is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.

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No More Tears.

I have curly hair. More than that, it is terribly unruly. It acts on its own. No matter what I do, I end up with huge knots in it, knots that often have to be cut out of my hair with scissors. I try my best to work them out little by little with my fingers and some conditioner. But often it comes down to cutting out the last stubborn portion. Because my hair also breaks easily. And breakage looks worse than a little hunk chopped out here and there. Especially since my hair is curly, so it isn't as obvious when pieces are missing at the ends.

It sucks a little bit, my hair. But things have been looking up lately. The combination of the excellent haircut given to me by Joni at Dekko in San Francisco (she saved me from a hair situation gone beyond bad during a time when my regular haircutter was busy with giving birth and such), her styling tips and the amazing hair product she recommended�the Prive Shining Weightless Amplifier�things are much more under control now. Some days I even like my hair. Other days I'm reminded over and over again why I kept my hair super short for so long... beyond the fact that I like how I look with short hair. Short hair is EASIER. Ugh, with all this shampooing and conditioning and twirling of hair strands to discipline curls and adding product to keep the frizzing from happening. It's like I have a second job or something.

That's why the minute I get home I always walk directly to the bowl full of hair elastics and put my hair up in some way. Of course that causes more hair breakage, putting your hair up. But leaving it down causes insanity. We all face touch choices.

This hair struggle is not new with adulthood. When I was a kid, my mother and I were engaged in an epic struggle over my hair. She would brush it. I would cry. It hurt because she was trying to brush out my tangles. That's what she called them. She even bought a product called "No More Tears" that was supposed to remove tangles. I'm not sure it worked very well. Every day she would call me to brush my hair, I would refuse, we would fight, then the brush would come out, she'd start working on my hair, and I'd wail or complain or cry.

Finally, at age 7, she took me to a hair salon and got me a pixy cut. It was cute! But oh how angry it made my dad. My dad is one of those men (by which I mean, like most men) who likes females to have long hair. He just is. It's OK.

The funny thing is that any salon professional who looked at my hair now would tell you that the last thing I should ever do is use a brush on it. A wide toothed comb, or simulating that with my fingers, is about as brushy as I can get without causing some serious knots or damage. Sure, the knots form on their own, but brushing actually makes them worse. So I think my mom may have been making my hair worse, tangle-wise, in her pursuit of detangling, lo! those many years ago? It's just a guess. And an irony, I suppose. It was a long time ago and I'm not mad.

But, as I said on Facebook the other day, it's funny that I now know a whole crew of people who can't imagine me with short hair. Half the time I still can't imagine myself with the long hair I do have.

11:56 p.m. - December 07, 2008
Lily - 2008-12-09 01:16:15
I'm attempting to grow my hair out after several years of pixie-tude -- it is hard! There is so much to do and think about when your hair is longer! And if I put a hat on I have to resolve to keep it on because if i take it off I will have crazy hat-hair now. Totally a second job.
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js - 2008-12-10 19:12:36
Hi Lily! Thanks for writing! I have something to tell you. The growing out part is terrible. All those awkward stages. The need for creative use of hair implements and products. And so on. It gets better. But let me deflate a myth for you. Everyone told me that it would get "better" once my hair had finally grown out. But it hasn't. My hair LOOKS better. But it is still a lot of work, by which I mean, a lot more work than the no-work required by my cute little pixy cut. I suspect that the curliness adds to all that. I am planning on keeping it long for the foreseeable future. But it is not the case that long hair is ever "no work." At least for me. I used to wear hats a lot in the late 80s (when I had longish hair for a short time) to counteract the hair problem. But so far I haven't found any hats this time around that look good on me. And so I search....
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