I hate that straight hair is “more professional” than curly hair. I’ve heard it dozens of times, and it always bothers me. Wearing my hair in an unflattering way that takes for freaking ever to do (I have shortish hair, but it’s thick) and frizzes if it’s humid at all does not seem extra professional to me. It’s like being expected to wear heels to be professional. It’s annoying and stupid at best, but really sort of sexist (and kind of racist against people who are of races in which curly hair is prevalent). Although I guess guys have it bad hair-wise, too, as they don’t look professional with anything but a very short hair cut.
My hair is pretty curly naturally, but I almost never wear it like that. I don’t hate my curls or anything, it’s just a matter of convenience. I’m one of those chicks that washes her hair every four days or so and straight hair allows me to do this without looking like a hobo. Hear me out.
Straight Hair: day 1: blown out and flat ironed day 2: touched up with flat iron day 3: curled with curling iron day 4: up somehow (usually a bun, sometimes a pony).
Curly Hair: day 1: fabulous, beautiful bouncy curls. day 2: wake up to find giant tangle of matted hair on my head. Attempt to detangle. Hair becomes giant poofy mess. Wash hair and blow out and flat iron.
It doesn’t matter if I braid my hair to sleep in or put it in a bun. . . my curly hair just cannot last the night without getting torn up. I’ve tried scarves, everything. So, for me, my straight hair just lasts longer.
Now, if it’s a weekend or I’m on vacation, I’ll usually just deal with the curly mess because of sheer laziness, but during my work week, I follow the straight routine because it saves me time in the morning.
The thing is, thinning a curly girl’s hair is one of the worst, most damaging things a stylist can do. It creates problems all its own.
I used to straighten my hair because I thought my only other choice was the Christmas Tree (Gilda Radner-esque). I now go to someone who knows how to cut curly hair—cut it dry, follow each individual curl and cut it in the right place of the C-curve or S-curve so that it lies the right way. I also use different products or the same products in a different way. I have a cross between corkscrew and Botticelli—anyone familar with Curly Girl/Lorraine Massey knows what I’m referring to. I’m still learning what products work best, since I am trying to go completely no-sulfate and no-silicone.
I notice that I look older when my hair is straightened. It’s dark and I feel like it draws my face down. But as with the OP, I do have a friend who is always asking me why I don’t straighten it, and it’s not in a making-conversation way. One time she came to visit me and told me that she almost brought one of those home Keratin kits to do with me—even though I have never once expressed an interest in doing one. She really could not have been clearer if she had said, “Your hair looks like shit and I wanted to change it for you.”
I do sometimes wish for sleek, straight hair, but I’m learning how to have shiny and soft curls instead, and they’re a lot easier for me to achieve.
It’s the style now. Everyone with naturally straight hair was urged to perm it in the 80’s.
I have stubborn Finlander hair; there’s just no point in arguing with it. I’ve worn my hair the same way since my early 20s not because I wanted to or particularly liked the stick-straight Marcia Brady look but because no technology known to humanity will keep a wave in it for longer than an hour. Even perms flattened out and formed themselves to the shape of my skull. My poor mother tried to fight nature and permed her hair, colored it, etc., and she is now nearly bald.
I have a little hope now that more silver is coming in, because my gray hair seems to have more wave and spring to it. Unfortunately I seem to gain only about a half dozen gray hairs a year, so I won’t live long enough to see how it all turns out.
My hair is pretty thick and naturally wavy. I hate it. I don’t know why, but I have a crush on super-straight angled bobs. Like, Victoria Beckham style. God, I could look at pics of her hair all day. Unfortunately, my puffball resists the powers of straightening and will curl back up during the day. Plus I sweat at my hairline, and once moisture touches my hair, bam! Curl.
My god, we were separated at birth!! 
Everything you said is what I would’ve said.
I do do both, when I’m in the mood to. Flat-ironing takes about 45 minutes. The scrunch-and-go routine about 15, if I partially dry it. The natural curl takes care of the rest. People like my hair both ways, with the curl edging out the straight.
I, too, have Rosannrosannadanna hair (Gilda Radner.) My hair has three speeds: curly, wavy or frizz. I went thru a California surfer girl phase where the only way to get my hair straight was to crouch down at the end of the ironing board while my mother ironed it. Difficult and achey. We didn’t have flat irons back then. We didn’t even have blow dryers. But what my mother did have was a big fat dinosaur curling wand and we decided we could control my curl with that. After she finished sausaging my head I looked in the mirror and, futiling tugging on bouncy Harpo Marx curls and almost peeing on myself laughing (good thing I was in the bathroom) we jumped in the car—and it was late! almost 9p.m.!—and drove the 10 plus miles into town to park at one of the two drive-ins my city friends were still making lazy eights around. Each time somebody I knew passed by I’d point at my hair and roll my eyes. The honking of horns increased and we were finally satisfied. Drove back to the farm and I set my alarm for Early, to wet my head and go back to curly/normal before school.
My hair’s still like that. I pull it back into a ponytail.
I resisted answering this but I have had three hairstyles in my life:
- Short
- Long
- Long with bangs
I don’t colour it because that’s too much trouble and expense. I don’t curl it ir straighten it because I can’t be bothered.
What I do is get it cut (or cut it myself) in one of the three styles above and let it do what it does. It looks good in all three without any fuss.
I also wear the same makeup everyday and generally wear some variation on jeans and a t-shirt. I look neat and tidy and casual.
There’s a big difference, too, between having curly hair in 2012 and having curly hair in, say, 1986. I remember how hard it was to have curly hair products, and my mother wouldn’t have let me get them anyway. Plus you all know what curly hair was like in the 80s. BIG. No, bigger than that. No, bigger. I still get it with the occasional stylist who doesn’t know what to do; she’ll cut it and then blowdry it until it’s dry and frizzy and humungous, and then I have to do the Haircut Walk of Shame, desperately patting my head, until I can find a scrunchy to pull it back.
I blowdry my hair about six times a year, and even when I do, it’s not to complete dryness. Nothing dries my hair out faster than a blowdrier - I of course don’t just mean the water.
Right now my hair is short-ish, it’s a couple inches past my shoulders. I had it in layers a few years ago. This spring the shortest layer finally reached my shoulders so I had it all chopped to that level, except for my bangs, which are less than an inch, and am letting it grow out one length.
I also have three styles like perfectparanoia:
Short
Long with bangs
Long without bangs
I don’t like it long without bangs because the hair on the top of my head won’t curl; just lays flat. Other than that I see no reason to change it up. Great thing about curly hair is it looks like a fresh style every day.
I have coloured it on occasion, though.
Hello, sister!
Exactly. I have wavy hair that some people have told me they envy (usually women). That doesn’t mean I haven’t tried straightening it out completely, or making it full out curly. Granted, it’s too much work for normal use, but don’t all people want to occasionally experiment with looking different?
I also think that they may want you to say, “Yes, but it looked awful! It doesn’t look anywhere near as good as your hair.”
A friend of mine has hair that looks like a Breck model. (I’m aging myself.) Basically straight, long and thick. It looked lovely on her when she was younger, such as her circa 1990 16 x 20 wedding picture that she displays very prominently in the living room.
She’s in her mid-40’s now, and though her hairstyle has gone the way of the dodo, she still wears it exactly the same. Unfortunately, the color has faded and her face is no longer taut, and frankly, it’s now aging her. I wish I could take a scissors to it and do something different with it – layer it, color it, cut it – anything! But I’m polite enough to resist the temptation. I’m also polite enough not to even SUGGEST she do anything else to her hair, because it’s obvious to anyone who enters her house and sees her photos, that she LOVES her hair.
One woman in my circle of friends was not so polite. She came right out and told her that she needed to change up her hair. She did it half-jokingly, but the reception she got was frosty.
Hint: If you’re not asked directly, don’t offer up unsolicited opinions on how someone styles their hair, or decorates their house, or dresses. If they want advice, they’ll ask.
P.S. I have slightly wavy hair. Sometimes I make it curlier, sometimes I leave it wavy, and sometimes I flat iron it. Different looks for different moods.
Straight hair is in fashion now. It bugs me on makeover shows that they almost always do a blow out or otherwise straighten curly hair, which is generally not what the woman is going to keep up doing.
Ah, but the tide is changing, as it always does!
To Mika,. the reason you might flatiron your hair over the last thirty-five years or so (jeez, I don’t even think you’re that old, are you?) is because that’s what has been “in”. Just like everything else in the world of fashion and beauty, an “ideal” was created and we all got inundated until we feel uncomfortable if we don’t fit in.
Today, there isn’t a reason in the world why you should do such a thing. You’ve described your curly hair and I think I may have even seen a picure of you. . . . you don’t have to bow to old, stupid convention anymore. If everyone felt secure in dealing with the body, skin, , hair texture that they have, it would be a much better world. Well, not for the fashion and beauty industries, but, screw them.
Ha.
This is mine when it is a reasonably uniform 3 inches long. My hair is now a couple inches below brastrap level. To get that touseled hair in the picture upstream I wash my hair, comb it out and ignore it until dry. For years I would get asked who did my perms.
