Curl Girlz

Another one just for the girlz. Sorry guys! This post is not for those gifted people with naturally wavy hair with softly curled ends. It's for the genre of women 'blessed' with pure curls and just curls. Hint: Does your hair look like a springy mass once you've washed it? This one's for you.

If you're anything like me, you've hated your mass of curls at some point or the other and been perpetually jealous of your friends/foes or bystanders with straight, silky and shiny hair which they just can't seem to stop flaunting in front of you. You've looked up to the skies, cursed about life being unfair, tried a whole variety of products on the market from expensive conditioners to curl crunchers to the variety of all new brushes designed to 'enhance' your curls. After years of discontent though, I've discovered that hating your hair only makes it work against you. Work with it and all of a sudden, there's so much potential waiting to be tapped to make you look and feel better about those dense curls.. Here are some well-waited out tips -

Find your length: Long, short or medium, every hair type has it's critical length at which it is at it's best. Too long and the hair at the ends maybe thinning or splitting... Too short and you've got a semi-electrified look. But hey, some things work better on some people than some others. My hair tends to straighten out a bit beyond it's critical length. While on the surface this may seem to be good, soon unable to deal with it's own weight, my hair starts breaking. Ergo -> haircut. So go for whatever length you find easiest to maintain and what you think looks good on you.

Condition: Curly hair and frizz go hand in hand and seldom have I seen people with just pure curls and no frizz without any products... Finding the right hair-care product then becomes a challenge to combat the unruly ones. I'm no dame at taming it, but I find that regularly conditioning your hair does work eventually. And really, there's no need to wash your hair more than twice a week. That's one of the advantages of having curls.. they don't get oily/sticky a couple of days after the hair wash. In fact mine are at their best right before I need to wash them again.

Tame (an option): Absolutely weird as it may sound, sometimes using a curler on your hair can help regularize your curls to a more standard shape that suits you than leaving them natural. For instance I like to soften my tremendously tight curls into a more rounded form when I have the time. The downside? If you want it to stay just a couple of hours, there are none. Else, expect your hair to regain it's shape in a few hours and even sooner if you're headed to someplace humid. On the bright side, all styles look good ultimately even though you may not think so.

Damn the gel! News flash - gel sucks. Even the ones that they say don't stick end up making your hair seem like crunchy cotton candy. Not worth it at all. Along with the gel, throw away all hair crunchers, curl scrunchers and whatever other weird products out there.

Recognize the green side: With curls, there's no day you have to worry about hair being flat or lacking volume or being 'oily'. In fact once you realize that the grass is greener on the other side and that the chicks with the straight hair want your curls, things begin to look up. Liking your hair and oozing confidence about it's looks works wonders in other people's eyes as well. Always.. always remember that. Love 'em and have your fun...

The haircut that wasn’t

Did it ever happen to you that you cut your hair and no one noticed? Just now, after you read that question, did your eyes shift up towards your right brain while you searched your memory? Was it like once in your whole lifetime when you got a “trim” or something? Now what do you do when you chop off 7 inches of your hair and still no one notices? Well, now you know how I feel! Unless you’re one of those I-got-my-haircut-for-my-own-satisfaction-people. I got a haircut last week and my curly tresses went down from waist-length to shoulder-length. And give or take 3 people, NO ONE noticed! Granted, from front I don’t look that different at first glance. But from back or when it’s let loose, it’s like hello, where’s the rest of it? And why why why isn’t anyone noticing? Take my parents… I was Skypeing with them the day of my haircut with my hair loose and in tight curls around my ears and they didn’t say a word. On the other hand, when I have it in plaits or anything equally unexciting, they speak about it all the time. And the second I mentioned the haircut out of indignity to invoke a reaction, I got the wrong one. If you’re wondering what I am talking about, read this post. And everyone else is totally on the “Hey wassap” mode. Grrr. Here’s another big fat disadvantage to having insanely curly hair. No matter how long/short, it looks short. No matter what the volume, it looks big. And bangs and blah need so much maintenance they are not even worth it. Add to that every time I call attention to my hair, I end up sounding pretentious. Hmph.

Spare the hair

I was just talking to SS about this one. For as long as I can remember, I have never been encouraged to cut my hair by my family. Not when I suffered with lice when I was very young, or with hair fall from the water change from Kuwait to Madras... not when my hair suddenly became curly in XII grade and in return became as unmanageable as a dense forest (I swear I had insanely straight hair till then.. something that was plait-able and we used to tie it in half with a ribbon, typical of the south Indian innocent school girls). I guess I stopped caring about their opinions once I got to college. Even then, it only extended as far as getting a trim. I suppose it is part and parcel of the TamBrahm expectations that the girl keep growing her hair infinitely. Not that it follows the plans you have for it. My own hair stops at a threshold level for a very long time, awaiting a cut or something else. This is somewhere mid-back for me I think. For almost 2-3 months, there is absolutely no appreciable growth in my hair. But once it gets past it, there's no stopping it. Not just does it lose all its conformality and has the mid section growing away leaving the sides limping behind, but it also loses its tendency to curl a lot. In other words: Time for a haircut. I chop it down to just past my shoulder and the cycle repeats itself. Only since I went to the US, I have stopped mentioning my haircuts to the folks back home. It is invariably followed my a lament... Yen di cut panne? Adhu batuku valandhundu irundhudhu (Why did you cut it? It wasn't like it was a bother). Wasn't? Er... excuse me.. what about the weekly (sometimes, twice-weekly) routine of oiling, shampooing and conditioning my hair? And then to comb the knots out of it... it's insane. No sooner am I done with one section of my hair, the very same section develops more miraculous knots. Not just that... with hair like mine, the best days for it are close to hair-bath day when it's a bit flat. Or else, I am like Medusa, with springs of hair in every direction, rather than snakes... I don't know what's with the TamBrahm girls-should-grow-their-hair obsession in any case. It's a bit absurd. But no one reacts to it normally. There's a dramatic hush and lowered tones and there's a plea not to tell the dads. Previously it was like, kalyanathuku epdi jadai veppom? (How would we attach the false hair thing for your wedding?) Now after, it's more like - onoda aathukararke onnum illaina naanga enna solla (If your husband doesn't mind, neither do we). Girls, the solution is right in front of you - find a modern man. :D

A hair-razing experience

Those who know me know that I have a habit of 'curling' my hair when I am totally jobless or when I want to 'set' my hair well enough after a hair-raising headbath.. So it was no surprise that I had packed away my curler from the US for use here... Having bought a us-france plug, I figured I would use my curler to soften my curls 2 mornings ago. As is customary, I plugged the curler on and left it to heat for a while.. It usually takes about 5 minutes to gather sufficient heat to make any difference when I wrap my hair around it. My first hint should've been when in 2 minutes the light indicator (which turns from red when its cold to white when its hot) popped off the curler's surface. I didn't think much of it... Instead after a few minutes, I sat down and took a very small section off the front frizzy hairs and twisted them around the curler.. I usually have to wait a minute atleast before the curls get soft enough.. But then in a few short seconds I smelt burning... A sort of singed smell... the smell of hair being burnt. In utter panic, I unplugged the curler and then unwrapped my tiny strand of hair.. or atleast tried.. Because my hair was burning and sticking to the curler.. I jerked it away and it came off in my hands. I don't think I have ever been so shocked. Still shaking from the horror of it, illogically I pulled all of my hair tight to verify that my hair wasn't just falling and that the curler was to blame. Thankfully no more hair tore loose... Mercifully my husband stashed the cursed thing away..

It was a while before I was calm enough to examine the logic behind the sequence.. When I did, it was fairly simple and as an Elecrtical Engineer I had to take all the blame. Being a US gadget the curler required just 110V. The conversion plug we'd purchased was just that - a plug and not a transformer as I had for some unfathomable reason thought... I needed a step down transformer to plug the curler in to step down from France's 220V supply to the gadget's 110V. The only other devices I had used with the plug had their own adaptors - the cell phone and the laptop. No wonder the curler heated way too fast.. it was receiving twice the power it needed. And mercifully, I didn't burn myself or anything else.. all I lost was a few strands of frizzy hair.