Do As I Say (Not As I Do)

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

A home for fleas

A hive for bees

A nest for birds

There ain't no words

For the beauty, the splendor, the wonder

Of my...

Of course, I'm referring to the one matter that I allow myself to be openly hypocritical about: hair brushing.

My two beautiful daughters* have beautiful hair: one has straight, shiny, nut-brown hair and pulls off a straight bang like she was born to. The other has long, fine, silky, orange hair. Neither have inherited the abomination of thick, coarse, wavy frizziness that has been my poofy cross to bear since childhood.

My husband often stops behind one or the other and strokes their hair gently, a quizzical look on his face, like he's asking whose hair this is, or how they got so lucky.

I often wonder that myself. 

I don't even know what to do with their hair; after all, why would you braid or tie back something that isn't tangled or sticking out at all angles? When my hair looks good (that is, when I have spent 45 minutes with a round brush or a flat iron), I would never tie it back. Let the people admire and enjoy, I say! I will wait 15 minutes until it starts amplifying in circumference and growing wings, and then tie it back, thank you very much.

The number one rule of hair like mine is: don't brush it. Stuck between curly and wavy, but often just plain floofy, on some miraculous days it looks fine. I wash it at night, add a bit of defrizzing stuff to it, and hope for the best in the morning.** And sometimes, this works, and my hair is pleasantly curly and bouncy.  Too often, though, I still grab a brush, even though I should know better after having this hair for over forty years, and just try to... oh dear.

Anyone with coarse, wavy hair knows what happens. It only takes one brush stroke to turn a nice- or even okay-looking curl into a poofy frizz. 

The best compromise I have come up with is combing it in the shower with conditioner in it, which means that my hair gets combed once every 3-4 days at best. 

Science has not yet been able to fix me. I've had probably a hundred recommendations from other frizzsters,*** and I have a giant basket full of products which I haven't yet given up on, which I try every so often and -- sigh -- put back in the basket. The best product I've found is Biosilk, and even that's not a guaranteed fix... it's more of a "slight improvement" to "whatever the situation is up in there". I'll take it. 

In the meantime, and until science decides to stop focusing on "important" issues like "health" and "space", I'll just keep on telling the girls to brush their hair every day, twice a day. 

Like a frizzing hypocrite.

*My handsome son has straight shiny hair, too. Humph.

**Ah. I may have identified part of the problem.

***sisters in frizz