Perms

I think I'm a pretty attractive person, kind of objectively speaking. Sure there are things I might change about myself (read: saving for a postpartum BOOB JOB), but I have always had good looks on my side.

OR SO I THOUGHT.

My mother brought a passel of photos for my viewing pleasure this weekend, and I was hurtled back into the reality... that I had -- from 1983-1989 -- the WORST PERMS IN THE WORLD.

I was trying to fit in -- our proximity to New Jersey dictated that PERMS were just the thing for being a hot chick in the 80's.

And the perms didn't look so bad on other girls. They had hair that kind of handled perms better, I guess, or they knew how to style it so it didn't look so ASS-ISH.

I suppose it's time to present an example. Here, cringing, I attach a photo of myself at 14 with a fresh perm:

I am seated in this photo next to my friend J. I cut him out of the photo because, well, would YOU want to be in this photo? If you look closely, you can see that I've put a bow in my hair, but you can't find it because I look like a damn sheepdog. WHY didn't someone stop me? And why were my parents routinely laying out the $60 or so in order to damage my hair, my appearance and ALL of my teenage photos irreparably? Did they hate me?

I thought this shirt was awesome. These are paisleys on a white shirt, and you can tell by how meticulously I have folded the sleeves back that I was DRESSED UP for this visit with J. This outfit and hairdo were the apex of what I was able to achieve at this time. So sad -- if I just had a little lipstick and no damn perm, I bet J. would have totally been my boyfriend.

****

Flash forward, through two years of bad perms and hair growth, to age 16:

I worked HARD to style my hair in these perms. I would use a curling iron every morning, curling my bangs under and curling a kind of "croissant" of hair back from the second layer of bangs. Sometimes I'd curl additional layers in order to make the front as fluffy as possible, then I'd hairspray the entire concoction until it stood, solid, from my scalp, surrounded by these layers of chemically induced "waves," and I thought it looked kind of hot.

Of course, by the time I reached the bus stop, the whole thing would be falling down in greasy-looking loops, and I'd spend the rest of the day catching my reflection and trying to kind of pile it all back together into the giant croissant.

This photo was taken in the middle of summer, and my lunch companions are sporting their own bad perms, but this is my own confession. They can do penance in their own ways. It just makes me sad to think of all of the hours of my precious young life that I spent screwing up my hair.

I just looked at Google Images to see if I could find a stock photo of a WORSE perm, so that I could say, "Yeah, but at least I didn't look like THIS! Ha ha ha!" But there are none to be had. I am the winner of this sad contest.

But the GOOD NEWS is that the minute I arrived at college, my roommates took one look at me and commanded that I NEVER use the curling iron again, that I NEVER get another perm, and that I grow out my bangs tout de suite. Thank you, thank you, thank you, ladies.