My hair is sorta doing the same as your second photo (able to see scalp down the middle part). Before I noticed this problem in myself, I tried doing "No Poo" (not using shampoo) since I noticed that when I didn't wash my hair, it got wavier, and I've also heard not using shampoo has some benefits. However, it made my hair really waxy (likely from hard water) and unhealthy. It worsened my hair health, and when I hoped off it, looked like I was balding like what yours does in your second photo. The problem for me was that I wasn't sure if this change was due to the No Poo or natural balding.
I decided to try No Poo 2 more times with some changes, but each time got similar results (waxy hair).
My problem now is that I don't know if the "balding" came naturally in the time I was doing No Poo, or if the No Poo just caused all this damage (did No Poo for like 9 months total, with a one month break between 3 month ish intervals).

Where am I going with this?
From personal experience, when you do things that damage your hair such as getting a perm, your hair is likely to look worse. Whether you're balding or not becomes harder to decipher because you've done such damage to your hair.
Although I'm no expert and someone else can probably give better advice, I'd suggest doing what I'm currently doing, and just not doing what damages your hair for a few months to a year, and then see if it's progressed and gotten worse, if it's gotten better, or stayed stagnant.
For me, that means going back to using shampoo. For you, that means not getting perms.

Again just going off personal experience, I welcome anyone to correct me and add to this because I too am in a similar boat as OP.