Telegraph.com columnist Judith Woods reveals extreme anti-curl bias March 2004
This is just a taste of the column:
‘The actress Kate Beckinsale couldn’t have caused a greater frisson of horror if she had appeared at an awards ceremony in Los Angeles this week wearing Dynasty-style shoulder pads and dangly earrings. For once, it wasn’t a daring decolletage that helped her to hog the limelight, but something much more seditious: her hair.
The Pearl Harbor star, you see, has gone curly. Not just half-an-hour-with-heated-tongs kinky, or can’t-be-bothered-blow-drying wavy; no, she has a magnificent mane of fully fledged Crystal Tipps curls. Worse, tongues are wagging that she might even have had a perm.
In fashion, where flat is chic and everyone uses hair straighteners, going curly is tantamount to anarchy. From Avril Lavigne to Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie to Jennifer Lopez, poker-straight has long been considered the height of glamour.
Being born with curls is considered a relatively harmless affliction, but actually going to a stylist and asking for a perm is one step from shaving one’s hair off and joining the Hari Krishnas.’
