Little Suzy Curly-Q

Bertha B. got a perm today. I still reek of rotten eggs. The smell reminded me of going to the hair salon with my mother when I was little. Her salon was this snazzy place on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens with a purple neon sign that read Papillon. I used to love looking at all the hairstyles in the oversized hardcover haircut catalogs. By the time I was in middle school, I had all those hair catalogs memorized, but I still liked flipping through them. I can still almost picture all the feathery, Farrah Fawcett layers and short and curly backcombed 'dos.

Anyway... so, I gave Bertha a perm today. Bertha B. is my most-trusted, daily client. She's also made of plastic, so I don't have to fret about poking her in the face, slicing her with shears, or dripping a chemical in her eye. Plus her scalp comes off and I can give her a brand new head of hair if I accidentally give her a bad perm or dye job. Most convenient.

My thoughts on perms: Part of me can't comprehend why anyone would want to put their hair (and scalp) through that much chemical torture. (...says she whose hair is about to break off from years of bleaching...) Apart from the fact that you have to keep an eye on the stuff and check it every 2 minutes because if, heaven forfend, you over-process the hair, it WILL turn into cotton candy and melt right in your fingers -- it also really freaking stinks! And that smell lingers on your clothes and your hair for days! (Sorry Bertha, that is the price you pay for vanity!) I mean, yeah, okay, I get that perms were big in the 80s, and some people just have no other way to get a curl to stick in their hair, but it boggles my mind just a little bit that there aren't any more effective alternatives. I have no idea why chemically changing the texture of someone's hair seems like a big deal to me, but I don't bat an eye at chemically changing the color (no matter how frequently). It's not like the actual hair can feel any of it... it's just dead protein.

The actual process wasn't so bad, though of course it took me all day. I was feeling particularly the anti-beauty student beauty student today (more on that later), so I was happy to retreat into my own little world and just roll hair into rods for four hours. And it is kinda rewarding to see those curlicues emerge as you rinse that foul-smelling potion off. I am, however, secretly hoping that I never have to do another perm again for the duration of my career.

So here's Bertha, pre-perm. (just ignore the awful highlights right on her hairline... I was totally going for that 90s skunk look, ok?!)

And Bertha, post-perm. (I *might* have been channeling Jennifer Grey's look in Dirty Dancing. Nobody puts Baby in the corner.)

K, that's it for now, as I've been severely sleep-deprived and don't have the mental energy to discuss hair any longer (for fear my *brain* will turn to cotton candy and melt between my ears). I've been working on a couple of posts that will come up as soon as I regain some of that, notably on why I suck at being in beauty school and also pics of my first few real-life hair models... So exciting!