Who the Hell Still Gets Perms?

Apparently this is something I really need to know.

I know this because I've written some version of “Who still gets perms?” in my notebook at least three separate times.

Not intentionally.

I'll be flipping through pages of random thoughts—family, work, relationships, things people do that make me question humanity—and there it is again.

Perms.

Are people still getting them?

Who is getting them?

Who the hell is still doing them?

Well, Monday morning I left my house at 5:00 a.m. to go watch my daughter start her senior year of high school, attend her senior breakfast, take in her very last first day...

…and then I hauled ass back to the salon by noon.

To do a perm.

So there's my answer.

People are still getting perms.

And apparently I'm still doing them.

Depending on who you ask, that either makes me an experienced stylist with a diverse skill set or a living artifact from the Smithsonian.

There are younger stylists working today who have probably wrapped approximately four perm rods since cosmetology school.

Meanwhile, some of us can still section a head, sling rods and end papers around like we're preparing for battle, and recognize that unmistakable smell from three buildings away.

You know the smell.

Everybody knows the smell.

A perm doesn't quietly enter a salon.

A perm announces itself.

You can light candles. Open the door. Turn on the fan. Spray something expensive in the bathroom.

Doesn't matter.

Someone walking in twenty minutes later is going to wrinkle her nose and say:

“Is somebody getting a perm?”

Yes, Susan.

Somebody is getting a perm.

But here's what's funny about hair:

Nothing ever really disappears.

For years everybody wanted volume.

Then everybody wanted their hair flat-ironed so straight it looked like it had personally offended them.

Then came beach waves.

Then texture.

Then effortless curls that require eleven products, three hot tools and forty-five minutes to look effortless.

And now younger people are getting perms again.

They just don't necessarily call them the same thing our mothers and grandmothers did.

Because apparently if you rename something, it's new.

Fashion does this too.

Give it twenty years and somebody will put on something we threw away in 2004 and inform us that it's trending.

Ma'am.

I owned that the first time.

But the more I think about it, maybe what keeps making me write about perms isn't actually the perm.

Maybe it's what they remind me of.

When I first started doing hair, I had quite a few weekly clients.

I lovingly referred to those ladies as my bread and butter, because baby...

THEY SHOWED UP.

Same day.

Same time.

Every damn week.

For many of them, doing their own hair just wasn't part of the routine.

They came to the salon.

Shampoo. Set. Style.

And I'd tease that hair within an inch of its life so they could sleep on it for seven nights, wake up, fluff it back into place and show up the following week ready to do it all over again.

A lot of those women have passed away now.

And for a while, I thought the weekly salon client was disappearing with them.

But lately I've noticed something.

She's coming back.

She's just younger.

I'm seeing younger women coming in weekly for blowouts, flat irons, shampoo and styles.

No, I'm not necessarily teasing them to Jesus and shellacking everything into place so a hurricane couldn't move it.

But the basic idea isn't all that different.

I'm giving them a really good foundation they can easily maintain for the next seven days.

And it has made me wonder something I've actually talked about with people who aren't even in the hair industry:

At what point does a woman decide she's going to the salon every week instead of doing her own hair?

Turns out, I don't think there is a point.

And there definitely isn't an age.

The reasons are as individual as the women sitting in my chair.

Some have very textured hair and doing it themselves is just a lot.

Some tell me:

“I can't get it as straight as you do.”

Some develop shoulder problems and physically can't reach or hold their arms up long enough anymore.

Some get dizzy shampooing their own hair.

Some have hot flashes so bad that halfway through blow-drying they're about ready to tear the entire bathroom apart just trying to get their damn hair dry.

Some love being pampered.

Some want forty-five minutes when nobody needs anything from them.

And some?

They just don't want to do their own damn hair.

And honestly?

I don't care why.

You don't need to justify it to me.

You don't need a medical reason.

You don't need difficult hair.

You don't need to be a certain age.

You don't need to explain why you could technically do something yourself but would really rather have somebody else do it for you.

You want somebody to wash your hair, dry it, straighten it, curl it, fluff it, make you feel put together and send you back into the world with one less thing to deal with for the next seven days?

LET'S GET YOU AN APPOINTMENT, BOO.

Because maybe the weekly salon client never really went away.

Maybe every generation just finds its own reason to come back.

And maybe that's true of hair in general.

I've been behind the chair long enough now to watch techniques become outdated, disappear, get renamed and suddenly become cool again.

Styles change.

Clients change.

The reasons women come to us change.

But eventually, so much of it circles back around.

Which brings me back to the question I apparently cannot stop writing in my notebook:

Who the hell still gets perms?

Well...

I watched my daughter walk into her last first day of high school Monday morning.

And a few hours later, I was standing behind my chair wrapping perm rods.

So apparently some things really do come full circle.

And if you'd like one too?

You already know what I'm going to say.

Let's get you an appointment, boo.

— Bawsey