The things women will do....
 

So I was getting a perm from a friend. We were talking about cosmotology school and stuff when they boyfriends/spouses came up from the dark recesses of the basement where the new power tools were complaining about the smell.

Rachel was like, yeah well....its better this way than it was a long time ago...so my curiosity piqued I asked her what she meant. She goes to her book case and pulls out her great grandmothers cosmotology text book. It seems that "back in the day" perming was done pretty much by electrical shock. Hair was wound around metal rods and shocked to provide enuff to steam to permantely curl the hair.

There was even a whole section on how to treat your "client" when they suffered from electrocution and scalp burns.

In 1906, a German, Karl Ludwig Nessler, demonstrated the first "permanent wave" for hair, in his beauty salon in Oxford Street, London, to an invited audience of hair stylists. The hair was soaked with an alkaline solution and rolled on metal rods which were then heated strongly (IE with electrical charge to cause high temperature steam). However, this method had the disadvantages of being very lengthy (about 5 hours) and expensive for each application. Also the machine was large and cumbersome, and the client was obliged to wear a dozen brass curlers, each weighing 1-3/4 lb and there was always a chance that the ladies would end up being shocked or burned!

can you imagine sitting for 5 hours with these on your head?

http://www.celticdesade.com/beyond/u...1119854692.gif

Eep! That is scary.

Speaking of old things we used to do...

I remember learning about a "psychologist" who invented a way of treating women monthly to help get rid of the demons they are possessed with- he invented the first vibrator- women would go to this doctor once a month and get aroused to the point of orgasam. Of course, none of the women told the doctor that it was actually enjoyable.

its SO good to see your sweet kitty avatar back around :icare:

heh, I guess that doctor found a way to get his kicks "in the name of science" didnt he!!!

When I was a kid I hated my curly hair...now, as a semi-grown up, I understand how oh so very lucky I am.

I remember home perms as a kid. The smell of the solution was awful, same with hair dyes. Nowadays they use smaller amount of ammonia, and its much better than it used to be. We used to have to open all the windows & I'd be forced into exile into the bathroom for an hour while the solution did its stuff.
Did I mention I never wanted permed hair at age 7? Women & their weird rituals. lol.

eeekkkkkkk !!!!

I may get a brazilian wax every month for beauty, but never electrical shock for my hair! . . . i draw the line! ;)

Sweetpea

I remember going with my mom when she went to get a perm. The smell was horrible. I never understood the point of it.

5 hours to get your hair done? Not to mention the electrical shock...
How long does a perm take now? I do remember waiting around for a long time when my mother got hers done.

Hahaha, Sweetpea, the Brazillian doesn't sound much better. :p

You think perms were bad? In the early renaissance pale skin was the ultimate sign of beauty and nobility (oh, to have been born into such an enlightened age, says the pasty white girl), so women ate arsenic to whiten their skin. Talk about dying to be beautiful!

Brazilian...*shudder* If I didn't think it would hurt so much (and hated the idea of a stranger looking at my butt hole) I would totally do that...

brazilian waxes, perms, arsenic... yeah i'll go without :) torture just doesnt sound appealing to me. my mom used to fry her hair all the time just to get it to curl slightly. then if she washed it too soon or didn't follow the instructions to the T, it would turn into a fuzzy, frizzy poodle mess. heh, i should have taken pictures.

/me still doesn't understand why anyone would willingly undergo that torture to get curls - I've got 'em - -they are way overrated... :)

I never inherited my mothers blonde bone straight hair, I got the milkman's red curly hair instead... As a kid, I remember watching my mother set her hair on curlers every night. She'd have these big plastic and metal things protruding from her head held in place by sharp metal clippy things, and then she would actually sleep like that... With her head encased in metal.. Never quite understood that...

My sister was a big fan of the bleaching the upper lip hair thing..

We also pluck the hairs out of our eyebrows...

I think I've seen some pictures of women getting perms that way, it looks like doctor Frankenstein's beauty parlor!

i got a perm once but it really screwed my hair up for a long time (made it poodle poofy and only slightly curly), so i'm very glad to be "stuck" with my flat-as-a-board hair. i'd get brazilian waxes if they weren't so expensive, i personally don't think it's worth spending all your money just to look slightly better than you would normally have looked.

and the whole arsenic to look pale thing, well, look at girls today. the things they do to look tan (like sit under tanning booths) baffle me just as much as someone drinking arsenic to look pale would. of course, arsenic is more poisonous, but skin cancer is bad and will bite ya in the butt in the long run....

hehehe :lol:

it's not too bad :)

Sweetpea

ohmygod! :eek:

Sweetpea

Our family motto (passed down from my great-grandmother):

If you want to be beautiful... SUFFER!

This is what my mother would tell me when she was doing my hair in the morning, and I flinched (and occasionally threw things) because she was pulling my hair too tight.

My first perm (around age 8) resulted in a bald spot on the top of my head! They kept me under the dryer/in the chemicals too long and it literally burned away a section of hair!

i had a perm in my awesome waist-length hair for my 12th birthday. the curls fell out the next day but the smell stayed around for days. it took 4 hours to get all that hair in to teeny tiny curlers. my head hurt for weeks and i'm still tenderheaded. should have learned my lesson, but got another a year later and combed it out too soon (the day of the yearbook pictures, no less!). i was "poodle head" for years...

what about all the women who tear their calves up wearing high heels every day. i know one woman who actually ripped her calf muscle when she started jogging because the muscles were so tight. but, hey, it's high fashion. :thumbsup: :rolleyes:

I'm too cheap to spend much money on my looks. I spend more on clothes because I enjoy clothes because they can change my look and COMFORTABLE clothes often cost more. As for pain? I shave down there but I won't get waxed. It's too painful for me. (I know I've heard it's not if you get a person who does it well, but then there's the cost factor again - not spending big bucks just to find out if each person can make it more painless than the last.) I don't get perms. I got them three times when I was a kid. They never lasted, one burned my hair, and another turned my hair green a month later when I went swimming. My hair is too fine and porous and darn straight to bother. Right now I'm in the growing it out stage. I've never been completely happy with my short hair. Though I have though of getting it cut SUPER short but hubby hates that idea and I'm not SURE about it.

At any rate - pain - I only bother suffering that for the purpose of good looks when PAIN has the double advantage of giving me better health - i.e. EXERCISE.

I dunno. Waxing is a little crazy as it is... I don't think I can take the rest of that crap. I'm not patient enough to perm my hair now, let alone when it would have taken several painful hours... I can barely maintain a blowdry routine. I'll always have makeup on, but my hair... I have just never been good at hair. *sigh*

I am always amazed at the amount of money a woman will spend in the name of "looking good" and the amount of pain she will endure. Look at how many women subject themselves to various surgeries (face lifts, bigger boobs, the list is constantly growing) because they want to look better.

Back to the subject of perms, when I was a kid my hair was very straight and I probably got three perms by the time I was in high school. They never "took" and as mentioned already, the smell was horrible. My hair has been various lengths over the years; I tried short hair (short like above my ears and shaved neck) because it was supposedly easier to take care of -- so not the case for me! By that time my hair had become somewhat wavey in places, not consistent over my head, which made me a slave to the blow dryer and various gels/mousses/sprays. How many of us have taken a picture of a hair style we wanted to our stylist and it turns out to not be a good style on us? My hair grows slow so it always took a long time to grow out these "mistakes." I finallly wised up and realized that it's foolish for me to fight with my hair cuz it always wins :)
So now it is long, just above my waist, and I have bangs. Takes me about 2 mins to style which involves blow drying my bangs and scrunching the ends a bit. :thumbsup: This works well because I can work with the natural waves already there. I'm all about spending as little time on my hair as possible cuz there's so much other fun stuff to do with my time!
IMO women would do a lot better by working with what nature gave them.

Thank god I do none of this ridiculous plucking or waxing stuff or makeup or hair styling crap.

Freaky.