Item: 1 ceramic hair straightening tool
Okay, if I still had all of the hair implements and "relaxing" solutions I've ever tried, that could be worth at least a couple months worth of posts. I have this ceramic device because I read somewhere that the ceramic ones worked so much better than the metal ones. Well, it's true. They do. But I still never got any results from it that would allow me to leave the house.
A few years ago I ran across a book called Curly Girl by a woman called Lorraine Massey who noticed that most hairstylists don't know how to handle curly hair well and set out to educate herself about it. The book has a lot of tips and rinses you can make out of kitchen ingredients, and profiles of curly-headed women. I was surprised, when reading these profiles, how often it came up that the women had always struggled with low self-esteem, more than circumstances would seem to justify.
I haven't straightened my hair since I was in junior high, and even then the results were mixed and fairly temporary. I've thought about it - I always think about it - but I know that doing it has always left me with the sense that I've perpetrated a most severe betrayal. I've switched among brunette and blonde and redhead without a qualm; in fact it has often seemed like these things make me more myself. But to lose the curls is to lose some essential part of me, something that has always been there, always resisted every attempt to make it into something else. In the midst of every conflict is a refrain that says give it up, girl, this is who you are.
Surfing around on this topic today, I found the following:
This is strange, that I could want so badly to have normal hair, and yet also be so fearful of that very thing. It would be so much easier to be like everyone else, but then what would I have become?
A few years ago I ran across a book called Curly Girl by a woman called Lorraine Massey who noticed that most hairstylists don't know how to handle curly hair well and set out to educate herself about it. The book has a lot of tips and rinses you can make out of kitchen ingredients, and profiles of curly-headed women. I was surprised, when reading these profiles, how often it came up that the women had always struggled with low self-esteem, more than circumstances would seem to justify.
I haven't straightened my hair since I was in junior high, and even then the results were mixed and fairly temporary. I've thought about it - I always think about it - but I know that doing it has always left me with the sense that I've perpetrated a most severe betrayal. I've switched among brunette and blonde and redhead without a qualm; in fact it has often seemed like these things make me more myself. But to lose the curls is to lose some essential part of me, something that has always been there, always resisted every attempt to make it into something else. In the midst of every conflict is a refrain that says give it up, girl, this is who you are.
Surfing around on this topic today, I found the following:
Yet, interestingly enough, most women turn a cold shoulder to the concept of utilizing modern technology to permanently straighten their curly locks...Women won't part with their curly hair because they are afraid they will lose part of their personality and a sense of who they are in the process.
This is strange, that I could want so badly to have normal hair, and yet also be so fearful of that very thing. It would be so much easier to be like everyone else, but then what would I have become?
posted by Karen at 8:13 PM
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