For as long as I can remember, my hair has been my sworn mortal enemy. You see, I don’t have straight hair. I don’t have curly hair, either. I have a pretty unfortunate hybrid that bears a strong resemblance to Roseanne Roseannadanna, Gilda Radnor’s popular Saturday Night Live character—and that is on a good day. So this is why I consider one day back in the late ’90s to be one of the most monumental of my life, third only to the birth of my two girls and to my wedding. On this day, I learned about Japanese straightening.

It all happened while I was poring through a beauty magazine. new treatment permanently turns frizzy hair into a glossy mane! the headline read. I read on to learn that this treatment was new to the US and that only four salons on the East Coast offered it, one being the esteemed Paul Labrecque Salon in New York. Needless to say, I hopped on the first Amtrak train thereafter. Four hours and $500 later, I emerged with long, straight, silky-smooth locks the likes of which I only dared dream about. Eleven years later, I have never looked back.

Since that fateful day, I have tested out various versions of hair straightening: Japanese, keratin, Brazilian, you name it. Some have worked, while others didn’t fare as well. Guiding me on my never-ending journey has been Salon Vanity’s (1701 Walnut St., 3rd Fl., 215-925-2211; vanityphilly.com) Edmondo Blando. For the past decade, he has been my follicular Sherpa, teaching me about my hair and taking me to the limits of what it can do.

Those limits are becoming more, well, limited since the FDA began investigating the Brazilian blowout this past September. The hair-straightening treatment has been under fire for employing potentially harmful levels of formaldehyde, a chemical that puts clients and stylists at risk for a variety of health problems (namely, cancer) and endangers the environment by releasing toxins into the atmosphere upon heating.

Rumors about the Brazilian Blowout had been swirling in salon circles for some time, so when the FDA fallout made headlines (note that the product has not been outlawed, it is just under investigation), most salon owners were already on to the next thing. And it turns out the next thing is really an old thing. Allow me to reintroduce you to the keratin treatment. “Keratin treatments were the original craze, well before the Brazilian. Now there are many keratin treatments to choose from,” says Heather O’Malley, who is head of the retexturing department at Salon Vanity and does Japanese and keratin treatments each week. “It doesn’t have chemicals, so it’s just sealed into hair with a flat iron,” she adds. “Think of your hair like a street with pot holes: The good stuff goes where it’s needed and the rest dissipates through heat.” The benefits of that good stuff” are threefold: Keratin treatments cut blow-dry time, eliminate frizz, and generally make hair more shiny and manageable. The downside of keratin, even as recently as a few years ago, was not being able to wash your hair for up to four days after leaving the salon, the process itself a multistep one that consisted of a thorough shampoo, product application, a blow dry, and flat ironing.