(Just as an aside, check out the teeth! Awesome. Nothing that 5 years of wearing a retainer couldn't fix-I guess I should just be glad I didn't have to have braces...) Of course, being 10ish, and given the fact that I was a preadolescent (tween, if you will) in the late 80s, I just couldn't leave well enough alone. So, bad perm + puberty=6th grade class pic...
Wow. I am really putting it on the line right now. See the retainer? As you can see, I was very cute as a 6th grader....but wait, it gets worse. Here is my attempt at making it better:
Yep, I sported that super-sexy bob for two years, then in 8th grade I went for it and chopped it ALL off. That's what happens when you let your mom talk you into haircuts. I quickly tired of that, though. So, in high school, I grew my hair out. Now, this was the 90s, when everyone wanted stick straight, flat-as-a-board hair. I was no exception. I tried and tried, and failed miserably. A stylist once begged me to let her put mousse in my hair and scrunch it to see if I had natural curl she could bring out. I told her no, it would just frizz, it was just wavy....blow it straight. You can see for yourself how THAT worked for me:
Senior yearbook picture
Senior Cap and Gown PictureSo, the summer before I started college, a friend talked me into chopping it. This was the age of "the Rachel", the choppy layered cut inspired by Jennifer Aniston's character on Friends (one of my all-time favorite shows, by the way)....so a few incarnations later, this is the best I could come up with....
Chi Omega composite picture, 1998. Not terrible, but this was after 20 minutes of blow-drying and then another 20 of straightening....
This was "Running out the Doors" 1999. One of the last hurrahs for my straight, short hair. Because this was about to happen:Wait for it......
I had a roomie with curly hair. One day, I got ahold of her gel. I was bored, my boyfriend (now my wonderful husband) was at work, my roommates were all out somewhere...so I washed and scrunched. And that happened. What? Where have you been hiding, curls? To think of all the horrible injustices I suffered at the hands of my blowdryer and straightener...and my hair could have looked like this? I remember that there was a girl in my graduating high school class that had great curls and I used to think, "If my hair would look like hers I would wear it curly." Because even in the super-straight 90s, natural curl was okay. So, the days of Five-Minute Hair were born!
Somewhere along the way, though, a super-dry summer led to some not-so-nice-thoughts about my hair, as the dry ends crackled and frizzed. I sought a way to make it better. A pretty short search at Books-a-Mill (my favorite place) let me right to Lorraine:
Ahhhh, Lorraine Massey, my hair savior. She is a stylist with naturally curly hair. She opened my eyes to a new way of doing things, and she turned on my "curly girl pride." Very few people know about my VERY SPECIFIC hair routine, and when I tell people, I am pretty sure they think I am mildly insane. But it works for me, and I get many compliments on my hair. And except for Saturdays, I still have Five-Minute Hair. And it looks like this:
My routine: Most days, I wet it down....work conditioner through it....rinse out most but not all of the conditioner (I use Sunsilk in the green bottle)...squeeze it with a towel then scrunch it from the bottom with a towel....scrunch in a generous amount of Fructis Curl Scrunch gell...and that's it. On Saturday....I (1) wet it; (2) put conditioner on the ends; (3) massage shampoo into my scalp only; (4) rinse; (5) put Aussie 3-minute Miracle in it; (6) rinse; (7) put Sunsilk conditioner in it; (8) rinse most but not all of it out; (9) towel-scrunch, gel, go....
I had a roomie with curly hair. One day, I got ahold of her gel. I was bored, my boyfriend (now my wonderful husband) was at work, my roommates were all out somewhere...so I washed and scrunched. And that happened. What? Where have you been hiding, curls? To think of all the horrible injustices I suffered at the hands of my blowdryer and straightener...and my hair could have looked like this? I remember that there was a girl in my graduating high school class that had great curls and I used to think, "If my hair would look like hers I would wear it curly." Because even in the super-straight 90s, natural curl was okay. So, the days of Five-Minute Hair were born!Somewhere along the way, though, a super-dry summer led to some not-so-nice-thoughts about my hair, as the dry ends crackled and frizzed. I sought a way to make it better. A pretty short search at Books-a-Mill (my favorite place) let me right to Lorraine:
Ahhhh, Lorraine Massey, my hair savior. She is a stylist with naturally curly hair. She opened my eyes to a new way of doing things, and she turned on my "curly girl pride." Very few people know about my VERY SPECIFIC hair routine, and when I tell people, I am pretty sure they think I am mildly insane. But it works for me, and I get many compliments on my hair. And except for Saturdays, I still have Five-Minute Hair. And it looks like this:
My routine: Most days, I wet it down....work conditioner through it....rinse out most but not all of the conditioner (I use Sunsilk in the green bottle)...squeeze it with a towel then scrunch it from the bottom with a towel....scrunch in a generous amount of Fructis Curl Scrunch gell...and that's it. On Saturday....I (1) wet it; (2) put conditioner on the ends; (3) massage shampoo into my scalp only; (4) rinse; (5) put Aussie 3-minute Miracle in it; (6) rinse; (7) put Sunsilk conditioner in it; (8) rinse most but not all of it out; (9) towel-scrunch, gel, go....Yep, that's right. I only shampoo my hair once a week. I must have dirty, smelly hair, huh. Nope. I have done this for years. Five years, to be exact. My hair does not smell bad. It smells like my conditioner. You see, curly girls usually have very dry hair, and our American way of shampooing every day makes that even worse, because the detergents in shampoo dry it out. So rinsing with water and conditioning are plenty good to keep your hair clean through the week.
I swear I am not crazy.
And I don't stink.
And, one more thing. I straighten my hair on very rare occasions. I have a much better straightener now than I did back in the day. I can go from curly to straight in about 20 minutes, no blowdryer involved. But still, this is too damaging and too time-consuming to do on a regular basis (remember, I have Five-Minute Hair now), plus it's JUST NOT ME. So, if you see me with straight hair, PLEASE do not tell me that I should wear it like that all the time. God gave me curls, and I plan to work them for the rest of my life. It's one of His (many) gifts to me, and I love my curly hair. I love to spread the "gospel of curls."
