What is it about hair?

Is it only a girl thing? I don’t think so. Why are we so obsessed with our hair? All of you who grew up with the hair of the moment—shiny, straight, swingy, perfect, wow, were you lucky.

Not me. I grew up in the fifties. Can you imagine what it was like to have curls in the fifties? Brains didn’t trump curls.  We ironed, we pulled, we straightened, we lost sleep, we suffered. And to top it all off, my hair was the color of mud.

When one of my mother’s friends accosted her in the supermarket when I was in high school, indignantly asking her if she saw what her daughter had done to her hair, she responded,” I did it for her.” Life did change a bit after mud changed to yellow, but the curls still won the war every day.

My mother did have her idiosyncrasies—she made me clean her damned ashtrays, but, the good part was that I never did smoke. When Liz, my middle child, was very small, I remember her saying “Nanny, you’re going to die tomorrow.” But my mother encouraged my love of the theater—we skipped school on Wednesday afternoons to sneak into NYC for matinees. Sorry, Miami, you’ll never measure up.

Growing up in our somewhat out of synch house was fun. My father taught us to be color blind. We never knew what color our dinner guests would be. I’m not sure my mother was as accepting as he was, but I sure do wish he were still alive to experience our first black President—finally. If the circle could be completed this year with our first woman in the White House, even my mother would be contented.

But what is it about hair? Life does come full circle. I meet people at meetings and they swear they already know me. No, I try to explain, it’s not me they recognize, it’s the hair. Most of them have seen pictures on Facebook or Twitter or my websites and all they see is the hair.

People ask me over and over what I do to mine. First, believe it or not, I do it all myself. When my husband looks askance at yet another Coach bag or pair of shoes, I try to calculate for him the amount of money I’ve saved by doing my own hair—cutting, coloring, conditioning—for the last 40 years. He still gives me ugly looks, but I feel better.

Stop reading this now if you don’t care about maintaining curly yellow hair.

Wanna hear the recipes for maintaining curly hair? Some of it is thanks to my go to book, Curly Girl by Lorraine Massey. You may not want to believe it, but shampoo should never touch curly hair. We curly girls call it “no poo.” Shampoo is too strong, too harsh. Even baby shampoo is too harsh. You’d probably be better off with shampoo that’s safe for your dog, but, you really don’t need shampoo. I wash my hair with conditioner, any kind that’s safe for colored hair. I use huge handfuls of it, and then I don’t even rinse it out. No my hair doesn’t smell, it’s not dirty, it’s not oily, and, best of all, it’s not frizzy. Every six months or so, if I decide to frost my hair, I have to use shampoo to wash the frosting out, but that’s the only time

Now to the color, and this is my own recipe. Permanent hair color is too strong for curly hair. Semi-permanent does nothing, but demi-permanent is a good compromise. BUT…the demi-permanent calls for 10 volume peroxide, not strong enough to touch my almost totally grey hair. So I use 20 volume peroxide, an off label use, a no no in everyone’s book, but it works. I use it as if it were permanent color, only on the roots, then use gobs of conditioner on the rest of it, cover it with a shower cap, leave it for 45 minutes, and am left with perfectly-colored yellow hair in really good condition.

So there you have it. Advice from Peter Pan. I’ll never look or act my age. I’ll never have grey hair or, perish the thought, I’ll never look like some of my contemporaries who sport beautifully coiffed “blue” hair and would never wear a motorcycle helmet or ride in a convertible with us. I apologize to my Facebook friends for boring you with my recently changing profile pictures, but I’ve been at the scissors again and every time I cut more, the look changes. I might as well use a picture that renders me somewhat recognizable.

It's a Hair Thing

Why do I love Debbie Wasserman Schultz? Until we were so rudely gerrymandered apart, DWS was my representative. I loved to listen to her, follow her career, plan for her political future. But no, that wasn’t it. It was the hair, the curly yellow hair.

All of us who are blessed/cursed with curls can identify. I grew up in the 60s, the era of long, straight, shiny, parted in the middle, hair that went right along with the long, thin legs and bodies that were the ideal. And I had this mop of mud-colored stuff that was identified as hair.

When my mother was accosted in the supermarket by one of her friends to tattle on my newly bleached blond tresses, my mother’s response was “I did it for her.” The hair might have been turned from mud to yellow, but it was still curly/frizzy/impossible. We tried everything: heat, irons, chemicals, big rollers, frozen juice cans. Nothing worked. The curls were no more cooperative than the GOP.

My wedding day dawned warm and free of humidity and we were all able to breathe easier. My hair was as cooperative as my husband. A day at the beach—not so much. We all laugh at the hats, wigs, scarves, and misery. Fighting with curly hair was a war that lasted much longer than the one in Afghanistan.

That was then. Look at a picture of a group of Congresspeople. You can always pick out DWS; her hair identifies her. Two years ago I attended a conference with 1500 neurologists. They kept coming up to me and asking me where we had met before. No, we hadn’t met. They just recognized me by my Facebook page, the picture with the curly yellow hair.

Fighting with this hair has been a second job for me. Liberation came in the form of a book that told me never to use shampoo. I only use shampoo twice a year, when I frost my hair, and my hair isn’t smelly or greasy, what a concept. Yes, I frost it myself, another advantage of having curly hair. You can do everything yourself. I cut it, color it, frost it, style it, do it all myself. The curls hide all the mistakes. How much money have I saved in the last 40 years?

One of the biggest problems used to be drying time. Yes, drying time is a problem in more ways than one. I finally solved the nail polish dilemma with a UV topcoat, but hair drying is another story. You can’t use a hair dryer on curly hair.

When I lived in New York, my hair used to freeze while I was waiting for the Long Island Railroad train on the platform in Port Washington. It was then that I learned all about the Eskimos and their igloos. Once my hair dried solid, my head felt warm inside.

Now I live in Florida and my hair no longer freezes when it’s wet, but if I have an early appointment, either I arrive with a wet, stringy mop on my head or I have to get up in the middle of the night to wet my hair, the only way the curly hair manual taught me to handle my hair every day. Eureka, this week I figured out a solution: braids. If I braid my hair in a few places before I go to sleep, I can get up and take out the braids and my hair is good to go. See, you’re never too old to learn something new.

Hair, Hair, Hair

     This story in the Miami Herald prompted me to share my hair issues.

     
     Curly yellow hair is my identity.  When I went to a conference last June, people kept telling me they knew me, and asking where we had met.  We hadn’t.  What they remembered was the curly yellow hair in my Facebook picture.

     It’s been yellow since forever. In high school, my mother encouraged me to leave the mousy brown in the dust. It was bad enough that I had to deal with frizz, mousy brown was just too much.  When my mother met one of her friends in the supermarket, her reply to “Did you see your daughter’s hair?” was “I did it for her.” 

     Why does a bad hair day have to define your psyche?  Having a bad hair day has become a pseudonym for whatever can go wrong in 24 hours. I envy the other side of the human race—men can shave their heads and people don’t make ugly faces at them. 

     About 8 years ago I discovered "Curly Girl, Lorraine Massey's curly hair bible.  Some of the advice in this article makes sense but.... 

     Carolyn Brundage recommended products that are wallet-killers.  I've tried them all, spent a small fortune, need more storage in my bathroom, and finally settled on L'oreal's Everpure moisture conditioner, the one in the metallic pink tube available for well under $7.00 at Walmart, Publix, Walgreens…,. No shampoo.  Never shampoo.  I use shampoo twice a year, when I frost my hair. The rest of the year, just conditioner.  I wash my hair with it and then use some more and leave it in.  (I promise, my hair isn't dirty, doesn't look oily, and doesn't smell.)

     I follow Lorraine’s Curly Girl rule and avoid all the "cones."  No silicone.  It doesn't rinse out and it’s too heavy. When I remember to do it, I “deep condition:” put in some stuff, cover it with one of those hotel shower caps, and proceed to spend my half hour on the elliptical machine. I’m convinced that it doesn’t matter what stuff I use; it’s the moist heat that makes the difference.

     As to color:  my hair isn't yellow and it’s worse than mousy brown.  Thanks to curly girl, I discovered that demi-permanent color does the job and doesn't mess with my really delicate curly hair.  I mix it with 20 volume peroxide, not the 10 volume they recommend, and it works as well as the smelly permanent stuff with ammonia.

     The article left out the most important advice of all.  Along with the no shampoo rule, no hairbrush, ever. And no hot implements unless you are desperate and have to coax a few strands into the corkscrews that you're looking for, in which case a small curling iron works. Otherwise, air is your best friend. Let your hair air dry. I love my convertible but hate my motorcycle helmet. 

     Years ago, when I was commuting on the Long Island Railroad, I used to stand on the windy platform in Port Washington with my wet hair.  It was then that I came to understand the igloo factor.  When my hair froze solid, my head felt warm.  See, that’s why the Eskimos live in igloos—ice is a good insulator. 

     Why all the fuss?  Why do we focus on hair?  When you visualize Debbie Wasserman Schultz, what do you see?  Her yellow curls.  Gloria Estefan’s curls are her identity when she doesn’t choose to fight them.  Julia Roberts looks best with her curls. The same for so many others.  Have they figured out the solution?  I think so, because they look pretty good.

     My curly hair doesn’t always look the same.  It varies from day to day.  Sometimes it gets frizzy, sometimes it doesn’t behave, sometimes I hate it. But, I never have a bad hair day, or is every day a bad hair day?