TikTok has opened the world’s eyes to many cutting-edge trends, like bug-truthing in the fruit world and the controversial study of celebrity face archaeology. Another beauty trend has emerged on the platform, and unlike lip-gluing, it’s a lighthearted one you can wholeheartedly fling yourself into if you’d like: simply watching guys get “boy perms.”
Similar to Bangs for Men™, “boy perms” are pretty much what they sound like. As Allure reports, a bunch of younger dudes with straighter hair are booking appointments for perms and bringing viewers along for the ride.Despite it being the 2020s, the hashtag #perm has 334.8 million views on the app. Even more surprising, a good chunk of those videos are created by guys documenting their appointments to get semipermanent curls — not in the fluffy, back-combed ’80s way but in the K-Pop idol–meets–Chalamet kind of way.
Going in, you always know how the story will end (with a perm), and yet each upload is a delight, packed with all the satisfaction of a before-and-after makeover montage set to its own personalized soundtrack. Just sit back, relax, and watch as bowl cut upon bowl cut gets rolled into rods before eventually emerging as a pile of the kind-of-wet-looking ringlets characteristic of the era’s popular heartthrob hair. Welcome to the world, curl class of 2020 — we can’t wait to see what you do and how you air-dry over time.
Photo by TikTok Donovanora7 screengrab