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The story of a perm
Nov. 17th, 2008 07:54 amWhen I was twelve back in the spring of 1965 my mother and my aunt conspired to make me less of a tomboy and more of a young lady be giving me a perm. I was told to go and wash my hair - so I dunked my head in the sink and got my hair wet. At the age of twelve, and not being much interested in how I looked, no one had explained to me that clean hair and dirty hair looked different. Aunt Maria immediately noticed that the hair was wet but filthy and I was sent back to get in the shower and WASH my hair with shampoo. My much older sister Diana, recently arrived upon our household with her three-year-old son, managed to explain to me, kindly, the concept of "lather, rinse, repeat". I think that simply gettng this concept down might have more successfully accomplished all the benefit that Mother and Aunt Maria expected from the perm - but, no, they went ahead.
Now envision if you will a tall (about 5'6"), skinny, 12-year-old girl with long, long legs, deeply tanned skin (we lived on the desert), and medium-brown hair sticking out approximately a foot around her face in all directions. Afros, at that time, had not yet been invented, or I would have been accused of having one. My mother brushed and brushed and attempted to braid. Nothing did any good. I was, however, sent off to school anyway on Monday morning and received evil heckling from my classmates, and pitying looks even from the nice teachers who kind of liked me.
To this traumatic experience add watching "Legally Blonde" a couple times (and thus learning that one never shampoos one's hair immediately following a perm) and you have the sum of my experience with permanent waves.
I was, however, impatient and moderately disgusted with my hair. I've been wearing it short since ConJose where I got it cut for Locks of Love. That makes about six years. My hair is irongrey with a few dark and a few paler streaks. When I get it cut, it is too short. Three or four weeks after cutting it goes through a period a week to ten days of being perfect and I sigh with shortlived relief. Then bits start poking out - mostly over the ears - and it is too long and uneven and icky and I schedule a haircut. Then it is too short... ad infinitum.
So, in desperation, I decided on a perm. I scheduled an appointment with the hairdresser for Wednesday the 11th of June. On Tuesday the 10th of June I fell and badly broke my right wrist - dislocating all the fingers of my right hand and tearing ligaments throughout the hand. No perm on the 11th, obviously, but did I accept this for the sign from god which it obviously was? No, I did not. Months, and many, many hours of physical therapy later, I scheduled another appointment for a perm.
Somehow, foolish woman that I am, I felt that in the four and a half decades since 1965 - decades that had included men walking on the moon, microwave ovens, the invention of the plastic trash bag, and the entire computer and internet revolution - that something as relatively simple as a permanent wave might have improved. I also had greater confidence in my professional hairdresser and her salon product line than in now-long-dead Aunt Maria, God rest her soul.
It took about two hours. It was goopy and moderately distressing. When finished it looked like my hair had been set in pincurls and lacquered. I was instructed to hide in the house and just "live with it" for 48 hours at which time I could wash my hair and start "styling" it. "Styling" is not something I do to my hair - so this was not a good omen.
Well, it's been two weeks now. The pincurls are gone and are replaced by hair that -except for the color and length - reminds me very much of my 1964 afro. I must admit that it has solved the problem of having odd pieces of hair stick out. Now everthing sticks out. It has also brought back submerged memories of my paternal grandmother. My hair looks JUST like hers. Same length, same color, and with the clarity of childhood memories long-forgotten I can even see her creating a head full of little pin curls held with bobby pins before going to bed at night. And I don't WANT to look like that grandmother - I far prefer the smooth marcelled waves of my maternal grandmother.
But here I am, curled and afro-ed. It will last months, I am told. I solace myself with the thought that, with all this curl, it looks shorter than it actually is. So it may be easier to go through the horrible wasteland of hair that is neither short nor yet long enough to put up. Because that's what I'm girding my loins to face over the next year. No more cutting. Just tough it out and in another year it will be long enough for a nice Psyche knot at the back of my head. And I'll never cut it again.
Now envision if you will a tall (about 5'6"), skinny, 12-year-old girl with long, long legs, deeply tanned skin (we lived on the desert), and medium-brown hair sticking out approximately a foot around her face in all directions. Afros, at that time, had not yet been invented, or I would have been accused of having one. My mother brushed and brushed and attempted to braid. Nothing did any good. I was, however, sent off to school anyway on Monday morning and received evil heckling from my classmates, and pitying looks even from the nice teachers who kind of liked me.
To this traumatic experience add watching "Legally Blonde" a couple times (and thus learning that one never shampoos one's hair immediately following a perm) and you have the sum of my experience with permanent waves.
I was, however, impatient and moderately disgusted with my hair. I've been wearing it short since ConJose where I got it cut for Locks of Love. That makes about six years. My hair is irongrey with a few dark and a few paler streaks. When I get it cut, it is too short. Three or four weeks after cutting it goes through a period a week to ten days of being perfect and I sigh with shortlived relief. Then bits start poking out - mostly over the ears - and it is too long and uneven and icky and I schedule a haircut. Then it is too short... ad infinitum.
So, in desperation, I decided on a perm. I scheduled an appointment with the hairdresser for Wednesday the 11th of June. On Tuesday the 10th of June I fell and badly broke my right wrist - dislocating all the fingers of my right hand and tearing ligaments throughout the hand. No perm on the 11th, obviously, but did I accept this for the sign from god which it obviously was? No, I did not. Months, and many, many hours of physical therapy later, I scheduled another appointment for a perm.
Somehow, foolish woman that I am, I felt that in the four and a half decades since 1965 - decades that had included men walking on the moon, microwave ovens, the invention of the plastic trash bag, and the entire computer and internet revolution - that something as relatively simple as a permanent wave might have improved. I also had greater confidence in my professional hairdresser and her salon product line than in now-long-dead Aunt Maria, God rest her soul.
It took about two hours. It was goopy and moderately distressing. When finished it looked like my hair had been set in pincurls and lacquered. I was instructed to hide in the house and just "live with it" for 48 hours at which time I could wash my hair and start "styling" it. "Styling" is not something I do to my hair - so this was not a good omen.
Well, it's been two weeks now. The pincurls are gone and are replaced by hair that -except for the color and length - reminds me very much of my 1964 afro. I must admit that it has solved the problem of having odd pieces of hair stick out. Now everthing sticks out. It has also brought back submerged memories of my paternal grandmother. My hair looks JUST like hers. Same length, same color, and with the clarity of childhood memories long-forgotten I can even see her creating a head full of little pin curls held with bobby pins before going to bed at night. And I don't WANT to look like that grandmother - I far prefer the smooth marcelled waves of my maternal grandmother.
But here I am, curled and afro-ed. It will last months, I am told. I solace myself with the thought that, with all this curl, it looks shorter than it actually is. So it may be easier to go through the horrible wasteland of hair that is neither short nor yet long enough to put up. Because that's what I'm girding my loins to face over the next year. No more cutting. Just tough it out and in another year it will be long enough for a nice Psyche knot at the back of my head. And I'll never cut it again.
