My hair is super thick and naturally wavy and crazy. Every time I go to a new stylist, I prepare myself to listen to her comment over and over again for 45 minutes, "Wow, you have a lot of hair!" As if I didn't already know!! As kids, both my sister and I had this crimpy, frizzy layer of hair underneath the top layer. It made our already thick hair stick out even more and made it difficult to style and control.
I give credit to my mom, because I think she did her best to try to keep our hair under control. It was just too wild!
I've been looking at old pictures and trying to figure out when the crazy hair started. Here I am at Audrey's age. When compared with Audrey's fine straight hair, I definitely had more volume and body as a three year old! (Thank goodness it appears that Audrey did NOT inherit my hair!)
One of the first tactics for taming my crazy hair was to create layers. This was a good idea (and one that I constantly use now!), but this was back in the 80s. So the layers were taken a bit to the extreme, resulting in this lovely mullet-like hairstyle.
I don't think anyone was a fan of the layers, so the next option was to cut it short. Now, the wind is not helping me out in this picture, but just check out that hair! Having it short and all the same layer only made the thick hair look even thicker!
After that, I think we grew my hair out. The longer it got, the more frizzy it got underneath. This picture illustrates well the crazy, crimpy, frizzy hair.
To keep all of our hair under control, my mom often put our hair in ponytails. Which helped I think, but we still had those extremely heavy bangs that started in the middle of our head!! (that is my sister on the left and me on the right)
When I was in 4th grade, we (really, my mom and her hairstylist) decided to perm my hair. That did seem to help with the crazy crimpiness, but not so much with the thickness. I was such a tiny little girl with such a huge head of hair.
I stuck with that permed hair all the way through high school. How I cringe when I look at my high school hair! What was I thinking?! I was old enough to know better at this point. I usually wore it parted down the middle and tucked behind my ears. It was all one layer, and it was permed. Oh, it's painful!
Finally, before my senior year of high school, we started to get my hair under control! I got it cut shorter and quit perming it. I still don't think I had invested in a straight iron at this point, but it was a huge improvement over the long, permed hair.
I liked having short hair, as it made my hair much more manageable. But my first year of college, my hair kept getting shorter and shorter. I was not a big fan of this super short hair period, but I'm not finding any pictures of that time on my computer.
Later in college, I finally found a stylist who seemed to know how to handle my thick hair, and she introduced me to two amazing marvels of modern hairstyle: thinning sheers and texturizing razors. Where had these things been all of my life? Were they new inventions or did my former hairstylists just not know about them? Seriously, with these tools, she was able to remove so much bulk from my hair! Add in the use of a good quality straightening iron at home, and I started to feel like I had hair like a normal person!
Due to all the years of big, poofy, curly hair, for a long time I preferred to keep my hair straight and sleek and smooth. I wore it at various lengths, but I always wanted it straight...no wave, no curl. That look was possible to achieve, but it required me to completely blow dry and straighten every piece of hair and keep it extremely well cut. The above picture was taken right after I left the salon. I really don't like to spend a lot of time on my hair, so to achieve this look every day was extremely unlikely. Most days my hair just ended up in a ponytail when it was this length.Recently, my stylist has been helping me to embrace my natural waves. I haven't touched my straightener in about four months. And I think that's a good thing. It is SO much easier to fix my hair this way and usually takes less than 5 minutes. I just blow dry it a little, curl a few pieces and then I'm ready to go! Today at the salon, she cut it a bit shorter and added some sideswept bangs. I'm liking it a lot...so much better than the perms of my childhood!
I'm no expert on hair or style, I rarely wear makeup and I don't like to spend a lot of time making myself look beautiful (though maybe I should, as I'm looking at the makeup-less me in this picture...eek!). There have been several years in my adult life when I only got a haircut once a year.But the past few years, I have made an effort to, at the very least, get my hair cut every two months. It is nice to feel pretty and stylish, even just for one day! I have also started buying some salon products to use at home on my hair, even though it is a bit painful for the cheapskate inside me. My favorite product right now for creating soft waves and curls is Paul Mitchell Awapuhi Texturizing Sea Spray. It really works well on my hair, and it smells good too!
1 comments:
I feel like I could have been the one to write this, outside of the natural curls. I have crazy thick hair that my stylists always comment on ("It's uncommon to find this much hair without a single bend in it" and "Do you get headaches with how heavy this is", etc.) I always want to get a cute cut, but hate spending any time on my hair and it always ends up in a ponytail. Hopefully I can eventually find a style that suits me. Yours looks great.
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