Once again, Bella Hadid is leading the charge on a trend. But this time, it’s not her shoes or her watch we’re talking about — it’s her hair. In March, the model swapped her straight locks for big, tight curls, a look straight out of the ‘80s. You probably saw the switch-up all over TikTok (or on Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar) and now, there’s no denying: The perm is back in style.
Joining a slew of recently resurrected hair styles like mullets and shags, the perm — popularized in the ‘70s and ‘80s — has a shiny new reputation. The likes of Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, and Irina Shayk have been photographed rocking newly flowy waves and pin-tight curls. Perms have also reached a new male demographic, thanks largely to their adoption by K-pop stars and Korean actors. And on TikTok, the hashtag #perm boasts over 2 billion views.
It may be a trend, but the perm is anything but new (and in some places, it never went out of style). What is new is how we’re talking about perms in the U.S., and what we’re leaving out of the conversation. Namely: what the term “perm” means, the physical and social toll it can take on the wearer, and, critically, the intersection of race and curly hair.
According to New York-based hair consultant Mickiēla Mbatha, a perm is a “permanent chemical process that manipulates the hair into any curl texture,” from elongated waves to bouncy coils. Mbatha notes that our understanding of perms can differ depending on race and cultural background. For those with naturally straight or even wavy hair (typically non-Black folks) perms are used to add curl. But in the Black community, the term “perm” is often used interchangeably with “relaxer,” a cream or lotion used to straighten the hair.
Four years ago, Quia Bethea walked into a hair salon in Seattle, Washington in search of a perm. She wasn’t looking for curlier hair. She wanted to loosen her 4B hair type to something between a 3A and 3C curl, a straighter texture she believed would look “exotic and more beautiful, and not as coily and coarse.” When she described what she wanted, the stylist, who was Black, said no. In the heat of the moment, Bethea was annoyed. But in hindsight, she “completely understands” her stylist’s reasoning: “He told me I needed to maintain my curls instead, and insisted he wouldn't change my texture.”
The association between long, straight hair and beauty has been the dominant, Eurocentric standard for about as long as anyone’s been talking about Western beauty standards. These oppressive standards don’t just affect Black women’s sense of self-worth — they’ve been found to impact their financial success, too. The 2023 CROWN Workplace Research Study found that “Black women’s hair was more than twice as likely to be perceived as unprofessional.” More than half of the Black women surveyed “also felt like they had to wear their hair straight in a job interview to be successful, [and] two-thirds reported that they had changed their hair for a job interview.”
Growing up, Quierra Rodriguez was hooked on perms or as she calls them, “creamy crack.” “Like most girls in the ‘90s, I grew up with chemically relaxed hair,” she says. “I wanted to be like all the other girls in school who had straight, flowy hair.” But perms and relaxers can damage the hair, making it weak and brittle. Combined with frequent use of straightening irons, regular straightening caused Rodriguez’s hair to break off, a woe many Black women can relate to. By the time Rodriguez turned 18, her hair, which once cascaded from her head to her butt, sat above her shoulders. “It was so broken and had split ends everywhere. It was awful.”
Rodriguez, now 30, is one of many Black women who not only feel, but are constantly told, that straight hair is a necessity. It wasn’t until her college years that the registered nurse and health writer transitioned to her natural texture and got protective locs, which she still has today. When asked if she’d ever consider a perm, curly or straight, she says, “I’m never going to go back to the creamy crack. Straightening perms especially aren’t good for Black hair, no matter how infrequently you do it. It’s never going to be as healthy as wearing your natural hair straight from your scalp.”
Rodriguez has a point. Whether you’re using perms to curl or straighten, they can cause irreversible hair damage, as well as surface-level injuries like burns and scabs. In 2022, a study by the National Institutes of Health found that hair-straightening chemicals are associated with a higher risk of uterine cancer. (More research is needed to determine whether these chemicals actually cause uterine cancer.)
For Black women and girls, curly hair is more than a fleeting trend. Choosing to rock their natural hair is an act of self-love and defiance in the face of a system that constantly tells Black women to change their appearance. Celebrities like Hadid and Ratajkowski — white women who can wear curls without facing discrimination — are being credited with the sudden shift in attitude toward curls, but Rodriguez believes the curly-haired renaissance is really owed to Black women and the natural hair movement: “With more Black people embracing their natural beauty over the last decade, other cultures are seeing how beautiful our hair is, how cool it is, and how we can do so many different things with it.”
