Turning Heads (but Don’t Call It a Perm)

Desire for Waves is Overcoming Fear of Pherm.

Some women are trying for the look variously described as bohemian beach waves, bed head, second-day hair, “hangover” hair or simply “undone.”

TO get waves in her naturally straight hair, Kristi Koren, 36, used to dampen it, twist it in dozens of curlicues and then sleep on it. But after seeing Anne Hathaway’s effortlessly voluptuous locks in “Love and Other Drugs,” Ms. Koren, a mother of one 13-month-old and an entrepreneur in Raleigh, N.C., began wondering if there were a less time-consuming and a less uncomfortable way of creating long, flowing curls. As a child of the 1980s, it didn’t take her long to come up with the obvious (and yet terrifying) answer: a perm.

2/02/2011 (The New York Times – Fashion & Style)

Continue to read news >>

Who says middle-aged women can’t have long hair?

Why is there always a debate surrounding long hair? Writer Dominique Browning, 55, wrote a piece for the New York Times today about how she loves having long hair, but everyone in her life seems to have a problem with it: “My mother hates it. My sister worries about it. My agent thinks I’m hiding behind it. A concerned friend suggests that it undermines my professional credibility. But in the middle of my life, I’m happy with it,” Browning writes. And we can see where she’s coming from!

When you’re a young woman, a long, lustrous mane is often hair priority number one. Bouncing long hair is the most popular style for younger celebrities, it’s favored by both designers and stylists, and, from what the many magazine surveys tell us, most men love it best. Ladies under 40 will go to great lengths (heh. pun intended) to get the look—even shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars for hair extensions. But the cultural acceptability of long hair comes to a screeching halt by the time you’re middle-aged. Then society says it’s time to fall in line, cut it all off, and, for many women, opt for a short, boring, de-sexualized “mom” haircut, one that’s not particularly stylish, but—what the hey!—it’s easy to maintain. The prevailing wisdom seems to be: Young women with long hair are sexy, but old women with long hair look witchy and somehow unkempt. Cripes.