ALL IN THE NAME OF BEAUTY

The one baby picture that I have of myself indicates that I probably didn't have a lot of hair when I was born.  What little I had was blonde.  The hair that grew in as I got older was also stick straight and fine.  My mother kept my hair all one length to about my chin and always with bangs.  On Saturday nights, my freshly washed hair got put up in pin curls.  However, with the development of home permanents in the 1950s,  my mother, being a trained beautician, subjected me and my sisters to regular home perms. I say subjected because it was quite a process and seemed to take most of the day, especially if all three of us were getting perms.

My mother's home perm kit of choice was the Tony Home Perm.  In the box of the Tony Home Perm was everything that was needed to have curly hair..pink plastic curlers in various sizes, the small waxy tissue papers to use on the hair when it was being rolled up and, of course, the stuff needed to make up the powerful, smelling home perm solution.  The smell of a home perm was so bad that my father and brothers would vacate the house for the entire time.

While getting a perm, I sat on the junior chair in the kitchen. The junior chair was a sturdy wooden chair that was a little taller than a regular dining chair.  It was what I graduated to after I out grew a high chair. My mother had everything she needed on the kitchen counter.  It seemed to take forever to have the perm solution combed through sections of my hair, the tissue paper folded over each section and then have the section rolled up on one of the pink curlers.  Sometimes, the papers would slide off my hair and curlers would fall out. The solution was cold and smelly and often ran down my scalp and neck.  There was always a towel nearby to catch the drips.

After all the perm curlers were in place, if there was any left over solution, my mother would use cotton to soak up the solution and then squeeze it over the curlers on my head.  This was always annoying because by the time she was done with rolling up the perm, you had  gotten use to the damp and cold on your head.  The applying of the last bit of perm solution was always a bit of a shock and it always ran down my scalp and neck....again.  After all the solution had been applied, my mother would put strips of cotton around the bottom row of curlers.  The cotton absorbed any additional solution that would inevitably seep from the curlers.  With that terrific look, I was sent off to process.

The next step for the home perm was that it had to process.  This meant that you had to wait around for the perm solution to do its thing if the end result desired was beautiful, curly hair.  My mother would usually send me outside while I processed.  I'm not sure if she timed the processing exactly.  All I know is that if the solution was left too long on my hair, I had VERY curly hair.  Since my mother would only perm around the sides of my hair and my bangs, the effect could be very interesting if the perm was left on too long.

After the processing time, I sat on the junior chair in the kitchen as my mother removed each curler.  My hair was shampooed over the kitchen sink and then put it up in pin curls.  I never really knew how curly my hair was until the next day, usually Sunday, when the pin curls were removed and my hair was combed out.  Sometimes tears were involved when the end result was revealed.  But regardless of the look, I still had to go to church, smelly hair and all.

The perm solution was really smelly and stayed on your hair for days.  Everyone knew when someone had had a home perm just by being within four or five feet of the person.  It would take days for the smell to fade and even longer for the curl of an over processed perm to relax.  That was also about the time when a new Tony Home Perm was purchased and the process was started all over again.