Yesterday morning, Mia and I got a straight perms together, and my feelings toward my new hair went like this:

WOW!!! It's so STRAIGHT!!!
I look fabulous!
I look like a real, live Korean girl!
Hey. I look like someone I know... my work colleague Soo-yun has this exact same hair.
Huh. So does my teacher from 3rd level.
My face looks big. And draggy.
Wow, check out those dark circles under my eyes.
Hm. Maybe I don't like this as much as I thought. It's weird. My unruly waves -- gone! Wah!
[next morning]
Well, it's not SO bad. And it's still amazing.
Ah, just put some lipstick on and go with it.

The straight perm (sold here as "Magic Perm") originated in Japan and is wildly popular here. Someone told me that Jennifer Aniston's stick straight hair (on some season of Friends) was a product of a straight perm, which is quite costly in the States, apparently a couple hundred dollars. Here, in Edae (near Ewha Womans College), I was the recipient of 2.5 hours worth of work by at least 3 people for 60,000 won (USD $50.46). As a result, my hair looks like I spent an hour this morning blowdrying it, it has a glossy sheen, and it will keep looking like this for months. I can just wash my hair, leave the house, and it will dry into this amazingly perfect blow-dried shape, every strand in place.

I know, it's kind of scary.

My transformation into a Korean girl has started! AAAAAGGHHH! Now I will start wearing makeup, including glossy lipstick; wear high heeled slippers with pants with cuffs you can tie up around your shins; carry a small dog around; and adopt a surly look and whiny way of addressing guy friends.

Just kidding. But since I have this shiny hair that I have previously only associated with girls who actually did blow dry their hair in the morning, I kinda feel like I need to match it. So I've been wearing my contacts and putting on lipstick and considering losing weight. (The weight is not an indicator that I've suddenly lost my head; I've actually gained a few pounds in the last month and am feeling bloaty. Probably all the beer I've been downing lately. Plus, someone called me chubby last weekend. But to be totally honest, if you're a girl and have any body issues at all, Korea would be a hard place to live; ever since I escaped adolescence, I've never been unhappy with my appearance, but even I sometimes feel like a bedraggled duckling next to the tons of made-up, slender, swishy swan girls everywhere.)

I don't think it's all that bad to want to live up to my new hair; I've often looked at the Girls Who Blowdry Their Hair and wished I could look that pulled together. It's nice to feel pretty, as trite as that may sound. Also, I never cared much about my office appearance, but I have the feeling that it might be worth a little effort to look professional, and not quite so much like a college intern.

Mia didn't quite agree. She's also feeling ambivalent about her new hair, which is much longer than mine and is also stick straight, glossy, etc. She's athletic and is usually casually dressed, so last night, when I told her she should work the Just Stepped Out of a Salon look, she jokingly tossed her hair around and looked like a sports clothing model. Her natural hair is unruly and wavy, like mine, and she ranted last night, "My crazy unsmoothed, unglossy hair was ME! It showed who I was! Not like this hair! I feel like I look like everyone else now."

I think I might have felt like this when I was younger. But now that I have accepted the truth in the magazines and the billboards and the movies and the TV shows, I think it's perfectly fine to subject my hair to chemicals, spend an hour a day putting on "my face," shop ceaselessly for the latest fashions, pretend to be from Venus, and stay in the box. If it isn't me, it will be. Mwah hah hah!

Yeah yeah yeah. Bad joke, I know.