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The Hair That Took Over the World The Hair That Took Over the WorldLast week I promised an entry about my hair. You have no idea what you're in for. My hair is not the thickest around; Smacked wins that title hands down. She has more hair than anyone I've ever met. Her ponytail is as thick as my wrist, I'm not kidding. My hair isn't the curliest; Giggles wins that one no contest. Her hair is absolutely gorgeous but I've seen it in a high wind and it's definitely skittish. My hair just has the most aggressive personality. My hair is fine and dense, meaning the strands of hair are thin but I have such a large number of hairs that my hair is thick. It's not quite curly but almost. It's a combination of wavy, frizzy and curly. I don't mean an average of the 3 evenly all over. I mean that patches of my hair are wavy, some are curly and the patches are melded together by frizz. Every so often a tiny perfect ringlet will appear somewhere on the back of my head just to taunt me that I could have had nice curly hair, but nope, no cigar. It's also medium brown, which is near to, but not quite, the most boring color on the planet. (I should be careful, I'm sure my hair is reading this as I type and plotting to strangle me in my sleep.) Water seems to calm my hair somewhat. The only time I can change styles is if it's wet. Once it dries there is no moving it. Trying at any other time only infuriates it so that it stands up hissing and spitting atop my head. If it's dry then gets damp it gradually stands up in an angry halo of frizz all around my head. If I go to bed with my hair wet it will be vertical in the morning. My hair is almost a foot and a half long when extended so I have to duck through doorways the next morning. My hair has personality and it's not a nice one. I'm not exaggerating. It eats things. I once had my hair done and was finding bobby pins in the shower for the next 2 weeks. Sailor calls it "The Hair That Took Over the World" (There was a comic strip in the works). If my hair had a theme song it would be "Born to be Wild". Very few things will placate my hair. I try to keep it strapped down at all times, generally with a tight elastic and several of those clippy things (I LOVE the person who invented those, my hair was completely unmanageable before their invention). This way my ponytail is the only part that is free to do damage and my hair is generally subdued by the beating that it took to get it into a ponytail. Unfortunately the very front seems to stand out from my head in horns, giving me a devilish appearance. My hair is generally happy if I put it in a bandana. I don't know if it just likes the feel of the thin cotton or the patterns and colors but the bandana covers the most frizzy part of my hair while keeping it out of my face and the back is happy and tends to form semi-nice ringlets (although I get both dextral and sinistral curls). I would wear a bandana every single day if this were possible. I would have dress bandanas (sparkly), swimming bandanas (waterproof), bar bandanas (smoke proof), camping bandanas (soaked with nutrients in case you get lost in the woods), lingerie bandana (black silk bandana with matching bra and thong)�you get the idea� About 3 times per year I wear it down. This is a process that takes several hours and by the end of it I'm generally wearing my own body weight in hair products (which seem to have an anaesthetic type effect on my hair). The slumber lasts for about two hours before the frizz start setting in. My hair just grows and grows, getting angrier and angrier, until it gets hungry and starts eating the silverware, and small children. By the end of the evening my hair is standing out from my head about 8 inches in all directions looking somewhat like a large growling terrier. It takes hours in the shower, greedily slurping wads of conditioner while I gently comb it, to get it to calm down. I have to wear a bandana for at least 3 days afterwards or risk losing an arm to it's snarling bites. When I graduated from University I decided to have my hair done for the ceremony. I gave the hairdresser Gaymes 2 hours, just in case. It was his first encounter with my hair and I really should have introduced him earlier. Gaymes made the mistake of putting my hair in hot rollers. It came out in Shirley Temple style curls, which he separated with his fingers. As he worked through my hair it got bigger and taller and wider and increasingly angry. With a touch of panic in his voice he suggested, "We could put it up" He held it up and it dropped back into place, looking the best it had since he started. He backed away slowly "Don't move" he whispered, "I'm going to get the hairspray". At this point I was panicking; I had to be at my pictures in 5 minutes, hairspray is my worst asthma trigger and my inhaler was in the car. Gaymes crept up behind me and pounced, spraying wildly! By the time I had run to my photo appointment, my hair looked like a giant lobster on one side of my head and a smaller crab on the other. I don't think I'll be ordering that picture! Since then Gaymes has made friends with my hair. He's found products that sedate it and he uses a flat iron to make it straight and shiny. I love it straight. It looks stunning and it's so manageable. I can change hairstyles every 5 minutes if I want to. I LOVE straight hair. People with straight hair have no idea. Conversations like this happen all the time: Straight Hair: "Oh, I wish I had curly hair like yours" Me: "No you don't." Straight Hair: "Oh, yes I do!" Me: "No you really don't." Straight Hair: "Oh, yes I doAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" My Hair: "Burp." Me: "Excuse you."
2003-09-25 || 11:10 a.m. |
