Bad Idea

This week I permed my hair. I decided to save a few dollars by going to a cosmetology school. I have friends who get their hair cut, or dyed there and it always looks cute. I guess it depends on who you get, but in my case, I think it was just a plain bad idea.

First off, it took FOREVER for the girl to get the rods in. The owner decided he wanted to close early, so two more girls came over to help roll. At this point, I began to feel rushed. This is not a good feeling for someone who is getting their hair permed for the first time. There was one girl there who I could tell how I felt, and made sure my girl was doing it correctly. The other girls were trying to give me the impression that I should feel like a queen because there are three girls working on me. One of them even said something to that extent.

Second, it smelled HORRIBLE, in caps because there's no way to describe the stench. My eyes and nostrils were burning. I could only take half a breath before it burned my throat too much to breathe. To make matters worse, the girl decided my hair was too long to use just one box. She needed 2. In order to keep the goo out of my eyes I was holding s towel pressed up to my forehead. This left my arms exposed. The girl drenched my shirt in the smelly chemicals. I'm talking every exposed part of my shirt was soaked. I found this odd, because if all of the chemicals were on my hair, I wouldn't have needed 2 boxes (For those of you who know me, I cut 8 in. off, so it's a normal length now.)

After a half hour of letting the smelly stuff in my hair it was time to rinse them. The girl had told me before we started that the reason perms sometimes smelled was because they didn't get rinsed enough before the neutralizer was put on. I wanted to be sure I didn't smell for the next 2 days that I couldn't wash my hair. My head was really heavy. There were a lot of rods in in. It was hard to lean my head back, and the girl was rinsing slowly, and it didn't feel effective. Another girl came over to help her, which sped things up a bit, but not enough. The other girl could tell I was really uncomfortable, so she had me get on my knees facing the sink and lean my head over. At this point, my hair is so tight and heavy that I can literally feel my heart pulsating through my head. The only thing I could think about was how glad I would be when they were out.

The other 2 girls came back to help unroll the rollers, to hurry me out of there so they could close. Other girls (students) are selling clothes and parading around in swimming suits modeling what they just had bought.

The girl bow dried my hair with a diffuser, which I usually don't like because it makes my hair too fluffy. But I wanted to see what it looked like, so I let her. The girl I liked could tell I wasn't happy and I told her I just needed to get used to it.

Now, it's time to pay. When I got there the girl at the front desk told me it would be $30, my stylist girl also told me $30, more than once. I was pretty convinced it was going to cost thirty dollars. However, she said $55 when I went to pay. I asked how that could be and she told me she had made a mistake. It would be $50. I asked how that could be, because I was told $30. She looked outside and told me it actually says $30 and up (I'm not sure if it actually did or not. It was raining when I left, so I didn't look closely.) Apparently the type I got was more, and they charge extra for using 2 boxes of perm. Remember, I'm drenched in stuff. I paid the $50 and left. No, I didn't tip. I felt really bad, but it was almost twice as expensive as I was told, multiple times. And never once did anyone say, 'Hey this is going to cost more.' There's no reason it should have. Plus, I gave the girl really specific details about how I wanted my hair to look, and they brought out this girl who had gotten the same perm a few weeks earlier to show me what it would look like, and it looked nothing like hers. She later informed me that the instructor had brought bigger rollers than the school had, so hers was actually different. So I felt disappointed, and worried my hair would be ugly.

As she was spilling the chemicals all over me I asked if it would stain my shirt and she said no; it would just make me smell. It was a cream colored shirt. I went home and immediately washed it, because it smelled so bad. When I got it out of the dryer, it was indeed stained. It was just a little darker where she had spilled it. It was pretty much everywhere, but my sleeves were rolled up, so there were some "dry" spots, which was the regular color of my shirt. Gary said, "Remember, it's a school." I understand that, but they need to be more careful. I was really friendly, because I remembered that they were in school and deserved a break. Oh yeah, the teacher wasn't there that day either, she had fallen or something.

A few days after the perm, my hair pretty much looks like it did before I permed it. My hair was already curly, I just wanted to have it be curly everywhere. It was straighter underneath and in certain spots. I guess it is curlier in the not curly spots. Also, I wanted it to be curly at the top. It was a little straight at the top before it curled. It still is. Overall, I suppose I like it because it made my hair more uniform and I'm hoping when it grows out, it will curl on it's own again (the problem began during my pregnancy).

I think I would perm my hair again, but I would pay the extra to go somewhere professional and not have to be accepting that they are learning. I don't think I would recommend it for perms, maybe for some other services. Or maybe I would just make sure I got someone who was about to graduate, or a teacher.