The comments in the last post inspired me to write this post. =)
Korean hair salons (at least the ones I've been to in the LA area) have some fancy smancy forms of torture. Have you ever had to endure the "magic" straight perm or the "digital" perm? They take forEVER to do. Yet, I endured it, time and time again, so that my straight hair could be straighter.
What do you mean you ask? How can straight hair become straighter? Well, you see, before the "magic" straight perm, my hair would look like this if I didn't blow dry, curl, and/or flat iron it. Sometimes it would look like this even when I DID blow dry it.
See how it's kind of frizzy? Koreans actually call this "curly" hair. (khop sul muh rhee: khop sul = curly, muh rhee = hair/head)
But with the magic straight perm, my hair would look more like this (and this is without blow drying!):
It's a little hard to tell but you get the point. It becomes super straight and smooth without having to blow dry or flat iron. I could go to school/work straight out of the shower (get it? straight out of the shower?)without having to do anything to my hair. It was so convenient! I loved it...even though the treatment cost an arm and a leg and took 4+ hours to do, I got this done several times.
Then there is the digital perm. I have no idea why it's called that but here is what my hair looked like after I got a digital perm.
I really liked this perm because it gave me natural looking curls. When they did this, they didn't curl the hair all the way to the roots, they stopped like 2 inches short. And then they plug you in to this huge contraption. Each one of your curls are plugged in and it gets SUPER hot. You kind of look like Medusa when you're getting this perm done. After about 3 hours of torture, you get big, natural looking curls, if done right. Sometimes, if they mess up (or maybe it's because my hair was damaged), parts of my hair would be less curly or more curly than other parts... but overall, it turned out pretty good. I don't remember this costing as much as the magic straight but still, quite expensive. I think I've gotten this twice.
Now that I'm a mother of two, I hardly ever go to the hair salon... come to think of it, I hardly ever even wash my hair! (just kidding, sort of). I get my hair cut maybe once, or at max twice a year. I always grow my hair out really long, then get a bob-ish cut... repeat ever two years or so. Besides, the hair salons in the bay area cost SO much more than the ones in LA. So now, I just get my hair done when I visit LA, which is not very frequent.
I wonder what kind of hair treatments they'll come out with next...
On a side note, what's with all the boy "pop" stars in Korea and their feminine hair cuts?
- Mary vows to never get the ajumma perm even though she may be an ajumma already.
