Perm didn't work?

Hi guys. I'm not sure if this is the right place for this topic. But I really hope someone here can help me in some way, because I've about had it up to here with my hair.

Just a bit of background - I've always had fine, straight hair. And I mean poker straight. It lays flat on my head no matter what I do with it. Volume shampoos, volume hairsprays, volume mousse - nothing works. And it's terrible at holding anything. Curls fall within a couple of hours of getting them done. It slips out of hair claws constantly. I put layers in it a couple of years ago and got a really 1980s hairstyle which involved teasing, a ton of hairspray, and bleach. And I loved it. But it was way too much work, so I let it grow out. Now it's about shoulder length, and it has layers, and it's back to being my own colour and flat as a board. I have to spend every morning teasing it if I don't want to walk out of the house looking like someone poured a bucket of water over my head.

My mom continually told me that when she was younger, she had the same hair and got a body perm and loved it. So finally today I decided to go ahead and get one. And after two-plus hours of rollers, chemicals, etc., the stylist took it down and NOTHING. Only the slightest tiny flip to the very ends of my hair. She was very kind and said she didn't know what had happened, and she didn't make me pay for it, but I'm so frustrated. I thought this would work. I thought I could finally have a way to have thicker, more exciting hair without having to spend ages on it every day. And here I am with nothing, again.

I'm to the point where I kind of want to rip all this hair out rather than deal with it every single day. Does anybody have any clue why the perm wouldn't work? Has anyone ever seen something like this before? I thought perms were supposed to work on everyone? I'm so used to absolutely nothing working on my hair that I wasn't even really surprised when she took it down and there was no curls. Is it my hair? Did she do something wrong? Any advice whatsoever would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!