Curly Girl

I don't know if you know this (it sort of depends on how long you've known me) but I have curly hair. With rare exceptions, I've blown my hair straight or pulled it back into a straight ponytail every single day for ten years. If I allow my hair to dry all the way from wet, I have little ringlets all over my head. My adult hair is the hair of my father's side of the family: brown with a little red, and curly. I remember seeing my uncle Lee in the 70s. He had a glorious head of soft past-shoulder-length corkscrews that was tinged with gold at the front from sun and surf. That was some joyful hair.

Through junior high school, when "feathered" hair was the thing, I got up at 5:30 in the morning to shower so I could dry my hair and re-curl it with a curling iron, dress and run to catch the bus. Thick Central Valley fog or worse-- drizzling rain-- often turned my carefully arranged tresses into silly-looking swirls, the most annoying being the two devil horns that would emerge at my temples. Winter was not a good time for me during those years.

But let's move quickly through the history of my hair and to the present. (Honestly, how interesting can it be?) Recently, I came upon a book in the public library called "Curly Girl" written by a ringlet-topped hairdresser from New York. I was inspired. She calls her little book "a celebration of curls". I've never celebrated my curls. Except, I now remember, one summer in the 80's, when big hair ruled and I got voted "Best Hair" on the college swim team. How about that?! But fame was fleeting, and straight hair came right back in again and has been in ever since.

It was not until I picked up this book that I ever considered my curls might be "Botticelli curls" (one of three types she mentions in the book, the others being "corkscrew" and "wave"). Suddenly, I felt lucky, rather than cursed. I was skeptical when she described her curl-care regime, which required that I give up *gasp* shampoo. Shampoo?? Never wash my hair again? Gosh darnit, but it works. I rinse my hair with clean water. I condition my hair and scrub my scalp gently, and then I rinse out some, but not all, of the conditioner. My hair has been soft and curly, and I have spent about 1/4 of the time on it each day, as long as you don't count air-drying. I have even gotten out of the pool after swimming, conditioned it, and dried it by driving home with the windows open on a warm day. I am free. Mike says it is flattering on me. People seem nicer. I feel more relaxed, less worried about whether I am having a good or a bad hair day. I don't have to check the weather before I decide how to do my hair for the day for the first time in years.

I am not looking forward to breaking the news to my hairdresser that I'm going to be growing it out for a while: that's the "let's just be friends" of the hairdressing world. I'll still go back for highlights and maybe some richer color later this fall.

As I wrote this post, I kept stopping myself. It's kind of boring to talk about your own hair, much less how you wash your own hair. Snoresville. Can I see your vacation slides after that? I am posting this just in case some other curly sister (this is how I've come to think of other curly girls when I see them on the street) is frustrated and feels ugly and awful and like she doesn't fit in. She's searching "curly" on google or something, and she comes across this post, or this book, and finds a way to appreciate herself for who she is and let go of conventions about beauty that don't fit. That's worth a little bit of boredom on the part of straight-haired folks, isn't it?