THERE WAS A TIME in Black American hair history when someone with a cosmetological soul decided the final barrier to racial equality should be toppled—the curly perm. Given the recalcitrant nature of black hair, a simple tight roll set was not going to be sufficient so this enterprising individual, the one with the comsetological soul, developed the Jheri Curl, also known as the Carefree Curl, a sassy and curly wet look for black men and women everywhere, made possible by a complex and probably dangerous combination of chemicals that would force black hair into a loose curl and keep it that way for up to three months at a time provided the recipient of the Jheri Curl adhered to a strict and expensive maintenance regimen. Much like modern pharmacology, the Jheri Curl espoused the capitalistic ideal that profit is never in the cure but rather the medicine. Not only did beauticians make money on the application of the perm itself, they (and the manufacturer, of course) made a killing selling the products required to maintain the hairstyle. This enterprising cosmetological, capitalist soul was a man and his name was Jheri Redding. He was white. His race is neither here nor there but it is an interesting piece of trivia you can now share at a cocktail party or job interview. You’re welcome. I received my first and only Jheri Curl in 1989, some time after the height of its popularity, my sophomore year of high school. I was at boarding school in New Hampshire and needed a hairstyle that would keep my hair looking respectable between visits home for the major holidays. That’s what I told my parents. Really, I wanted my hair to look like Michael Jackson’s in Thriller, so curly and bouncy and luxurious. This was, of course, before the Pepsi video fire a year after that video was released, and the altered skin pigmentation situation that would soon follow, when Jackson was quite foxy. That’s what we called an attractive man back then. Or that’s what I called an attractive man
