Fragging hair. We all have to deal with it, one way or another. I've never been great at it. I blame my older sisters for always wanting to do it for me. Oh, and it's never been like, my top priority, so I have yet to read a book or take a college course about it or anything. However. I have, like everyone else, spent some amount of time on my hair about every day of my life. And I say, if you're going to spend time on something, you might as well feel good about the result.
So when you're pregnant, you have awesome hair, right? It's a hormonal thing - the hair that would normally fall out doesn't while you're pregnant, so you end up with luscious locks. And thank goodness, since you don't exactly look great in any other way. Somebody threw us a bone there! But after the baby's born and you don't have all that wonderful hair-retaining estrogen anymore, it all falls out. At once. It sucks! This has happened to me, well, four times. But this last time, I never recovered. A year and a half later I still have super-thin hair that falls out a lot, as well as loads of little wispies growing in all around my hairline and the nape of my neck. My search for a nutritional/hormonal answer is another story, but in the mean time, I still have to deal with my lame hair!
But now I get it. I now know why some of my sisters always complained about having thin hair - a problem I never had before having babies. Because when you don't have much hair to start with, it won't DO much. And since looking at cool hairdos on Pinterest won't actually make more hair grow out of your head, and videos of "quick and easy" styles don't actually make the styles quick or easy to do, you end up feeling incompetent and ugly, and wondering if there might be some hair-doing gene that you just didn't inherit.
Well, none of this stopped me from trying. I have had some success in the past with copying styles I see... but only the day after I hair-sprayed and flat-iron-curled my hair. You know, it had body. And when my hair was like that, I really could do a quick messy bun or... well, I'll be honest here, that's the only thing I've really been able to pull off. Lay off me, I'm a beginner! So I knew it was possible, but I thought that "texture" and "body" had to come from either curled or dirty hair, or both. Or, from having been born with "hair that just works," which I clearly wasn't. By the way, my hair has been a lot more oily since my last baby too, so the dirty option isn't great for me.*
So, having seen my hair actually do something before, I couldn't give up hope that it could do it again, and maybe, just maybe, without having to take 20+ minutes to curl it first. Besides, after I've painstakingly curled all my hair, ain't no way I'm pulling it into some updo so just the curled ends can hang down. I want credit for every bend! But I just can't get my plain ol' hair to cooperate like it does with day-old curls.
Everything changed the other day when I watched a(nother) video on how to do some 2-minute top knot or something. This one showed a professional stylist doing someone else's hair. It was long. It looked thick. I soon decided the style wouldn't work on me. But I watched anyway as the stylist sprayed the crap out of the hair before doing anything else. Then she teased it. And then she put it in a ponytail and sprayed and teased it some more. By the time she was ready to do the actual style, the woman looked like she'd been struck by lightning. There was just a head with a huge, puffy fuzzball on top. Then she twisted it around or whatever and - tada! - of course it looked great. The end. But something had clicked for me. I finally understood the key to all my problems. When hair is sprayed and sticky and teased and messed up, it's BIGGER. And when hair is bigger, either from having been curled and slept on, OR sprayed and teased 10 seconds ago, it cooperates.
This means that I have options! I have tried this on my own sad, thin, depleted hair, even when it's squeaky-clean, and it works! It stays where I put it! It flows up and out instead of falling flat! It gives me something to actually work with! Incredible! I may be the last person on earth to learn this universal truth, but hairspray is magic, folks. And if you can tease your hair too, even better. And while my hair is still not my top priority (by a long shot), it's something I have to live with, and knowing that there IS a way for even me to do my hair and like it, makes me feel like a real live grown-up.
Is my use of the phrase "grown-up" here a little telling of how far I still have to go?
*About six months ago, I actually had a human (not a video) show me how to use dry shampoo and I've got to say, it's great. It really does help a lot. So maybe the dirty hair thing is kind of doable after all. But I don't think dirty necessarily equals workable.
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