Body Waves and Too Much Curl

Hair with too much curl
Photo: PushAnn/Shutterstock
Q: I have medium length hair. I wanted to just have some waves, and I went to get a body wave. She used the larger rollers, but I still got more wave than I wanted, and the underneath side is really permed a lot. What can I do to relax the underneath more and the top less without damaging my hair more?
 
A: An immediate remedy is to either roll the hair underneath using larger rollers to reshape the curl or use a large-barrel curling iron for the same purpose. Both of these methods offer a means of physically changing the amount of curl in the hair until the next time the hair is shampooed (or wet).
 
Some women find that they get more "curl" than they expect from body waves even when the stylist (or whomever) uses the largest rollers available. It is possible that they don't realize what the effect will be on the length of hair they have, or they may have porous hair that reacts more readily or more quickly to the perming solution.
 
In your case, where different areas of the hair seem to have responded differently, it is possible that the lower sections of the hair were wrapped more tightly than the upper sections or that the upper sections were more resistant to the perming solution.
 
What you may want to do is have the body wave redone using regular plastic, "wet set" rollers. Ask your stylist to use a roller large enough that the length of the hair wraps around it no more than twice. She will need to secure the rollers using plastic clips instead of metal to prevent any potential reaction with the perming solutions.
 
Some salons already offer this technique as a "specialty wave" as the method is ideal for women with very long hair who just want to add a little wave and volume. It does tend to be a little more expensive than standard perms or body waves, because extra care must be used to keep the hair secured during the perming process.
 
As long as your hair wasn't damaged too severely from the initial perming process, you should be fine to have a corrective process performed. I would suggest that you give your hair a deep-conditioning treatment a day or two before getting the corrective wave, just to make sure your hair is in the best possible condition before exposing it to more chemicals.
 
As always, if you are unhappy with the service or results of a service that you received from a salon or stylist, it is best to explain your dissatisfaction to the stylist. A stylist will often be very willing to do most anything to keep a client happy, and at the very least deserves the chance to identify anything he or she may have done that contributed to your unhappiness.
 
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See also:
 
Perms
 
Wet set tools
 
How much does hair shrink up when you get a perm?