K-Perm

Disclaimer: I try to write gender-neutral posts whenever possible, but in this instance, I'm tremendously skewed towards the feminine side. I'm sorry, men. If you find yourself jittery reading this post, go obtain a beer, turn on ESPN, and try to breathe. Maybe watch this video a couple times. Or just X out of the window now. Consider yourself warned.

For those of you brave enough to still be reading, I got a much-needed hair cut for the first time in seven months over the weekend. I headed down to Gangnam Sunday afternoon to meet a shall-remain-nameless friend (*cough cough Zooms) who was running about 4 hours late. Typical. Having time to spare, and having spotted an H&M sign on my bus-ride in, I decided to wander around and explore. Maybe do some shopping. My wardrobe is kind of desperately in need of some spring-y additions...

So off I wandered until I stumbled upon a Juno Hair Salon on the main street. I'd avoided hair salons since my arriving in Korea for the simple reason that my hair is very thin and fine. Something not at all common among Koreans. I'd heard horror story after horror story of Waegooks like me going into salons, only to leave 40 minutes later with over-razored and layered hairstyles that felt awful and made them look kinda bald. These styles and techniques work well on thicker Korean hair, just not mine. So I stayed a safe distance away from all hair-cutting establishments, trimming my own bangs for seven months, and vowing to let my hair grow out for the year.

But then I found a Juno Hair Salon. Without exception, Juno is the only salon I've consistently heard good things about in terms of dealing with Western hair. I knew they had a branch of Juno somewhere in Bucheon near my apartment, but to be quite honest, I'd been far too lazy to go out looking for it. Having it there right in front of me in Gangnam, however, was incredibly convenient, so in I went.

Of course I had no idea what kind of haircut I wanted, seeing as my finding the salon was just a bit of spontaneous luck. As I glanced through the pictures in one of their hairstyle guidebook-things, I saw a curly style I thought was fun. I have wanted curly hair since literally the age of 7, but never had the guts to go through with it. Until now. My hair has been every color in the rainbow, why not curly too?

And so I got my first (gasp!) perm. Little did I know that I would be getting a digital perm, a perming technique invented in Korea (How culturally appropriate of me). The main difference between a K-perm and a normal perm is that Koreans use both heat and chemicals to make your hair curly, whereas a normal perm just uses chemicals. The resulting K-perm creates soft waves nothing like the gravity-defying spiral ringlets of the 80's. Which is good. The 80's had their place... in the 80's.

So it took years to build up the nerve to do it, but I finally have curly hair! Horray!



Oh, and Kimchi's hair is growing back nicely too. Did I ever mention, never shave a Yorkie?

Cheers!
- Christine -