In late September, 11-year-old Ethan spent three hours and around $300 in Seo-nu Park’s salon in the Mission getting his hair permed. As his dark locks were doused with chemicals and wrapped around small rods to “set” the curl, Ethan passed the time watching basketball highlights on his iPad. The sixth grader from Miller Creek Middle School in Marin was pleased with the result: soft waves that flopped appealingly around his face. “It’s easier to style,” he said.

Ethan, who is Chinese American, estimates that seven other kids in his grade are rocking perms. “They’re all Asian,” he said. “White kids have naturally wavy hair.”

Ethan’s parents were — obviously — supportive. “I understand,” said his father, Ed, 44, who declined to share the family’s last name. “I’m OK with him experimenting.” In fact, Ed partakes in perms too. He got his first during a work trip to China in 2020 and was impressed by how much more manageable it made his hair. He now gets one every time he makes the trip. 

Teenage boys all over the Bay Area are sporting what stylists call the “alpaca” or “llama” look. The inspiration comes largely from K-pop and J-pop, whose biggest stars have been rocking loose, curly hair for a few years. One style is known as “broccoli hair,” wherein curls are piled up on top of the head, with the sides shaved clean. What frosted tips were to the early aughts, curls are to the 2020s. And to achieve this look, many teen boys are embracing the perm.

This is especially true of kids of Asian descent, whose hair tends to grow out straight from the shaft, unlike white or Black hair, which grows at angles or in spirals. This can lead to what some kids described to The Standard as a “sticky-outty” effect (not the official term), which can be tamed with heavy-duty hair products. 

Granted, permanent waves have been a go-to for many Asian men — mainly in South Korea, China, and Japan — since the 1980s, long before the TikTok algorithm ruled teen life. But social media and the spread of Korean and Japanese pop culture have pushed the trend way beyond the borders of East Asia. With about 37% of San Francisco County identifying as Asian-American in 2023, there is now a local wave of teens and tweens giving the look their own twist. 

“I know so many kids with perms,” said Carson Goldstein, a 15-year-old sophomore at Urban School of San Francisco in the Haight. He’s half Chinese, half French, with straight, wiry hair, and he wanted to embrace the wavy look.

A friend offered to give him a DIY perm, but his mother’s reaction was a hard no.  What if the chemicals messed up his skin or hair, and what if his friend did a poor job?

“I was surprised he wanted a perm,” said Ida Goldstein, Carson’s mother. She knew her son spent about half an hour styling his hair every day but hadn’t realized how much it frustrated him until he asked for a perm. She gave it more thought and decided to give in, but she wanted to do it herself. She always cut her kids’ hair, so how hard could a perm be? 

A deep YouTube dive later, and Ida was ready to give it a go. “The tricky part was rolling the rods to set the curl pattern,” she said. Carson requested it “a little loose, a little messy,” she said. The perm solution “burned a little,” he said, but it was worth it. “It’s much easier now,” he said of his new tousled locks.

Seo-nu Park, the hairdresser who did Ethan’s hair, said she perms around five teenage boys a week. “I get a lot of schoolkids from Berkeley and the East Bay,” she said. “They’re very particular about looking cool.”

Park, who is Korean, mostly perms Asian hair, she said, though she has some Latino clients. “If [the kids] come with their parents, the parents pay. Otherwise, they have part-time jobs and pay for it themselves,” she noted. 

Park’s prices start at $50 for a bang perm and go to $300 for a root volume perm. The teenagers are very particular. “They want a certain look,” she said. “They all copy their K-pop idols, who have perms.”

At Monterey Salon in Balboa Park, where the perms are a little pricier, most purchasers are adults. “A hundred and thirty dollars is expensive for teens, and most can’t afford it,” said hairstylist and owner Joshua So. He estimates he does perms on 12 to 15 teen boys a year.

At Lowell High School, whose student body is 47% Asian-American, perms are increasing in popularity. “Around 40 kids in my year have perms,” said 14-year-old Oliver Figueroa-Mast, who was rocking natural curls when The Standard spoke to him at Stonestown Galleria. “It’s all the Asian kids.”

Some of those kids go to 20th Salon and Barber in Potrero Hill. Kids from Lowell and George Washington High School in the Richmond are common, according to owner Franz Jeremy Burge’t. His teen boy clients are mostly Asian and usually come in with their parents, he said, which is a good thing, as he charges $200 and doesn’t want to “take their whole allowance.”

Cody Ma, a 15-year-old sophomore at Lowell High School, found Burge’t on TikTok, via the hashtag #boyperm, and got his first perm in September. “I kinda wanted one since freshman year,” Ma said. A couple of his friends had perms, and he liked their look. His parents were cool with it, and even his grandparents were supportive and decided to cover the cost. 

Ma showed Burge’t photos he’d screenshotted from TikTok: not K-pop singers or actors, he said, just everyday influencers with rizz. He explained that he wanted loose, floppy curls. The only downside was that post-perm, he couldn’t shower for a few days, which was annoying. “I felt really dirty,” he said. But he’ll get another when it grows out. 

While Asian-American teens appear to be in the majority of the boys getting perms, straight-haired white kids are also getting in on the trend, said Dzovag Minassian, mom of 16-year-old Shant, a junior at Balboa High School and friend of perm-having Carson. “When he asked me for a perm, I laughed out loud,” Minassian said. 

But then he asked again, and she reconsidered: “Is this the hill I want to die on? I’ll save that fight for tattoos.”

Minassian finally relented when Carson’s mom offered to give Shant a perm. He came home with tight curls and a huge smile. “It was kinda awesome how much he loved it,” his mother said.

Shant was very careful about maintenance, wearing a bonnet to sleep and washing with specific sulfate-free products. Four months later, he had a second perm to address his regrowth. “His generation are very open about their appearance,” Minassian said. “There’s a whole new universe to being a boy.”