I have been perming my hair since I was eight years old.
(And to everyone who says perms are awful, thank you so much for implying my hair looks like shit…which admittedly, sometimes it does. But that generally has nothing to do with the chemically induced curl.)
Before that it was straight, fine, and very flat. Not every perm has been the greatest (third grade school pictures, I’m looking at you), but I’ve never had much for damage—aside from dry, split ends when it’s been too long between cuts. Other than the first couple of years, my mom has done every single perm I’ve had. At some point, she’s not going to be able to do that for me anymore and I’ll either have to start paying someone else to do it, or stop doing it altogether. Hell I’ve only started paying someone else to just cut my hair in the last decade.
For the past year or so, I’ve been letting my hair get pretty long (for me) between cuts. Then I get three or four inches hacked off at once and start over again. At some point, I decided to try growing out the perm to see what my hair is like without curl. It hasn’t been unprocessed in twenty…seven…years. Who knows what the au-natural is looking like these days?
And then I realize just how much I don’t know how to properly use the white balance function on a camera.
Apparently.
Also, contrary to what this time lapse might suggest, I do own shirts in colors other than varying shades of blue.
What?
After my last cut, there is (are? is? are? grammar is hard) only a few short inches left of curl, and it’s really not curl anymore. It’s just kind of this awkward kink that looks like I put wet hair in a ponytail and let it dry. It generally looks like I haven’t combed it in months despite combing it every day post shower. And the rest of it, where it’s straight, is flat to my head because it is very fine and has no volume to speak of. I could get it cut again and take off more of the residual curl, but it’s finally grown out enough after my last cut to the point of long-enough-to-stay-in-a-ponytail and I’m not ready to lose that just yet.
It might help if I had a dedicated stylist handling my hair, but I don’t. A.) Because I have no idea where to even find a good one. And 2.) I’m not keen on spending asinine amounts of money to get an inch or two hacked off my hair every four to six months. (Yes, yes, let’s all gasp in horror at how often I don’t get my hair cut. I’ll just set the ADHD card here and we’ll leave it at that.)
The last time I had it cut, I talked to the stylist about my complete lack of volume since losing all my curl, and she said that anything that damages your hair gives you volume—coloring, perming, blow-drying… I’m currently forgoing the perms, I’m too lazy for the upkeep of dying (did it for a couple of years and said fuckit), and I let my hair air-dry every day because I don’t have the patience to blow it dry. It takes too damn long and looks like even more of a train wreck than its current state.
Where am I going with this?
I don’t know.
It’s…some ungodly hour in which normal people are sleeping and I need to write.
Also, I really want to put bright blue streaks in my hair, but I don’t want to bleach it or deal with the upkeep of the stupidly short shelf-life of such colors and the nasty green it will eventually fade into in about a week or two. Because with color like that you either can’t wash your hair or have to wash it in cold water to maintain it and that shit ain’t gonna fly with the girl who needs to properly bathe every single day.
—
 |
I Only Wanna Love You O.A.R. |