When Bad Hair Happens to Good People. By Joy.

This is me, age 18. Check out my hair. It’s awful, I know. Unfortunately, this is not my natural hair (actually, that is somewhat fortunate); this cluster of curls was the result of a perm. And a poorly timed one at that. Allow me to explain (to the extent possible). The Boyds are not “hair people.” Some girls grow up with cool moms who unlock their daughters’ hairstyling creativity at an early age and said daughters grow up into lovely young women who instinctively know how to manage their manes. Said cool moms set their daughters up for hair success at an early age by ensuring that they get the cutest haircuts in the latest styles, or braiding their locks into the fanciest of all hairstyles- The French Braid. As is clearly evidenced by the “About Me” picture of me with a mullet, Syl was not one of those people.

I can count on one hand the number of “real” haircuts I got during my childhood (this excludes Syl putting a bowl on my head and cutting around it, or, worse, letting her friend in beauty school cut my bangs). My first haircut was a doozy. When I was in kindergarten, I had hair down to my derriere. It was long and luxuriously thick. Syl called me “horse hair,” which, at the time, I believed to be a term of endearment, but have since realized was really a sardonic statement of fact. Like any tomboyish five-year old, I did not care what I looked like. I never brushed my hair and I hated washing it. Every other day or so, Syl would take notice of my wild banshee-like appearance and spend an hour or so vigorously working the snarls and tangles out of my hair.

One night, I went to sleep whilst chewing gum (disobeying Syl’s strict orders to the contrary) and woke up with the gum thoroughly entangled in my hair. This act of defiance not only resulted in an unpleasant encounter with the Board of Education, it also resulted in Syl seizing a golden opportunity to chop my locks (again, see Mullet Joy in picture to the left). Having been shorn like a sheep in spring, I felt exposed and embarrassed and was a little wary of salons (and I use that term loosely) after that. While I, like the rest of my siblings, had bargain-basement cuts, every six (6) months or so Syl would go to the salon (a real one, I think) and get a new perm. Throughout my childhood, Syl had various permutations of the perm, and I loved and admired them all. Every six months, I would beg to accompany Syl to the real salon so I could get a perm, too. While I am sure Syl would have loved for us to have matching perms, the fact is that there was just not enough money in the Boyd Bank to buy me a perm…until I turned 18.

Though I quit asking for a perm after elementary school (doubtless having concluded that this dream would never be realized), I had renewed interest in the elusive perm towards the end of high school. Much to my inexplicable delight, Syl offered to buy me a perm for my 18th birthday, just before I left for college. To this day, I have no idea what I was thinking. Perhaps my motivation was not aesthetics (clearly), but rather laziness. At this point in my life, I had not yet been introduced to the almighty straightener; every morning I tried to wrestle my horse hair into some semblance of a hairdo and, having recently seen some high school photos, I was wildly unsuccessful at it. Having sensed on some level that I was fighting a losing battle, then, I must have thought a perm was the perfect solution for my hairstyling ineptness. What could be better than taking a shower and letting the ole curls air dry? Just a little gel! No more blowdryer! No more crazy hair! Or so I thought. Not only did the smell send everyone in a 5 mile radius running, I looked like a cross between Weird Al Yankovic and the Soul Glo commercial from “Coming to America.”

As you can see from this picture, my jheri curl didn’t do me any favors in the looks department. Turns out I was not any better at managing the perm than I was my old hair, so I eventually let the curls out, and discovered a straightener, thanks to my sorority sisters. I think the moral of this story is clear: you can get away with a perm you’re seventy or if your mom makes you get one, but not if you’re old enough to know better!

Share