Digital Perm!

The Lazy Girl Guide to a Digital Perm.

   

   I will fully admit I am a lazy person when it comes to my hair & my face. Luckily for me, Genetics agreed with me and I am able to get away with (for the most part) not brushing my hair & just tying it up in a pony tail.  I wanted to get my hair cut, and was feeling cheap, so I went on craigslist and searched "hair models". On Craigslist, there was a listing for a digital perm and so I decided to sign up and see if I was a candidate!

Luckily for me, I was! and so I was on the list for a free digital perm at Terry DeMarco's Barbaria in Foster City. 

The before and after: 

before: after: 

Background on my hair: Thick, straight and does NOT like to hold a curl. Like alot of thick Asian hair, you can try to curl it, but unless you have skills, it probably won't stay. This was my first process done to my hair (i.e. virgin hair), so I've never permed, dyed, or done any other chemical process on my hair. 

Process: My appointment was at 9 AM and I was completely done by around 1:30. Yes it is a LONG time. As some other people have mentioned it DOES stink. Since I was a hair model, the people doing my process were being trained so it might have taken a bit longer than normal, and my hair was being stubborn so we had to sit a bit longer for my hair to 'relax' before they could add the heat element. 

The obligatory 'medusa' digital perm shot. 

The salon: The staff at Barbaria are SO nice! It's a really beautiful salon and you can totally tell that the staff gets along & they are all experienced. I was a little hesitant to be a hair model for something so permanent, especially since they haven't done it before. I would suggest that anyone looking for their hair to get done to go there! It's very clean & they give you little robes to put on so you don't have to worry about cut hair getting into your clothes. Even as someone getting a free service, I was treated nicely. 

If you're anything like me, you signed up for this digital perm (or someone mentioned it to you, or for whatever reason you came up with the idea) and so now you're doing research on it! For me, I thought that the digital perm was going to be an 'easy way to get beautiful loosely curled hair' and for the most part (in my case) that's true. The most useful website for me by far was http://eatpraylove.hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Take-Care-Of-Digital-Permed-Hair. The author breaks down what a digital perm is, and the two videos are by far the most helpful out there for teaching you to section and twirl your hair. 

If you just got your digital perm, and you're waiting to wash your hair (since they say don't shower for 24-48 hours to let it 'set'), your hair might start to look like this: 

(this was actually only 4 hours after the salon)

(this was roughly 24 hours after) 

DON'T PANIC! If you are like me, you are freaking out and thinking your hair is the one type of hair to completely reject any idea of being wavy.. And you start googling things like "what to do when your digital perm fails". Mine was free & I was freaking out, so I can only imagine the panic if I had paid money for it. DON'T WORRY! Once you shower, your straightened digital perm will pop back into its beautiful curly new self. 

Things that work for me: twirling my hair. I never used to play with my hair, now I play with it almost constantly. This might sound stupid, but one side of my hands twirled one way, and the other twirled the other. Don't do this! I ended up having to retrain my left hand to twirl in the same direction as my right. Think about it this way, if you curl something counter clockwise and then go back and curl it clockwise, it'll just end up confused, and then straighten out. 

Online there are not a lot of suggested products, most of the posts by people are from the phillipines, and if you live in the US like me, you can find those products on Amazon.com.  However, I had a $10 coupon for Ulta so I wanted to buy my products there. I bought the Tigi Foxy Curl Definer spray to help my curls out when it's not wet, and when it's dry, I use the curl defining cream that I bought from Barbaria. I also bought a conditioning mask and use that once a week. 

Overall: I think that the digital perm looks pretty good. It doesn't quite look like all the pictures you see online of amazingly curled hair thats like Victoria Secret or Salon status, but I'm sure thats more me not knowing how to achieve that than the digital perm itself. Like I said, I'm kind of a dummy when it comes to these things.  I don't know that the product really helps, I feel like the cream weighs my hair down a bit, but it does seem to keep more of a 'curl'. I tried sleeping with the suggested 'princess leia' buns, but must have done it wrong cause I woke up looking like a poodle.. no joke. I had a lot of baby hairs before, so the digital perm did seem to smooth those out, and I feel like my hair looks a lot more interesting curled than it does straight. I do not have a diffuser, so I can't blow dry my hair properly. So I try to air dry my hair for the most part (this takes about 3-4 HOURS UGH) twirling the whole time. My hair seems to keep the curl pretty well, although I do twirl it whenever I can. I work in a surgery room so for a majority of the day it's kept in a single bun in the back (even though I know they say 2 is better). It's a good way to have curly hair if you don't know how to use a curling iron! 

This is 3 weeks after my Digital perm. 

Even though it says that the digital perm will last 3 months, I'm doubtful that it will last that long.. 

Overall,  If you're going to get a digital perm:

• Buy some product. You can get away without any product but I think that it's good to have on hand. 
• Be prepared to have wet hair that you are going to need to twirl after your shower for a couple of hours. 
• DON'T panic the first 48 hours of your perm. One post suggested to wait a week before you freak out as this is when your hair will 'relax' into the style its going to hold. Please don't be like me and call the salon you got it done with in a panic. 
• Twirl your hair as much as you can without seeming like an idiot. In my opinion, the longer and more you twirl your hair, the longer your curls will stay around. 

If you live in the California Bay Area, I would totally suggest going to Barbaria Salon in Foster City. They're really nice, and they know what they are doing.

  Good luck! I'll try to re-update with what happens to it later on.