Brian Kagan's Blog

Yesterday, while fishing the internet’s deep waters for a story referencing fashions from the early 2000s, I hooked a 2019 Harper’s Bazaar article, the title of which curled the hairs on the back of my neck: “Is the perm the biggest (and most surprising) hair trend for 2020?”
Made popular in the 1980s—think Jennifer Gray in Dirty Dancing and Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally—perms eventually stunk away into the past. Until now, thirty years later. The Harper’s article opens with, “The perm is back: there aren't many four-word phrases in the beauty world that could cause such a flicker of panic in even the most hardy of hair trend followers.” The article goes on to say, “The perm process has also been undergoing a low-profile transformation. There are more techniques being used to limit damage—both from the chemicals and the heat required to set the curls….”

A story from my stinky past cried out to be told.

Arriving at Oklahoma University in the autumn of 1969, I weighed in at a marshmallowy two-ten. During that first year, I embellished my Stay Puft physique with a gnarly beard, Frank Zappa hair, flannel shirts, jeans, and Timberland work boots—a poster image for male hippies during the late 60s and early 70s. Then I got a job selling women’s footwear and accessories in a trendy store on campus. I lost fifty pounds, shaved the beard, whacked off the locks, and started wearing swanky clothes.

I graduated the summer of 1974. High-honors diploma in hand, svelte, Hugo-bossed wardrobe, and now general manager of what had expanded to three trendy women’s footwear and accessory stores located in Norman, Oklahoma City, and Tulsa. I swan dived into a pool of self-admiration, ready to take my seat alongside Ralph, Georgio, and Calvin; the fashion elite. My ego, already soaring at ten-thousand feet, rose another ten-thousand after a shoe-buying trip to New York City in 1982. While walking through the perfume department of Bloomingdales at 59th and Lexington, a lab-coated, heavily made up, high-heeled salesperson spritz-attacked me with a blast of Armani Cologne. Between hacks and tears, she asked if I was Pierce Brosnan. Bottling the moment, I simply shrugged my shoulders and walked on.

After returning home and still intoxicated with Eau de Brosnan residue, I happened upon an episode of Remington Steele. I studied my ‘twin,’ wondering how that Bloomies perfume terrorist could have mistaken me for Pierce. The outfit? Similar European cut. The self-assured smile? Definitely. The hair? Parted like mine…but wait. The irksome difference hit me right in the cowlick. His hair had waves. Mine did not. It was time for action. And a perm. While the high cost of obtaining the perm resulted in curvy locks and fed my rampant narcissism, the added physical and mental trauma made the price extortionate. And, I willingly paid it every ninety days. For six years.


Back in the 80’s, the quest for chic hair required the indignance of being draped in a polka-dotted shower curtain vice-gripped around your throat while being held hostage in a salon chair by your coiffurista. She snapped on armpit-length black rubber gloves to protect her skin. Not yours. Then fistfuls of your hair were wound so tight against your head, you were unable to blink and felt grey matter oozing from your follicles. All this paled in misery, however, to the moment she started gooping you with the permicide—a chemical combo reminiscent of diaper poop, rotten eggs, and skunk discharge. Intended for the rollers, much of the toxic mash seeped out onto exposed skin. Thus, the birth of perm burns.

After the hour-long torment, your personal dungeon master swung the chair around so you beheld your head occupied by a legion of rollers wrapped in enough Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Foil to signal E.T. Vapor-induced tears filled the wells formed by your stretched-open eyelids. Optimism broke through, however, as you anticipated her removing the rollers, washing, cutting, and blow-drying your permed do. And escaping. But no, the real fun was about to begin. She engulfed your throbbing head in a brownish-green stained shower cap that allowed the chemical ingredients time to mingle and do their noxious magic. Then she escorted you down Agony Boulevard where, along with other morons, your head baked beneath a hairdryer set at “Sun’s Surface.” The mixture of radioactive sludge and solar heat burned the inside of your nostrils and filled the air with a vinegary-tinged aroma of smoked meat. The two-hour abuse completed, you were free to go. To begin three months shampooing your hair with Lysol to keep people from sniffing the air whenever you were around. Just in time for your next perm.

I remember driving home after that first perm and glancing at myself in the rearview mirror. Pretending I didn’t know this guy, I thought about his looks. Confident. Square jaw. Assertive brown eyes. Love the way the hair ripples across his scalp. I sighed, winked at the man in the mirror, ready to cruise the cologne aisles at Nordstrom, Neiman-Marcus, and Bloomingdale with boosted verve.

It feels good to have finally gotten this off my scalp. At sixty-nine, I have maintained my weight. Give or take twelve pounds. I have reinstated the beard. Shorter turf with a good trimmer. My hair has developed a natural wave. Likely from scalp glands infused with permacidal deposits. And I am back to wearing mountain-man-styled clothing and accessories. From Eddie, Kühl, and Keen. I think it’s permanent.

So, we’re having Dim Sum last Sunday with some friends and a childhood buddy from Dallas who was bragging about her son.
“Not only is he doing well," she said, "he looks just like the Marlboro Man…and the ladies love him.” She pulls out her iPhone, scrolls to a photo, and as she hands it to the person next her to pass around, she adds, “See what I mean?” It’s a picture of her thirty-something son wearing a cowboy hat and full Marlboro attire…with three lovely-looking cowgirls semi-circled around him and drenching him with adoring eyes.
“Yeah, he’s really a good-looking guy,” I responded while slurping in a wormy noodle dripping black bean sauce down my chin and onto the white tablecloth. I thought to myself, Damn, in my best younger days, I didn’t look that rugged or swarthy, let alone corralled by a posse of adorable Dale Evanses.
Pleasantly full, it didn’t hit me until we were driving home when I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror and noticed my sagging bloodhound jowls, crow’s feet (more like pterodactyl feet), and curly nose hairs (what was God thinking with the whole senior nose and ear hairs thing?).
What’s with this pre-occupation guys have with trying to look and act like Madison Avenue and Hollywood’s portrayal of the Manly Man? Here's what I came up with trying to pick my best MAN image:
• Marlboro MAN: Not a good fit for me considering I’ve only smoked five cigarettes in my life (got dizzy, sweated profusely and coughed a lung out), wearing cowboy boots gave me bunions and blisters, and when I wore a cowboy hat I looked more like cockeyed Jack Elam than Bret Maverick.
• SuperMAN: Bad idea. The thought of me in aquamarine tights and fire-engine-red Speedos is not only a disturbing image for me, but I’m confident women would cringe and run, and other men in tights would immediately change to overalls.
• Candy MAN: Closer. Problem, though. My childhood obsession with candy (I was a sucker for a fresh Butterfinger, Nestle’s Crunch Bar, Baby Ruth or Peanut Butter Log hovering within biting range) led to my Stay Puft Marsmallow MAN image lasting until my sophomore year in college. Hard image to get out of your head, right? Plus, I’m pre-diabetic from the piles of sugary junk I’ve ingested since birth.
• BatMAN: While I love the whole all-black superhero threads thing–PLUS the black mask and uncovered mouth and chiseled jaw look–I have a deep fear of contracting rabies. And then there’s that black Speedos and tights issue, though black does lessen the whole flab thing. But not that much.
• The Muffin MAN: Now, we’re talking. I mean during those pre-college days, all those times I was naked in front of a girl (actually only twice and only one of those times in a fully lit room), I looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
• AnchorMAN: Shame on you for picturing Ron Burgundy strutting around the newsroom.

Man oh man oh man. I’m so exhausted from trying to be a cooler, swashbuckling, leathery-cigarette-smoking-cattle-rustling, super tight tights hero, Idaho Indiana Jones kind of MAN that I need to take a nap (the rest will give me renewed energy and contentment with the man I am). But not before watching an episode of S.H.I.E.L.D., drenching my face with Olay Regenerist Retinol 24 Face Moisturizer, then taking a spoonful of Miralax and a tab of Beano from all the Dim Sum I ate on Sunday.

I was washing my hands in the Mens bathroom at New Orleans’ Acme Oyster House in the French Quarter and looked up to check my hair in the mirror–yes, I’m vain and insecure. I was interrupted by the reflection of two guys turning from their urinals, shaking shrimps, resettling oysters, and zipping up flies in perfect synchronization as if practicing a toilet routine for Cirque du Bidet. They walked past me, sinks, and stumbled through the door back into the throng of fellow shucksters slurping and slurring to the beat of “Caribbean Queen.”

Hygiene note: According to the CDC, I’m one of the 31% of men who wash their hands after peeing. You know, hands that free and aim a putz that’s been smashed up against a fleshy wall of matted hair jailed in a dank Fruit-of-the-Loom prison–we’re talking late July N’awlins, y’all.

Returning attention to my mirrored self, I noticed the tip of my right shirttail had gotten stuck in my jeans front pocket, creating a ripple of lavender cascading over my hip. I jerked it free and tugged the two shirt-tails down into measured alignment. That’s when a shirty question hit me right between the buttons:
What happened to the days when men tucked in their shirttails?

I was born in 1951 when PC protocol called for tails tucked, PF Flyers and Buster Brown’s laced, hair Vitalissed, parted and neatly combed, English Leather–if you were cool enough. I fell in line with the rules up until age seven when I began an eating marathon that would run uninterrupted until freshman year of college. This feeding stage led to ever increasing rolls of marshmallowy flab. Not even a daily exercise regimen of sprints to the kitchen for more Cheetos and Dr. Pepper, and then back to the den to watch my favorite TV shows helped.

As a result of ballooning preteen years, I defied 60s shirttail conventions as well as tee shirt tucking rules–a effect resembling a pork sausage with a casing meat bulge. How could I have possibly known that my andouille coverup foreshadowed a trend-setting style revolution some fifty pounds less and fifty years later? These days, the tails-out look rules–even when wearing a jacket. There’s even a shirt company offering out tails only named Untucked. Go figure.

Here’s the tuckaway from my moment in a Mens bathroom in New Orleans: We’re all consumed by our reflected image–current Marie Claire or GQ style, perfect Gordon Ramsey menu for your party, right car key chain dropped dangling from your front pant pocket, posting twenty-year-old photos of svelte you by the pool on Tinder versus present-day snapshots with Fat Tire belly, cellulite and curling ear hairs.

I am fifty-plus pounds slimmer than I was in college.
I still check my image in every reflective surface to determine if I’m still the fat guy who never felt as if he fit in.

When will we cotton up to the fact that what you see is what you get? Believe it or not, there’s someone out there looking for exactly you.

Reflect on that.