thanks it ended up being ~$140 after tip. expensive, but it was an xmas & birthday gift from my good friend (my birthday is in december) and apparently magic straight perm cost even more? (~$200) i normally don't spend much on my hair so i dunno if that's an acceptable price or not :P

it's supposed to last 3-6 months, but doesn't seem to work as well on thin hair. my friend got it the same day i did, and hers is a lot looser than mine now. she has very thin hair. :/ i on the other hand have very thick hair with lots of volume (EVERY hair dresser keeps telling me this whenever i get my hair cut) so it worked better.

actually, i just remembered something. they told me because my hair was thick, i had to get a "setting" perm, which is digital perm meant for people with my type of hair. the end result should be the same though.

edit: i found picture of the process! it was bizarre o_o



they hooked me up to the same medusa like machine, except the one i had was MUCH bigger. i think the one above is regular digital perm