"I love your hair!"
"Yeah, but it tears from the roots, falls on everything, and sheds everywhere!"
Having hair is worse than having a relationship. Girls, more than boys, seem to always have 'issues' with their hair. They have to know how and when to maintain it. They book appointments and note it down as "Very Important" on their agendas to make the weekly, monthly and quarterly visits to their best friend-literally: their hairdresser. And usually those trips tend to be exactly what we call the “only real maintenance date.” We stride gracefully into the salon, like walking on a cat walk, make the "celebrity" entrance to make sure EVERYONE knows that we are there with our not too fond of hair we carry on, over or beneath our shoulders and jump to our stylist's arms, out of love and desperation- calling out for help in every single body language movement ever, seeking needy attention every corner we spot. SOS is the code that everyone communicates to the professional silently, knowing that this is the one secret that is really out there and everyone else knows it, but don't really boldly say it out loud. Girls love gossip, but don't like anyone gossiping about her. Especially her hair. If you insult her hair, you are out of her circle; I mean you are OUT- like never talk to you again OUT and OUT of her sorority which she fancies calling: the sick chick club.
We have to admit, she makes more effort with her hair than she does with her own boyfriend! She spends more time washing out the impurities that affects her hair’s health than she spends time figuring out the problems that her man bothers her with. She spends more time gently squeezing out the overbearing moist which will damp it instead of re-vive it than she does trying to understand the major miscommunication barriers that exist in the relationship. She has more patience sifting and drying it from top to bottom and through each streak as she strokes from one half of the mass to the other than she has trying to shop with her lover. She is calmer rubbing it for protection by adding the necessary products than she has sanity trying to decipher the language of men. She finds more sanity in collecting the fallen threads of hair she finds anywhere she goes than finding sense in why in the world her husband would call her to ask what time to feed the baby!! She will effortlessly make no interruption whatsoever as she gracefully lays and matches each strip with the other, unlike finding so much irritation and exhaustive trouble in making a call back to the seven hundred missed calls that poor guy made just to tell her, “I love you.” And she will never ever make excuses to skip the sacred date she made at the salon. And those trips to the salon, they are costly. A month worth salary, a bonus and extra petit-cash unwillingly given by her partner is the fortune spent per salon visit. So yes, the biggest, ongoing, life-long commitment, a woman makes in her life is on hair investment. The fact that it yields to a fatter profit margin is variable, but the fact that the return on investment is promising is very doubtful and highly unlikely.
My hair has usually been the ‘talk of the town.’ In school, I was known for the long braids. In college, I was envied because my hair would never puff out like everyone else's. At work, no one understood why I made two trips a week to the hair salon. To everyone, my hair never needed nothing but to be itself. In America, it was classified as thick hair. And in Canada, it was too much hair. But what none of those people know is that my hair has its days and goes through its own phases. Much like everyone else’s hair, it goes from dry to soft, from damaged to thinner than thick, from shiny to tangled-up, and from normal to brittle. And you definitely don’t want to be around my hair during humid days and post work outs. Now that’s a different phase by itself.
When we have bad days, we say we wake up on the wrong side of the bed. But when I have a bad day, it’s because my hair woke up to the wrong day. But of course I don’t really tell that to people. My hair is my day’s fortune teller. If the baby hairs on both sides stick out, clearly stating ‘help put them back down,’ I know my day’s calling for challenges. When my bangs don’t find their way home, which is always on the right side, then I’m asking for trouble. And when the rest of my hair knots up in unsolvable doodles, I know that this is the day I have to face my fears. The first thing I do in the morning is step into my reflection in the mirror. I think it horrifies me more than the trembles my body feels before I see the figures on the scale. And once I figure out what my hair tells me, I start the day according to the meaning of that note.
I can’t really ever leave the house without making truce with my hair. I think every girl will say the same when I identify hair as one of the reasons we feel confident and that it is the source of pure confidence boosting; like a magnet attracting men and their flashy flirtatious complements. So to maintain and increase all that, and of course prevent any further disappointments, I made a decision. I decided to pamper myself and buy professional products. I never thought that shampoo and conditioner would be the remedy because it seemed like it was my hair’s texture, mood and surrounding environment that made it the way it was. But I guess I had to give in to my hair’s demands and make a trip to a hair professional store. Based on my friend’s recommendation, Aveda was the magical secret to getting back her hair and improving the relationship between them. It made sense to me- my friend had similar problems, she followed professional advice, I should follow it too. It didn’t matter how expensive, I needed to repair the damaged and hold on to what’s remaining when everything seemed as it was on the verge of falling apart. Bottomline, I was on the tip of the iceberg.
I was so excited and couldn’t wait any longer to use the products and eventually see immediate results, like my friend after her first wash. Rushing under the waterfalls of my shower I happily washed and conditioned, enjoying the not so bad scent of natural ingredients lush through my hair. I impatiently waited for the next day to come to see the expected results. Miraculously, none. My hair didn’t go through any changes. At least nothing that was definitively evident in texture or appearance. Disappointed at the result, I stayed calm until my next hair wash. I didn’t yet want to feel deceived. I easily blamed it on my weak hair strands unaccustomed to chemical free products, maybe. Second wash results-nope. It still didn’t happen- my lengthy, fluffy, dry hair remained the same. The two Aveda bottles went through experimentation as I juggled around with the amounts used, the locations and points of focalization: on all of my hair, scalp and on the roots. Again, the results were just the same. So I blamed it on the water. I didn’t want to believe that it was my hair or the successful brand’s failure. It was the water.
But I still wanted to fix my hair. I was not going to stop at the disappointment of just one type of Aveda’s professional selection. After all, the representatives who were also consultants would surely advise me which would be the most suitable for my hair type, texture and specifically after such an experience. The second trip to Aveda was troubling to the hair specialists than it was for me. They were shocked at the unseen results that were promised from their company’s production. The odd looks were their source of communication while my frustration spoke on my behalf as I swept through the counters. I made the purchase of the newly advised yet skeptical about products, and reminded myself that my hair was indefinitely worth the extra bucks.
Both the first and second hair washes of the second line of products yielded exact results as the first. I was disappointed at disappointing my hair and putting it through the trouble and the dreadful experimentation. But I was sure that the effort was at least appreciated.
I finally concluded that North America, with all its expertise and researches, hasn't yet reached how to treat someone with ‘so much hair’ and ‘thick hair.’
I shifted to another professional hair production brand, which my hair and I finally bonded with.
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