Comments on: Hair Stories Redux

By: Lucy

Lucy — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:37:36 +0000

Okay, so I’m confused. I was about to tell you about the plights of my non-curly, bendy, “Oh please just make up your mind” hair, when I glanced in the mirror and saw curls. Now I’m not talking corkscrew ringlets, but still.
Story of my hair. It can’t make up it’s mind most of the time, whether to be bendy and frizzy and generally obnoxious, or curly.
When I was little, I had mostly straight, slightly wavy hair that was forever entrapped in a high ponytail. The baby hair around my hairline did not appreciate my efforts to make myself presentable, and staged a revolt in the form of a crown of frizz. Looking at me from the front, without a view of the ponytail in the back, you would swear I had an afro.
Then I got a (really bad) haircut around third grade that made my hair “poofy”, and worse than it was before. I cut it again at the end of fifth grade/beginning of sixth (donated to Locks for Love), to a very short bob that was not the most flattering thing on my poofy-haired self, althouh somehow managed to look pretty good in my 6th grade school picture.
Then it slowly grew back to the horrendous poofy length. One day my friend invited me and another friend over. She had a haircut appointment that day, but REALLY didn’t want a haircut, for some reason. Her exasperated mother protested that it was already paid for, but she still refused. Finally, her mother asked if either me or our other friend wanted a haircut. I said gave a tentative yes, on the grounds of “Free hair cut, sure, why not?”
So I was thrown into a chair, where my hair was washed and I was told that I was using the wrong shampoo/conditioner. After the woman dried it, she sat me in a chair, and I told her to do whatever she wanted.
She informed me that my top layer was too heavy, and it was making my hair weighed down and frizzy. Okay.
So she straightened it (they always do, it just bothers them, it’s weirdness making it nearly impossible to cut) and cut it into layers, a style we’d previously thought was unattainable to me, due to the nature of my hair.
Turns our it wasn’t. After I showered the first time and the straightness went away, I was pleasantly surprised to see it curly. It was a weird sort of curly, and I wasn’t quite sure if it should be classified that way, but it was good enough for me.
Then of course, it started growing out, hence my sometimes this/sometimes that current hair, which I plan to have cut soon by the stylist who actually did it, not my old one, because apparently (according to my Mom, and I guess me) it comes out better that way.
Before this, I would spend time every morning curling the fronts of my hair. As a kid, I went through that phase of wanting pin straight, white-blonde hair (I’m a brunette) but I got over it. Currently, I’m wish for loose red curls.
I have a friend who has the most BEAUTIFUL curly blonde hair. It’s not tight little corkscrews, it’s thick, volumous spirals that make me salivate with envy.
She, of course, hates them. She recently started straightening it, and brushing it out (something I can’t do, for fear of looking like Hermione Granger in the 1st HP movie). It looks (sorry) BAD this way. It’s frizzy, and greasy, and just tired looking. Also, she showers less so she won’t have to straighten it as much, and that’s just…yeah.
So anyway, sorry this got so glaringly long (due to my lack of a life, and can also say that it might’ve been much longer if I hadn’t restrained myself).
PS- My hair’s bendy again.

By: Brynne

Brynne — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:32:53 +0000

Indeed. It makes us awesome. (Or . . . well-traveled, anyway.)

By: Justine

Justine — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:42:01 +0000

Brynne: Another child of anthropologists! We should form a club.

By: Brynne

Brynne — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:36:04 +0000

My mum is an anthropologist, and I spent much of my very early childhood (ages 2-3) living in Belize while she did research (on ethnic identity and the conundrum of racial mixing when part of school curriculum involved teaching children about their heritage – what do you do with a kid who’s 1/4 East Indian, 1/4 Mayan, and 1/2 Creole? You assign her an random ethnic group! Tell her she’s Garifuna! Oh, that solves problems! Anyway, it was interesting) and I had this mop of ringlets about the same diameter as your finger. All the girls of African descent used to come and play with my hair because, although it was curly, it was *different*. But I think that experience – living there, with girls who had no access to straighteners, who had to learn to live with little bubbly curls – was what, more than anything, taught me to love curly hair and to love my own.

By: mpe

mpe — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 10:39:33 +0000

Frizz annoys me because it flies forward and sticks in my face. A quick stroke of moisturiser settles it, though.

(I have long brown Nordic hair with a slight natural wave, about as trouble-free as you can get.)

By: Tara D

Tara D — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:33:30 +0000

I have an afro and I don’t consider my hair frizzy. I consider it nappy. So I always say I’m happy to be nappy! Some people kind of see this as negative, which is sad, and some people see my hair as a social statement. Truthfully, the only statement I’m making is that I cannot use a curling iron or flatiron correctly and I’m too lazy to straighten my hair all the time and spend ours at the beauty shop getting it done.

I had straight hair, courtesy of a relaxer, from the ages of nine to nineteen. It had its conveniences, but it did a lot of damage to my hair and scalp. Also, since I couldn’t do hair and refused to learn how, I always had to depend on someone doing it for me. Now, I have way more independence and it only costs me about $15 to get it cut!

By: Kiera

Kiera — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 03:33:31 +0000

I have very thick wavy brown hair. A few weeks ago a girl from Liberia in my class was braiding my hair in because she was bored. When she stopped, my hair didn’t fall out. She remarked that I have “black people hair” even though I look “like an albino.” It amazes me how often hairdressers and random people ask me if I have black ancestors because of my hair. As far as I know, I do not. I used to hate my hair and would straighten it at least once every two days. Even though I wish it would be a little more tame sometimes, I’ve come to love my hair. As my self esteem has gotten better over the past two years, I’ve started leaving my hair go natural. People compliment me more on my wavy hair than they ever did on my product filled and heat destroyed hair.

By: Ariel Cooke

Ariel Cooke — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 03:01:04 +0000

Didn’t get to post my opinions about having curly hair in the last one so I will stick in my two cents here. My hair is dark brown, fine and not especially plentiful but thanks to my lovely curls, you would never know. I keep it shortish to keep it as curly as possible. I am always amazed when I go to a hairdresser who asks me if I want it cut so I can blow it straight when they must all be able to see that I would look like a Chihuahua (but chubbier) if I had straight hair. These are the same people who are always surprised that I don’t want to be redder or blonder, as if there is something wrong with having true brunette hair. Being white, I don’t my hair travails to heart the way my black friends do, but the whole thing is really mildly offensive, being steered gently but inexorably toward this whitebread ideal of beauty.

By: Rebekah

Rebekah — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:46:45 +0000

I have truly remarkable frizz. Even on cold, wet days (free from humidity), and when my hair itself is cold and wet, there is frizz. I used to be slightly distressed by it – after all, it persisted even when it was supposed to be impossible for hair to frizz – but not I am simply apathetic. And besides, when light is shining behind it, it looks like I have a halo (due to the natural dirty blondeness of my hair).