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In the mid-1980s my sister, Rita and I both wanted BIG Hair, which meant we needed perms. And since we both were working moms, with not much disposable income we resorted to buying Lilt or Ogilvie home permanent wave kits at the drug store and doing our own – actually doing each other’s hair. Rita had long thick blond hair, which had some natural wave to it, but not enough. She wanted to look like Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac and our previous attempt to achieve that look had failed. She was back to long blond fly-away tresses in a few weeks.  So here’s the story of our next attempt:

Rita schedules a Friday off work, when our kids will be in school, except for my youngest, Steve, who is a toddler. Her kids go to a babysitter after school, so no problem there.  We’re psyched. Ready to create Big Hair

The day arrives. Rita blows in my front door with a shopping bag of supplies. I’m ready, my kitchen set up to become a Beauty Salon for the next few hours. Rita spreads the paraphernalia she brought on the table.

“I went to the Beauty Supply store my friend told me about. Look at this.” She produces two white unadorned boxes. “This is the best, professional perm solution they had. And I got it wholesale price. My friend said since my hair is so long, I might need two bottles.” Then she opens the plastic bag full of skinny pink permanent wave rods. “She also said to use as many rods as we can get in my hair, to ensure it curls the whole length. And not to use the big ones, because they only wave the hair, won’t curl it like I want.”

I already have a plethora of different size perm rods in a tub. They are color coded; pink – small, blue – medium and yellow – large. So now we have enough curlers to turn a Golden Retriever into a Poodle.

Rita sits at the table. I cover her shoulders with an old bath towel and using a spray bottle to keep her hair wet, I begin the tedious task of pulling out sections, thin and fine, and wrapping the ends with the protective tissues and rolling them tight, securing the rods to her head. One at a time.  As per the second-hand instructions I use only the small pink rods to set all her hair. My arms get tired, and my eyes glaze over. I have to stop several times to tend to the boy, who wants to be part of our beauty shop experience. Over an hour later, Rita’s head is covered in tight rolls. I believe I secured at least 100 pink plastic cylinders on her head.

Next the chemical solution that will burn the hair so badly, that it will crimp and shrink, turning into tight curls in self-defense. I add the activator to the first bottle, shake it up and begin applying the stinky acrid liquid to each rod equally. I have to keep moving as we don’t want one side to sit longer, steeped in acid, while the other is spared. One bottle empty, and Rita insists I start with the second. Not being well versed in hair damaging products, I do as she wants. Halfway through our eyes are burning and the solution is running down her face, faster than she can dab it off with the wet washcloth she clutches in her hand. We finally consider the job done, when the second  bottle is almost empty. The directions say to cover the head with a plastic bag and sit for 10-15 minutes, while the chemical works its magic. Rita says we should go the whole time since she has so much hair, so we do, eating a lunch of crackers and tuna while her head cooks. 15 minutes pass, I check a few curlers, looks good. But Rita says, “Let’s give it another 5.”

Time up, I start applying the neutralizing solution on each rod to stop the process.  We wait 5 more minutes, then we go to the sink, where I begin rinsing her head, pouring pitcher after pitcher of warm water, cooling and soothing her burning scalp. Next, I remove all the rods. “Wow! This is great,” I comment as her wet hair springs into corkscrews as I free each rod. Then I shampoo her hair, rinse and repeat. Finally, done. Rita sits patiently while I towel dry her hair. We don’t want to blow dry it, because that will cause it to frizz. The hair needs to hang loose and dry, to get the desired Stevie Nick’s look. I use a pick to get the tangles loose, freeing her hair to hang in long cork-screw waves. We sit and chat as her hair is drying. As the minutes tick away, Rita’s hair grows. I don’t want to alarm her, but the look is not what she is expecting.  I hope she goes home without looking in the mirror.

“How’s it look?” she asks for the tenth time.
“It’s curly. Like you wanted,” is the best I can come up with.

Then Joe, my husband, comes home from work. His first response as he enters the house is, “What’s that smell?” Then as he walks into the Beauty Salon, he sees the source.  “What the F….k did you do to your hair?”

Joe and Rita have a great relationship. She loves his attention, and he says she’s the sister he never had. And just like a sibling he doesn’t hold back. But how could he?  Rita is sitting in our kitchen with a huge leonine yellow mane. The biggest wildest hair I had ever seen. [If this happened in 2023, there’d be a funny video of this whole scene on Tik-Tok. But alas it only lives in our memories. Not even a photo.]

Rita finally realizes that something is amiss, jumps up and runs to our bathroom to look in the mirror. We hear a loud scream.  “AHHHHHHH!”  and then crying, loud wailing like someone has died. She runs back into the kitchen and starts yelling at me. “What did you do to my hair?”   I know she is traumatized so I try not to antagonize her, but I do need to defend myself. “Rita, I did exactly what you told me to do. It’s not my fault.”  There is no calming her down, as she cries and asks me what she should do. I don’t know, so I tell her to go to a hairdresser and see if they can reverse it.

She wets her head down, puts on a scarf and runs out the door in tears.

A few days later, Rita calls me to say she went to the salon, and the girl cut her hair much shorter. “She said most of the ends were damaged by the chemicals. Then she treated it with something to relax the curls.”

The irony is, all told, Rita spent a lot more for this whole experiment than she would have paid for a salon perm to begin with. Lesson learned; I permanently closed the Beauty Salon in my kitchen.  Rita still had big blond hair and I had my short brown curls, so Joe started referring to us as Super Brillo and Brillo, respectively, for the next few months.  And he enjoyed telling the story for a long time after. Tom Moorman, a dear friend of the Hoppers especially loved this “Rita Story” as he referred to the many antidotes where Rita is the star.

So the motto of this cautionary tale is:  “If you don’t know what you’re doing, DON’T.”