30 Comments on Have You Ever?

  15. …It wasnt at home, but a hundred years or so when I just started driving at 16, I decided I needed a haircut (back when I could grow it…a LOT). I went to a place that did such things in a building we once called a “Shopping mall”, got a book of styles, and pointed at one for the stylist who went to work.

    I didnt know nothing about nothing, I was just happy to be doing something on my own and the new manly cut I had engaged for, but I had no idea what the process was.

    I also didnt know that the stylist, for such she was, had thought I pointed to the haircut NEXT to the one I wanted, which I can only charitably describe as a “Mike Brady”.

    https://imgproxy.amomama.com/auR_tc5MOI8davxRLhT1bskFgLGXcb9orKddCHG-Q7o/rs:fill:1200:0:1/g:no/aHR0cHM6Ly9jZG4uYW1vbWFtYS5jb20vNmJjMTlkNjJmMzM1ZmY2MWUyZDk5MmE3MzJmMjhmMmIuanBnP3dpZHRoPTY1MCZoZWlnaHQ9MzQw.jpg

    …so being ignorant of the stylists trade, I was not alarmed as I should have been by the burnt hair smells or various twists and turns and complicated applications of sponges and whatnot in my hair, or the REALLY long time I was consumed in hair product stench, because I didnt know that this didnt lead to the manly mullet or feathered rockstar hair or whatever ’70s atrocity I -THOUGHT- I was going to get.

    …to shorten an already long story, I left out of there as a White guy with a very tight Afro.

    Much to the delight of assorted tormetors in my sophmore class, making the decision to spend the last 2 years of my public school sentence in an automotive program at the vocational school instead, which was more aliged with my dream to be a world-famous guitar playing car mechanic, by which time I had grown the perm out before I joined a bunch of NEW guys that happily never saw it, but thats a different story for another day…

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  16. Did it for mom several times and it was fine. Friend asked me to give her one first year of university. She still hasn’t forgiven me. 😂 😂 Says it ruined her social life. Trick was to do it outside for plenty of ventilation.

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  17. ^^^^^^
    Richard Simmons, A couple years ago one of the members of the 0 dark thirty gym club showed up for Halloween dressed like Richard Simmons, complete with perm. He kind looks like Richard Simmons so he was a big hit. Instead of buying a wig he actually permed his hair. It took 6 months for his hair to look normal. Dude looked like a disco freak much of that time.

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  18. Once many MANY years ago. I have stick straight hair and wanted some body and soft wavy hair (like my little sister). I didn’t get an afro, but it was more than wavy.

    Never did that again!

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  20. Oh yeah! Mom used Toni Home Perm on me a couple/few times a year in elementary school. And when it started to lose its bounce, she’d put Dippity-Do on my hair and roll it up in big pink spongy curlers for me to sleep in. My teenage rebellion consisted of never cutting or curling my hair.

    I returned the favor and permed Mom’s hair when she finished her college degree and went back to work and wanted to look professional.

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  22. Yes, Toni home perm. My sisters and I, the three of us. My sisters curls would take, but I’d wake up the next day with hair as straight as string. It was always a disappointment. But my hair got darker as I got older and developed its own waves. Permanent hair curling chemicals are nauseating. That can’t be good for you. I once watched a YT vid about the process black women go through to straighten their hair, and that looks mighty toxic to me, too!

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  25. As a black person I had the opposite experience with my hair. A normal thing to do in the 70s (besides the afro/”natural”) was to “relax” the tight curls in your hair. Long history of relaxers since the 20s,btw.
    Hence, I would get a relaxer treatment. The chemicals would burn the heck out of your scalp if left in too long. Didn’t smell too bad because most formulas had a pleasant fragrance added to them.
    A relaxed “permanent” that straightened black people’s lasts a couple of months at best. Relaxed hair could be cut and styled in many different ways before returning to a curly state. Seems relaxer treatments are making a mini return in popularity especially with older black women done with weaves and braids.

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  27. @Different Tim

    Yes, I remember it too. Before I started kidneygarten my mom used to drag me around to her hair appointments. I’d see all these ladies sitting under those big round helmets, but of course I had no clue about what was going on. The smell of the permanents is a nasal memory I’ll never get rid of.

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  28. ^SNS

    I suspect that it is permanent as compared to the curlers and hairspray routine or curling irons which didn’t survive hair washing, rain, swimming, or high humudity.

    My mom hoped to have curly hair post chemo, and she did for a couple of years.

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  29. Nope… Nope… Nope… Always natural. Did the 80’s mullet/feather thing with hair spray, and by the 90’s I was going natural. I tossed the middle part in the late 90’s, and moved to a short comb-over. Amusingly after the 80’s mid-part I can go either left or right… Go figure. The last few years I’ve started to develop typical male pattern baldness, which I’ve responded to with a simple short cut. The next step will be a whole head shave. Honestly, kind of happy to be done with it.

    I hate grooming expectations. I’ve had a goatee for 25+ years, only because a full beard itches so much…

    KR

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