Home Permanents Are Making a Comeback: Why Not Try One Yourself?

Toni home permanents were highly visible in the media in the late 1940's. We didn't have TV, but newspapers, magazines, and the radio all combined to let you know that Toni home permanents were the poor woman's solution to bad-hair-days. They were so wonderful, according to the ads, that a Toni home permanent was equal to any permanent you could buy, at any cost, from a fancy salon.

To prove their point, Toni advertisements often showed a set of identical twins with identical hair-do's, and a question under the ad reading, "Which twin has the Toni?" Supposedly, one twin had gone to a beauty parlor to have a permanent and the other had used a boxed Toni permanent at home. I was always a little skeptical, but there was no way to disprove their claim short of following their models around for 24 hours a day.

I had never had a permanent, salon or home, and my hair was as straight as a stick. My sister, Carol, three years younger than me, was blessed with naturally curly hair, and, like the Peanuts cartoon character, never tired of reminding those around her of the fact. I desperately wanted curly hair-natural or otherwise.

One summer day, as I lounged idly by the radio, I heard the announcer say...."you can win a Toni Home Permanent Kit if your sentence is chosen for our story any day this week." Believe me, my ears perked right up through my stick-straight hair, and I remained glued to the radio for the rest of the afternoon, hoping to hear more about this fantastic opportunity.

The rules for the contest were simple. The station was composing a story, one sentence at a time. They had started out with a paragraph of their own---one that ended in a bit of a cliff-hanger, and then invited listeners to mail in postcards with suggestions for the next sentence. Each day, their judge would select one sentence to be added to the story, and, for this particular week, the prize awarded to the daily winner, was a Toni Home Permanent kit.

I had never won anything in my life, but that didn't faze me. I spent hours that evening struggling to choose just the right sentence for my entry. If I recall, the finished product was something like, "The candle flickered and went out, but the eerie noise continued." Early the next morning, my entry was on its way.

When I won, I basked in visions of my new Shirley Temple hairstyle for at least a week while I hounded my mother until she finally found time to give me my first permanent.

I didn't look like Shirley Temple, or even remotely like any of the Toni twins, but my hair was definitely curly---for a while. Much to my regret, the perm had grown completely out by the time school started that fall so very few of my classmates ever got a chance to see the curly-haired me.

I always thought that the word, "permanent," was a pretty poor choice to designate a temporary treatment of one's hair. Every woman who has ever had a permanent knows very well that her new hairstyle will only last until new hair grows in to replace the hair that has been treated, and each haircut or trim shortens the life remaining for the permanent.

That's probably a good thing, especially if you happen to get a really bad permanent, but there are times when I finally get it right that I wish my hair would just stay the same length and degree of curliness forever.

As the years went by, I got to a place where I could afford a salon perm now and then but, guess what? I liked the home perms that were flooding the market by then, even better. I had, unfortunately, received a couple of really bad professional perms, and decided I would just do my own from then on, and I have.

Unfortunately, as the years go by, there seems to be fewer and fewer home perms on the market. I hope I won't discover someday that they have all disappeared. At the present time, my favorite, Lilt, has come out with all kinds of different formulas, including one for thin hair, normal hair, hard to wave hair, one with foam waving lotion, one with regular waving lotion, etc. Describe your hair and Lilt will have a home permanent formula made especially for you.

Another favorite brand of home permanent is Ogilvie. Some of the available kits for Ogilvie are foam or non-foam perms for delicate or color-treated hair, conditioning perms for hard to wave hair, regular perms for normal hair, Precisely Right perms for color-treated hair, and straightening kits. Yes, straightening kits. My oldest daughter has naturally curly hair and hates it, especially when she goes swimming and her hair curls even tighter. She still uses a straightening kit to keep those curls to a minimum.

Bain de Terre is an acid balancing perm that can be used at home.

You can see from just these few companies that there are still several choices if you are thinking about trying to do your next permanent yourself. If you ordinarily set your own hair at home after a shampoo, you will probably have no trouble rolling your hair using home permanent rods. Each home permanent kit comes with excellent directions and, although the timing is a little bit different for each person, a home permanent isn't really that hard to do. If you are a bit nervous bout trying it, enlist a friend to help you out and return the favor when she needs some help with her own.

The old Toni ads were true in a sense. If you follow the directions, your home permanent will turn out looking as though you had had it done at a regular salon. Then you and a friend can treat yourself to lunch on the money you saved by doing it yourself.

*For more help, check out the first link with this article to see a great video on how to perm your own hair.