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Drybar Is My Nemesis
No, I don’t feel empowered by sparkly gold blow dryers masquerading as self-care
I heard a statistic once that said men think about sex every seven seconds. This seemed absurd to the point of unbelievability — until I realized that I think about my hair exactly that often. In fact, I think about my hair more than anything else in my life. If I know you — even if I like you, even if I love you — I probably think about my hair more than you.
In a podcast interview with Marc Maron, pop research psychologist Brene Brown discussed shame and listed examples of what people think of when they think about vulnerability. The list included a first date after a divorce, trying to get pregnant after miscarriage, and saying I love you for the first time. All I could think about was leaving the house with my natural hair.
I have curly hair, with tight spirals somewhere between a 3b and 3c (for the other curly heads out there). Curly hair is like a troublesome toddler; it can be cute on a good day but you never quite know what it’s up to. My hair is also very dry and very coarse, like tiny wires made of thread. But more troubling than the curls or the texture is that my hair is very thin and there is very little of it. The amount of hair on my head is probably the same as the bangs on most women I see walking the streets.
Curly hair is like a troublesome toddler; it can be cute on a good day but you never quite know what it’s up to.
For a long time, I worked very hard on my hair. In my twenties, I spent hundreds of dollars multiple times per year on keratin treatments and chemical processing to make my hair smooth and straight (in addition to hundreds of dollars on haircuts, highlights, and you-name-it products). I can easily spot these treatments on other women; when a minor celebrity gains popularity, for example, you can be sure that a few months later, her hair will be suspiciously smooth. But the treatments made me look like a wet dog; they simply exposed how thin my hair was and continued to damage the hair I had left.
So I retreated to my own devices, specifically an ionized hair dryer, a hair straightener, and a curling iron. My bathroom on…
