When I was about twelve, every girl in school had these wavy perms and a hairsprayed “quiff”. Don’t know if this was a local Dutch thing or whether that was universal. Anyway, it’s a look I would want to avoid at all costs.
However, lately I have been having great fun with both hot rollers and curling tongs, giving myself a sort of Helena Bonham Carter wild curly look. In fact, it looks so nice on me I would love my hair to always look that way. However, since secondary school no one I know has permed their hair so I have no idea how far the technology has/has not come. Can you get proper curls from a perm these days? Or are they mostly still quite poodle looking and am I better off just having fun with the rollers etc.?
No, it was definitely international! I remember the poofy, hairsprayed look from when I was about 12 (I’m 24 now).
Perms are better nowadays, but they still carry risks of damaging your hair. My old roommmate had hers done and it came out so bad she just cut it off, so it’s a good thing she looks good with short hair! However, she dyes her hair frequently, so I’m sure that had something to do with how fried it got.
You might be better off sticking with rollers, as they won’t damage your hair as much (and the spongy ones won’t damage at all), and you’ll be able to dye it without worrying about what color it will turn. If you’re not one to dye your hair, a perm would probably be fine, though.
My sister’s permed hair is really soft and loose and nice, sounds like what you’re trying to get at. I think she had it professionally done, so I don’t know about home kits or anything.
I suspect it depends very much on your stylist.
Choice of chemicals, what size rods, how the hair is rolled - all will affect the outcome.
I have a wonderful perm on long hair - no one believes it isn’t real. I love it - it’s so low maintenance.
Bumping this in the hope some of our resident hair-specialists (Alice-in- Wonderland?)will come in and tell us to look for special brands of perm, or certain matches between brands and hair type.
I really want to know, because like Pookah, I have seen and envied wonderful perms on others and experienced many a completely fried hairdo myself. I haven’t permed my hair in two decades, convinced as I was that perms just didn’t work on me. FTR, I have longish, slightly bleached blonde hair, straight, normal in length and condition.
I’d really would like to know it if perms have become anything other then the Russian Roulette they used to be.
As someone who has fine, flat lifeless hair, and as someone who tortured herself with about 15 years of perming, (many of them successful and most of them by a professional and a few by my mom…AIGH!) I have been off the perm wagon since 1994.
Yes, I remember the year. It was in December.
When I took my long lovely locks in to get the much coveted spiral perm. And my hair stylist had left that shop and I was refered to another hair stylist that I had never seen there before.
I should have run. I should have run fast!
What I came out with was a head full of fuzz.
I wore my hair pulled back in a pony tail from December to May. Then I went to my SIL’s hair stylist trying to talk him into giving me a bob or something. He easily talked me into a micro short cut, utlitizing the grown out hair and getting rid of the crap.
No one at work the next day recognized me. I looked goooooooooood.
I went to him for years and still think of him fondly.
A good stylist is worth the money and if you don’t feel good about the situation, you need to get out of there. Looking back on it now, I should have sued the idiot who damaged my hair so badly. I looked like Gene Wilder-Gilda Radner had a baby.
What I’ve learned from that hair raising experience is stay true to your hair kind. My hair was not meant to be wavy or curly. I wear it mostly micro short to a shag style and it works great for me. When you see the little old ladies with the pubic hair perms it is a cringing situation.