PERM FEVER

Inspired by K-pop and Tik Tok stars, floppy-haired teen boys are flocking to the salon for an old-school perm

- SARAH LAING

Dillon Latham got a perm when he was 15 because he lost a bet.

"I posted a Tik Tok and said, 'If this gets 500,000 likes, I'll get a perm.' Just completely randomly," said Latham, now 19 and a college student with a TikTok following of over 1.5 million. "I had completely straight hair."

The video blew up, and Latham found himself sitting in the chair at a local salon as a stylist who had "done a lot of old ladies" put rollers in and applied perm lotion.

"I was nervous it would ruin my hair but it ended up turning out so much better than I thought," said Latham. "The first thing I thought was, 'Finally, I don't have the Justin Bieber hair.'"

That was a temporary perm that washed out after a day, which earned him the ire of his followers. "Everyone got mad when I did that, so a week later I actually did go and do it." The reaction was "really good," but he didn't fall for the style until the perm grew out, and he was reminded how straight his natural texture was.

"When I got it the second time, that's when it really became the Dillon Latham Perm," he said. That's the TikTok trend he inspired that saw a multitude of floppy-haired teenagers take the perm plunge. "At this point, anytime somebody comes up to me, a lot of times they have the perm."

At first, getting a perm as a teenage boy in Virginia had its challenges. "When I first got it, a lot of people in my school were dissing it," said Latham. "It definitely sucked a little bit, but I got over it."