either, I have been tying my belts to my trench for years and so has everyone else out in DC. Of course you won’t find much originality out here either. We all wear our trenches with our Hunter rain boots. LOL

  19. Hakura says:

    Unfortunately, even on the East coast (Maryland), the scrunchies were around long into the 90’s. But in middle school more than highschool.

    Off topic, but in that last pic, the way she’s standing makes it look like she has ‘hooves’. xD

  20. Jeri says:

    She generally gets critizied for being under dressed or under made up so it’s nice to see her dressed for the occasion and not being torn apart by critics for her appearance.

    Hooves are GaGa’s thing.

  21. Zelda says:

    I always forget how pretty she is. She may be a little vanilla, but she’s well-spoken and charming and doesn’t come across as a ditz. When she first came out, I wasn’t really a fan, but now I have to admit, she’s got some kind of charisma. She made me cry in Juno.

    @TX Cinderella
    I’m usually Moscow-London-Montreal and I see the belts tied in all of them. It actually is more flattering and stays better than if you use the buckle.
    I hate that buckle…

  22. lila says:

    I’m kinda sad she has been keeping the weight off. She looked awesome on alias and daredevil/elektra when she has some muscle in her. Now she looks more like the typical skinny hollywood actress.

  23. Rosanna says:

    I usually don’t like her interviews… however this live one makes me understand how one can be totally fascinated by this woman…

  24. TXCinderella says:

    It’s not just the buckle thing, it is everything they do or wear. They are all copies of each other, like the long wavy hair parted in the middle.

  25. Hakura says:

    @Lila – Aww, piggy icon =) <3 Cuuuuute.

  26. Becky says:

    I am also 38 and graduated from college in 1994. I went to a small state university in south central PA (not too far from West Virginia!) and scrunchies were very big there during that time period. I would venture to say that almost every girl except the very hardcore alternative/punk types had at least one. I was into the grunge and vintage thrift store look and while I was never a huge scrunchie person I’d still break out a black or flannel one every and then(: Reading this post was a nice trip down memory lane. I’m not a Jennifer Garner fan, but it’s nice to hear from a celebrity who came from a more “normal” background (unlike the Goop, Kate Hudson, etc.).

  27. truthzbetta says:

    Are scrunchies no longer acceptable? Like if you’re walking around neighborhood working out?

    Does everything HAVE to have a time limit, yeesh.

    She’s pretty, but she should not have fucked up her mouth. I couldn’t watch that movie w/ her and Ricky Gervais b/c her mouth was so distractingly surgicized. Not good.

  28. Hakura says:

    @Becky“I was into the grunge and vintage thrift store look and while I was never a huge scrunchie person I’d still break out a black or flannel one every and then(: Reading this post was a nice trip down memory lane.”

    I agree! That’s one of those little pop-culture things that you don’t think about until someone reminds you. I had a few scrunchies in middle school, but I never wore them in my hair… the thing then (where I was) was to wear them on your wrists.

    It makes me think about the other random fads… Not sure if this was the case everywhere, but at our middle school (mid-to-late 90’s), those colored gel pens were a huge trend. Can’t remember what brand, but they used to drive our poor teachers nuts, as they’d have to struggle to see some of the writing. (Especially the ‘metallic’ ones.)

  29. Jelly says:

    She may be vanilla, but I still like her. Did anyone else see her playing beer pong on Jimmy Fallon’s show. She won!

  30. MaudeLebowski says:

    Her lips have always looked like that. Even way back to when she played Hannah on Felicity.

  31. Zelda says:

    @truthzbetta:
    ew. Not for about 15 years, no.
    Just use a covered elastic.
    Can you even BUY those ugly things anymore?

  32. manda says:

    @ CB — well that explains it! NYers are always ahead of middle America, fashion- and trend-wise.

  33. Forelithe says:

    ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ wha ? zzzzzzzzzzzz