“PERMS” FOR BABIES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21323, 18 April 1939, Page 10

“PERMS” FOR BABIES

OBSESSION OF “NEWLY RICH” MOTHERS (By Air Mail) Special to “ The Timaru Herald.” LONDON, March 25. London hairdressers smiled this week when they read the remarks of a Sunderland judge on the permanently waving of children’s hair. The judge had said: “A girl of 12 who wants to have her hair permanently waved ought to be spanked. What precocious vanity! If a child of that age wants her hair permed and gets it burned, I would say it serves her jolly well right.” The London hairdressers smiled because among their most profitable clients are little girls aged 31 to 7. This is what a famous coiffeur said: “Hundreds of baby girls come here every week. They have their hair cut while seated on rocking horses in the children's department, and afterwards they are taken to the women’s section for a perm. “Mothers seem to be obsessed with the idea that girls must have curls. There are some, too, who have their daughter’s hair done to match their own.

“The charge for these perms is anything from 3/6 in cheap establishments to £3/3/- depending, of course, on the number of curls put in. “Suburban ‘newly-rich’ mothers are foremost in all this—we never get children from the real old English families.”