Hair Woes 5
I am not obsessed with my hair. I swear. But as anyone who knows me will testify, I do have a very strong, very fluctuating love/hate relationship with it.
My hair is kind of like a checklist of things that could be considered difficult about hair. It’s thick, curly, frizzy, and has a mind of its own. I have no idea where exactly I inherited this hair from. On both sides of our family I have cousins with that perfectly straight Indian girl hair. Even my brother has straight hair. It was my mother and I who wound up being the only ones in the family tree with curly hair.
When I got a bit older I was desperate for straight hair. I remember watching one of those blonde girls in gym class as she ran across the field, the sides of her hair sort of folding into the middle with the wind, and thinking that’s just not fair! I think it’s one of those things, where growing up and seeing everyone look a certain way you start to feel like your look is somehow wrong.
Between my mom and I we must’ve tried everything graduating up the scale from blowdrying our hair straight (you can get some real arm muscles blowdrying long curly hair straight) to straightening irons that would take hours and trust me, we blown out our fair shair of both. Of course any girl who knows anything about hair styling tools can immediately guess that we were using the cheaper blowdryers and straightening irons, but really at the rate they crapped out? Not to mention that everyone else I knew who used them would laugh at the idea of paying anymore than $20, because “It works perfectly fine for me”. Now the first thing I take notice is what type of hair the person giving the advice has 
So I did figure out how to style my hair eventually, and along with that came a realization. I do NOT want straight hair. Once we all grew a little older, what did the little girls with the perfectly straight hair start doing? CURLING their hair for special occasions. This blew my mind. That the same girls who I had spent years envying would spend hours curling their hair and then even fewer hours watching and complaining as their hair slowly deflated.
In the car this summer I had to smile because we were discussing wash ‘n’ wear hair (which I do not own), and Kit was bragging about how no matter how she does her hair, whether loose or thrown loosely up, it looks great. Our boss was in the car with us and kind of laughed saying “That’s just because you’ve grown up in an age when straight hair was in. You were born at the end of the 80s and just missed being out of style.” Now Kit knows I love her, but hate her hair so I don’t feel bad in saying that. But I think really at the end of the day it’s true.
My hair isn’t wash and wear, but to me it’s like having a closet full of clothes, or a drawer full of accessories. I’ve discovered that between my hair and I, doing different things works well. It can be flat ironed into submission relatively easy, and it has no problem whatsoever holding those elusive curls.
So it appears we’ve called a truce. We have our off days (when nothing works), our lazy days (those happen a lot), but for the most part I’ve decided having choice and changing things up is worth the hassle.
We live and learn right?
heheh, how I do relate to those days where you just don’t do anything. My hair works for me. . .but that’s because I’ve learned to not ask anything of it and just be proud when it turns out nice. But now that I’m in an all-girls rez, I tend to be trying new things as well as partying a lot more. But the truth is knowing that at the end of the day I’m not trying to impress anyone with my hairstyle, and that it’s just one aspect of who we are.
It’s true, doing your hair for yourself is the only thing worthwhile. Other people don’t appreciate it as much.
But I do like doing my hair, so in that way I like it a lot. I’m through complaining (as long as we try to stay on the same page, my hair and I
)
you could say you have a ‘Love/Hair’ relationship
I used to have straight hair then it just became… curly, frizzy, thick and out of control. I like to say that it has a mind of its own as well. I always do things to make it unrecognizable.. I straighten the crap out of it almost everyday. Funny though how when I leave it just as it is, people are always telling me how much they love it. I always say that they probably only like it because they don’t have to deal with it…
I think the most love I’ll ever show it is letting it be all naturally curly some days… but like you, I have to switch things up. I will never completely give up on straightening it every so often… and even though people find it weird, sometimes I straighten it just to curl it again. And because of its texture, it actually holds artificial curls really well. So yeah, I guess I’ve come to a truce with my hair.
My story is somewhat similar to yours. I tried the straight hair thing (and subsequently realized I am too lazy to spend hours doing my hair), then I tried the curly hair thing (and found that my hair never enjoyed being uniformly curly) so these days I just wake up and toss my hair into a bun/ponytail and go to school. However, if I go out, I have the option to go curly, or straight.