The amazing and incredible evolution of a Magic Straight perm

Once upon a time I taught English to little tiny creatures who called themselves children in a far-off fantasty land. Sara wondered if I could lie on my deathbed without giving one of its many specialities a try. So I went for it and had the tedious full-day process done. Magic straight-uh!

I said goodbye to my curls in November 2005, opting to give the straight life a try, and I kept it up, refreshing the process just as I left the ROK at the end of Jun 2006. That was one year (and two months if you want to get specific) ago. Let's see how my hair has fared over the year....

Here I am in Vietnam, not a few weeks after the chemical transformation. I look sufficiently carefree with my roll-out-of-bed straight hair that required no effort whatsoever. What a novelty it was.

Here I am in November 2006, four or five months in. Look at that sleek and shiny mane! Not only that but the grueling stress of graduate school was taking its (welcomed, in this way) toll and I was dropping in poundage with little to no effort. Plus, I had a new friend called Romeo! At this point it would have taken blowing and hair straightening effort to handle the growing in roots.

I got a terrible haircut in December that nobody bothered to tell me about! Blunt cut?!?!?! Blasphemous! It looks okay here compared to how it really looked. I guess it was the smooth San Fran dinner jazz that made me smile.

By the end of January, seven months in, I grew sick and tired of the awful blunt and went for something that changed my life: bangs!!! What a wondrous invention, those bangs. I dug 'em, though I had to wield a round brush to get them to behave. It wasn't so bad, really. By now it was becoming a real effort to get this long, exceedingly curly rooted 'do under control. I'm not one for time consuming grooming.

So I cut a lot of it right off! My continued laziness left me with a mullet-esque cross between straight, wavy, and curly. I didn't particularly mind. People were starting to wonder, though, no doubt. Because they, like you, took great interest in the state of my cheveux. I also got this awesome wallet. It's yellow. It still makes me happy whenever I see it. This picture is taken in Fort Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia where I ate ribs and looked out at the gazebo behind the hilarious motel. I watched Bring it On on TV that night, and laughed hard over a game of pool. FYI.


Let's jump through most of the awkward hair growth period to the middle of July, just about one year after this story began. I'm at Mel's wedding. My reader's will recognize the lovely lady on the left, but probably not to the right. That's okay. Here you can see that despite being mostly curly there are still mucho-strange straight pieces at the ends that stick out and make me look much less polished than the two bridesmaids. It drove me crazy.

This brings us to the present. As you're well aware, t's the end of August and a year and two months have passed by. I haven't gotten a haircut since the wedding above, but I have been driven to the breaking point such that I took to some of those straight ends with a small but effective pair of nail scissors. Straight ends begone! I'm almost completely back to my curly self and it feels good! Plus I still have my friend Romeo. He's just a friend, people, just a friend.

The question remains: do blondes have more fun?

I'd say that straight hair definitely has its benefits. You don't have to do anything to it and, if you're lucky enough to have the thickness and sheen of a naturally curly haired person, it looks pretty awesome. Men on a whole definitely find long, straight hair sexy - that I can attest to.

Awkward growth hair I wouldn't particularly recommend. It takes lots of effort to straighten it and leaving it half and half just looks crazy. CRAZY!

Curly hair is pretty good. Girls compliment it a lot, mostly because those with limp straight hair are full of burning jealousy. Smiling guys say things like, "wow, you have crazy hair". I don't know quite what to make of that but... I'll choose to like it.

So that's that. At the end of the summer I'll get the rest of these damn straight bits cut off and that'll be the end of an era. I can now lay on my death bed without any regrets. Thanks Sara.