Hair Woes

I am a typical American teenage girl (besides the fact that I’m Chinese, but that hardly matters). Teenage girls are guilty of four infatuations: clothes, boys, shoes, and hair. The amount at which I’m guilty of the first two will remain undisclosed, but next to music, gymnastics, and school, I spend the rest of my time thinking about shoes or hair. Okay, that’s a huge exaggeration. No one is that superficial. But I do plan about going on a tirade about hair. 

I have this super thick, just barely curly enough to no longer be wavy, completely unmanageable hair. So far, my solution has been to tie it up into a ponytail or bun.  No amount of mousse can keep my hair from frizzing up the moment it dries. Gel looks weird, and is a pain to get out. Hairspray? No thanks. That’s purely for gymnastics competitions only. 

I recently switched from Head and Shoulders for Normal to Dry Hair to Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine shampoo and conditioner, hoping that it was designed enough for frizzy hair that it could be of some help to my mane-related issues. All it did was make me smell like apricots. 

Speaking of smelling like apricots, having thick hair has its advantages. My hair holds scent extremely well. So even when my shampoo is basically scentless, my hair still smells good. I personally enjoy smelling like apricots…

Back to its unmanageability: school starts on Monday the 27^th. I got a haircut earlier today, and the cutter guy used those weird scissors to thin it as well. We (my mom and I) hoped it would make my hair somewhat tamer, or more tamable, but guess what? It poofed right back up!

“Get a straight perm. It’s the only way to control this,” suggested the hairdresser in Chinese. 

“Aren’t those damaging to hair?” asked my mom.

“I’ve never heard of that,” remarked the assistant who was working on my mom’s hair.

Yeah, and that’s a load of BS. Chemical and heat relaxants (straight perms) break bonds that make hair curly, weakening it and thinning it. Both of those, I wouldn’t mind, but my hair grows unbelievably fast. So while it should last from 6 to 12 months, mine might last 3 or 4 before the newly grown natural hairs start peeping out from under, on top of, and all over the straightened hair.

My hair woes still remain unresolved. I’ll keep experimenting with milder, mostly natural products and hairstyles until something works, I suppose.