Back when I lived on Vancouver Island (the good ol’ days, as I now call them), I had an amazing award winning hairdresser named Edwin Johnston. I never had bad hair back then. Since I have left the island, it’s been hit and miss – with the hits usually being anytime I’m visiting the island and can get in to see Edwin. But even the misses with other hairdressers haven’t been all that bad. Not until now.My last few haircuts in Edmonton have been okay – as in very mediocre. So I had decided to try a place called “Modern Urban Hair Designers” or “MUD Studio" in Edmonton. Their reviews online led me to believe that it was a very chic place to go, especially if getting one’s hair done by the owner, Dana. Excited at the possibilities for zesting up my thin, lifeless hair, I booked my appointment with her.
Sure enough, the place was very stylish and trendy and I actually felt a bit underdressed for the occasion in jeans and a t-shirt. The hair stylists strutted around in all sorts of flashy attire: orange fishnet stockings and silver shoes, blue and purple streaked hair, tattoos, KISS-style stiletto boots that fit like a glove up to the knee. Surely, I thought, these women know about style, and I knew I needed some.
Shortly after I arrived, Dana came and sat with me on the big leather couch to discuss my hair and suss out what would look good on me. I started out with telling her that I’ve been trying to grow it out but it now just looks thin, shapeless, and boring. To which she replied, “You need a Body”.
“…A…..body?”, I replied, as if I’d never heard the word before.
And so, using her iPad, she showed me examples of what a “Body” was. We perused pictures of Meg Ryan, Madonna, and Charlize Theron while listening to some upbeat, trendy rock music. These were images of wavy, tousled hair. It looked oh so sexy. But wasn’t she talking about a ‘perm’? A small voice in my head (the common sense one that doesn’t always get air time) mentioned that this was, in fact, a PERM she was talking about, right? And so I trodded forth with trepidation.
“…. I’m not so sure…. I think my mom used to get perms….”.
“Oh no, dahling”, she said – with the utmost authority. “We don’t do THAT anymore”. And I thought I had understood what THAT was; the unspoken thing that went out with the 70’s. White chics with frizzy afro-perms, camel toes, polyester bell-bottoms, and ponchos. But I supposed that I didn’t have to worry. There are no perms, not at salons like this.
“I totally think you could rock a Body”, Dana said. And, looking at the celebrity pictures, I thought maybe I could, too.
For some reason, she instilled trust in me. Perhaps it was her confidence, the way she carried herself. She looked like an artist, sporting long black hair in a funky braid, big plump lips, and big knee high lace-up boots that looked like a saucy complement to her 8 month pregnant belly. She was so sure of herself, seemed to know how to handle anything, and appeared so certain of what I needed. A memory surfaced briefly before it sank back into the depths: that Edwin had made one thing really clear when working with my hair for those years back on the Island. That thing was for me never to get a perm. But I said yes anyway to this strangely compelling alchemist who spoke like she could work magic. And besides, I wasn’t getting a perm, I was getting a ‘Body’.
Flash forward to the day of reckoning a week later, at my hair appointment with Modern Urban Hair Designers. I am at the salon, getting my hair shampooed by a new gal there. “So”, she says in a sweet, welcoming voice, “you’re getting a perm today?”. At that point the spell broke and I felt like turning tail. Wish I had. But I wanted to keep believing.
I let Dana douse me with putrid chemicals once the curlers were in. I think it was ammonia but it smelled like 10 cats had shit on my head. Then more chemicals that smelled like some very bad perfume. I was determined to enjoy my time anyway, convinced that I would come out the other end looking hot. Stylists stopped by to chat with us, and Dana started talking about people in Newfoundland where she is from and how they are often stereotyped as being lazy – which she clearly wasn’t. One of the stylists told her she was surprised that Dana was on her third perm for the week, being that Dana recently told a client that she doesn’t really do perms. Uh-oh. I started getting worried.
Finally she rinsed me off and escorted me over to the station, and took the towel off. I saw the wavy wet hair, but it wasn’t until she started blow drying that I thought to myself, “oh shit”. It got curlier, and curlier, and curlier as it began to dry. I just wanted her to make it stop, but the curls multiplied. And my hair stank so much that I’m sure it could have been considered hazardous material. All I could muster to say at that point was, “…when will my hair stop smelling like this?”. I didn’t yet know how to form the words “how long will my hair BE like this?”. She finished it by putting some kind of product in it to tame down the curls and to cover up the stench. I couldn’t hold it in any longer and said that I honestly wasn’t sure I really liked it. “….it’s so….. curly”, I said. Likely I had the I don’t want to pay for this look on my face. And so she launched into a dialogue about how no one wears their hair straight anymore, and men like women with curls. I looked around the salon. Every hairdresser at the MUD studio had straight hair. Dana had straight hair. All the clients had straight hair. I was fucked.
It was a blur after that. I recall her continuing to try to convince me that it looked good. She told me that when she “had her lips done”, she thought she looked like a duck at first, but a week later went back because she wanted “more duck”. She then began selling me some products that I would need for upkeep of my new pet. I was put through the register. I think I tipped her, too, because she accommodated me on a Saturday when she doesn’t usually work. I had no reasoning ability at that point. I was holding in the shock. I walked back to my car, emotionless. All I could think was “I let a pregnant Newfie with fake lips perm my hair”. I looked in the mirror and it didn’t look any better than it did in the salon. I felt like a poodle. A very smelly one.
I drove home and I think I may have cried. I had a presentation to give on Monday morning to a federal board of directors. I had also promised my boyfriend that I would look ever so sexy that evening with new hair, and he was going to make me a special steak and crab dinner for our romantic evening. But now I had a stinky afro. I went from having thin, lifeless hair to having hair that has a life of its own. An entity. A planet with it's own orbit.
My boyfriend saw the hair, and said amicably, “it looks good”. He smiled encouragingly. But I knew that look and I know he would never want to hurt my feelings. Through salty tears I told him that I had a presentation on Monday morning and couldn’t give it looking like Crusty the Clown. He laughed – hard enough for me to see that there was some truth in the comparison. He tried to stop and insisted that it wasn’t like that. I went upstairs and cried in the bathroom, and then proceeded to think of strategies to tame the afro. But it wasn’t going away. I would have to live with it.
I assaulted my hair with various concoctions of hair products. It wasn't going to be okay anytime soon. It is kinky and frizzy, and at its very best, looks like I crawled out from under the tires of a bus. I kept telling myself it’s just hair. Just as some of the good hair I’ve had has come to pass, so will the bad hair. So I moved on. I was brought flowers that day by my lover, who also had cleaned the house and made me the most amazing dinner. The hair didn’t matter. And the next day we walked in the park and saw some buffalo, enjoyed the autumn air. I caught some bugs in the perm. The perm caught wind. But everything was going to be fine.
This morning rolled around, and it took me a while to tame the perm. Thoughts of “holy fuck what are people going to think” went through my head. But in reality, no one really noticed the perm during my presentation. I thought I imagined people looking at me a bit more, but not like I was strange. Maybe because I looked different. Whatever it was, people pretended not to notice that my head had sprouted like a Chia Pet.
And life goes on.
