Random: Old photographic evidence of a hair disaster

I was sorting out yet another box (desperately trying to keep my mind off the crappy house move) when I found a film strip inside an old folder. It was blank except for one mysterious image. I peered at it against a light and still couldn’t figure it out.

Will suggested I should scan it on our flatbed scanner and fiddle with it in Photoshop to see if I can create a photo out of it. I felt I’d give his suggestion a try.

When it finally appeared after I fiddled with Photoshop’s tools (grayscale > auto levels > invert > Brightness / Contrast), I almost fell off chair.

This is me sitting sideways, looking slightly over shoulder, in a photo shoot as a favour to an art student friend, when I was about seventeen. (I couldn’t make the image clearer without distorting it.)

It’s probably the only photo I have from this period. Until this, there weren’t any proper photos of me when I was at that age. I didn’t remember why until Will had a look at this image. The first thing he said when he saw it: “Your hair!” That was when it all came back.

A hairdressing student friend blatantly bribed me into letting her perm my hair. I can’t remember what she bribed me with, but the hairdressing session was a disaster.

She promised that my long (down to my waist) straight hair would have soft curls, like a Pre-Raphaelite woman, like this (all images below, I nicked from Google Image Search):

But instead I had a hairstyle similar to this:

She panicked into brushing my hair and then, flattened it all with this flatbed hot iron thingy. It didn’t work. It came out like this:

She used a chemical fluid (which stank to hell), which worked for the top part of my hair, but not the bottom part. It was so brittle, like this:

By then, her tutor came in and shrieked, “What have you done?”

After she tore a strip of flesh off my friend, the tutor offered to cut my hair into a “stylish bob”. I refused because I promised my gran I’d not have it cut that short until my 21st birthday, which was about four or five years away.

So she trimmed off the badly-damaged brittle bottom ends, which shortened my hair, up to just below my shoulders. She had to give me a fringe because without it, my now-thick hair kept sliding inward, covering my face until there was nothing but the tip of my nose. =D

I don’t think my hair has ever recovered from that session, because it isn’t as straight as it used to be. There’s always a slight wave to it. I think it’s because the hairdressing friend made the mistake of applying the hot iron thingy so soon after my hair was chemically permed. I don’t know.

I think – apart from that photo session, which I think I promised to do before the hair disaster – I was vain enough not to allow myself to be photographed until my hair became normal, which happened roughly a year later. Bwahaha.

The funny thing is, I still can’t remember a single thing about the photo session itself. I completely forgot about the hair disaster and the photo session until Will’s reaction to the image in Photoshop. =D