I was born with no hair. I remained bald for way longer than most babies, and my mom said people regularly mistook me for a boy. When my hair did finally grow, there wasn't a lot of it and it was stick pin straight.
When I was 5, I asked my older sister to give me a "one side pinned back" (it was the 80's) haircut - she agreed and cut the right side while my mom was at work. The only way to rectify our hair experiment was a mushroom cut - people started to mistake me for a boy again.
When I was 11 my hair started changing. It didn't happen over night, but by the time I was 13 I had a head of thick, frizzy ringlets. Having lived with straight hair my whole life up until that point, I really had no idea a) what was happening or b) what I was supposed to do about it. So, I continued to do everything I'd been doing, including blowdrying it sans diffuser, brushing it out daily and asking for the "Jennifer Aniston" hair-cut at the salon. As you can imagine, my hair was an out of control nightmare and by the time I was 14 I had a legitimate afro that I absolutely hated.
The summer right before I started high school I decided to basically shave my head and start over. I came back from the salon with a pixie cut so short it required nothing more than a few swipes of a towel to be completely dry after a shower. I loved it. My mom cried. I looked like a boy again.
What I didn't count on was the fact that my hair was going to grow back just as thick and curly as it had been before the cut, and that it was going to grow UP (a la Marge Simpson) until it eventually got too heavy and fell over into a weird curly mushroom/ bob. Needless to say, hair-wise high school was a pretty big disaster. (but I still had the time of my life and met life long best friends)
My first year of university I became great friends with a Lebanese girl and it was there that my journey of a million terrible hair scenarios came to an end. She introduced me to mousse and hair gel (bless her!) and taught me to comb (not brush!) and style my hair while it was wet (bless her!). At first I went a little crazy and was going through tubs of Dippidy Doo on a weekly basis. My curls were so crunchy and sharp they became a serious hazard on the dance floor. Eventually I fine-tuned my methods and moved on to products that cost more than $3.99 a tub, and today I am happy to say that not only have I learned to live with my kinks and curls, I have also learned to love my hair (on most days). My hair is my thing, I feel like if people were to discribe me to a stranger they would say two things: she's the tall girl, with curly hair (well maybe three..tall, thin girl with curly hair).
My current hair regime was a long time in the making, but it's fairly simple and works like a charm. Here's the break down:
1. No 'poo!
I've stopped shampooing my hair completely (Google "curly hair method" for more details), but it's pretty simple. No shampoo and no hair products with silicone in them. It sounds kind of gross, but once you get past that you realize it's really no big deal AND you notice results within a couple of weeks which is a nice reward. I realize there are sulfate free shampoos out there, but why bother when conditioner washing seems to be working perfectly fine. (I did have greasier than usual hair for the first two weeks, but this wasn't really a dealbreaker since curly hair doesn't get very greasy at all. Oh and if you convert, know that your hair won't smell good nearly as much or for as long as it does with shampoo washing.) I don't have any particular conditioner to recommend, but I do always try to use professional conditioners. Winner's is a great place to score professional products at cut rate prices (if you're willing to try new and random brands, like the one below that I'm currently using)
2.
AG Hair Products
This Canadian line of professional hair products is seriously amazing and contains no silicone. Although the stuff isn't cheap, it is more reasonably priced than other professional products I have tried (here's lookin' at you Aveda), and worth every penny in my opinion. The products smell delicious and work perfectly on my thick curls. I combine the Fast Food leave in conditioner with the ReCoil curl activator (1:2 ratio), rub vigorously in my palms until it becomes a thick, white creme, and then apply throughout my wet hair, scrunching curls up as I go. I repeat this step until I am satisfied that there is product ALL over my hair.
Recently I've added the Liquid Effects gel into my starting lineup. I use this to add extra hold if I am in a rush and need to diffuse my hair to dry it, if it's really humidy outside OR if I just want to make sure my hair has more hold. I also use it on day 3 to reactivate my curls - I wet my hair (not soaking), rub some Liquid Effects into my wet hands and then scrunch up the curls to bring them back to life.However, it's not an essential. The other two REALLY are.
And that my friends is the winning combination that took 28 years, several bad haircuts and countless bad hair days to figure out. Revealed to you in one post. You're welcome.
