dear internet,
my hair is curly, but not so much as to make real locks, thick, full of volume, rebel, and never does what i want. and i have a lot of it. seriously, a lot. not only long (it goes down to my waist, but as it's curvy, it looks like it's at shoulder lenght), but a lot in all senses.
although my hair doesn't like me that much, i don't dislike it a lot. i don't think only straight hair is pretty, i like having waves and (sometimes) locks, but lately i've been doing this treatment on the beauty salon once a month where you have to straighten the hair and let it like that for 3 days, and evverytime i do it people get really wide-eyes, even staring, and everybody comments on how good and shiny my hair looks. it's also easier to comb and i can pass my finger through it, something i can never do when it's au naturel. honestly, i just almost never let my hair loose except on these days, because of all the volume.
so my question is: should i make a chemical straightening on my hair, so it stays that way all the time?
the bad part of it is that the new growings are curly again, so when the hair grows a bit it starts to look weird, and i have to wait (at least) one month of growing to be able to apply the thing to the new parts. and also when i get tired of that i have to wait many many months of looking weird while hair enough grows to be able to cut the straight part.
i've done it once, and swore i'd never do it again, and i swore that on the first week, before it started to look weird, based on how i was feeling fake and dishonest because that pretty shiny thing everybody complimented me for just wasn't MY hair.
so?
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oh my god. i can't remember a time before reading that looong entry.
but yeah. iron it. i did.
yeah, my hair is a serious issue to me.
my hair is wavy and messy and all over the place, I recognise it completly in the description you gave. I always get compliments for it though, I think you're just not around the right sort of people who can appreciate good hair.
cut it a little and then learn how to straighten it yourself. get a straightening iron or ive heard of people flat ironing it but i never knew how and didnt want to burn my head.
As a fellow curly-wavy-very-long-and-crazy-hair type person, I can sympathize. But I tried straightening my hair with an iron once, and lemme tell ya, it looked..well..not very good (still floofy). I cannot tell you how many compliments I get for my hair, even on the days I want to just take an electric razor to it. So I agree with Fluffy in that you must not be around people who appreciate lovely and natural hair. So my vote is keep your hair natural and find ways to tame the craziness while keeping the curl.
And while it seems that you do like the ease of straight hair, the maintenance for keeping it that way sounds like hell.
i think you all get it wrong. i'm not talking about straightening it with an iron at all. i don't have the patience and the time and the knack for that, doing it everyday... eek! seriously, even when the hairdresser does it, it takes her more than one hour to finish. a hairdresser on the other salon i used to go to before i met this one once refused to do it, he said it was too much work. i'm not kidding when i say i have a lot. now think about how it would be to do it myself!
so what i am talking about is chemical straightening. when you do it, the hair just stays straight forever, and the only maintenance needed is reaplications of the chemical substances on the beauty salon after 3 months, only on the part that grew after the first aplication.
that, and some treatments to get the hair healthier to recover from the chemistry, but i already do these other treatments anyway because my hair is so dry and damaged... so it's not like it will be harder.
so, just to let it clear: i wont iron my hair!
as to the people around me: there is one friend who is actually offended that i am thinking about this, he says he loves my curls too much. he's the only one. even dad - even my great-aunt - tell me my hair needs something done to it. not because it's curly, but because it's untamed and rebel and has too much volume. and because it's damaged and doesn't shine.
I love wild and reckless hair! DO NOT STRAIGHTEN! But I can give you a hint... the taming of the hair is not in the post-shower treatment... It's in how you treat it in the shower... i.e. whether you shampoo/condition/wash with water only... and how vigourously, and what with, and whether you towel dry/blow dry/drip dry/squeeze dry, or what combination of these you use... Not product and brushing, well not with wild and reckless hair, anyway...
man, i tried it all...
I have your exact hair. seriously. and I have tried straghtening it and I always felt like it was too flat afterwards. But honestly, even though it is an unruly mess most days, every once in a while, usually after you haven't brushed it or been nice to it ironically, it will poof out just right and look amazing. so i'd leave it alone if it was my hair. besides, people are more forgiving of frizz on curly hair. straight haired people have no excuse, so if you do get frizz one morning and dont have time to fix it, you're that much worse off.