I was in fourth grade when my mom put in a perm and it was curly forever after. Before I had fairly straight hair. We thought it was damage from the perm too but my brother’s hair went from straight to wavy and my daughter’s went from straight to kinky curly by the time she was a a teen so it was probably just some genetic weirdness going on.
Mine went the other way around. It was perfectly straight until the summer before 8th grade, and has been loose curls ever since.
What I didn’t know as a straight-haired kid was that curls are so much more work than straight hair. Straight hair doesn’t need to be reined in the way curls do, and it’s a lot harder to make straight hair look messy. Five minutes on a windy day, and it looks like you didn’t bother to touch your hair after getting out of bed. sigh.
And the frizz. Ye gods. I own a straightening iron to straighten the two curls that take up residence around my face if I don’t brush them out straight while wet. ZipperJJ, you said you like the new Garnier Fructis Sleek & Shine leave-in serum, have you also tried their anti-humidity smoothing milk? I’m torn between which one I want to try next. Aussie’s 3 Minute Miracle smoothing treatment, Pantene’s Frizzy to Smooth shampoo, Pro-V Restoratives Frizz Control conditioner all leave a lot to be desired…I’m hesitant about the smoothing milk because the directions say to blow dry, and I don’t want to do that any more often than I have to.
My hair is STRAIGHT. As straight as it comes.
I have made more than one curly-headed person groan with envy by telling them that my hair dries so straight, I can wash and go, and it’ll air-dry straight with hardly any tangles (I might comb it a ittle with my fingers and that’s all).
Try wrapping your hair in a doobie while it’s damp and letting it dry that way.
Curly hair sucks. I’m a very low-maintenance person, and I don’t want to do anything to my hair besides run a brush through it and go. Unfortunately, my hair doesn’t agree. I’ve done the whole anti-frizz serum thing, and I’ve used products to encourage the curls, and all sorts of other stuff, and it just gets tiresome. I’ve actually chopped it all off and now have a pixie cut, but I still use product, at least before going to work.
My hair loses its curl when it’s short, but it’s still fairly wavy, which can get obnoxious when the pixie starts to grow out (and my hair grows really fast). It took me years to figure out that all of those haircuts I really, really liked (the chin-length bobs and such) were ones that I simply couldn’t do. I embraced my hair the way it is, and now only get cuts that I know will work with it, but I still get jealous sometimes when I see straight-haired girls with cuts that I really, really like.
Another feature of my hair: it’s thick, and there’s a lot of it. It’s also very thirsty. Even now, I still have to use quite a bit of shampoo/conditioner in order to fully wash my hair, and dying it is always interesting. It’s great because since it grows out so fast, I could, conceivably, change my hair color every week–but I still need a lot of dye. Sometimes my stylist will forget and make 2 oz. of dye, then run out and have to go make up some more.
I’ve had my hair straightened before, and have had dudes tell me it looks better that way :mad:. I had one guy, when I told him that there was no way in hell I was going to spend an hour straightening it every day, said “oh, so you must not have a lot of people to impress, huh?”
Fuck you, guy. Why the hell would I go to all those lengths just to impress you? I hope someone waxes off one of your eyebrows in your sleep.
Have you tried not brushing? Just running your fingers through it instead?
Well, that’s what I do now, but when my hair was longer, no way. It tangled really easily, and the tangles themselves were very stubborn, even with conditioner and detanglers. I tried wide-toothed combs, but they hurt like hell.
I had curls as a young toddler, than it went wavy for a long time and got curly around age 12 or 13. My youngest sister had almost completely straight hair until she was 13, then it got curlier than mine is. My aunt had stick-straight hair her whole life, then she went through menopause in her late 50s and now it’s very curly. It’s genetic, and hormonal. At or around puberty there’s often a change in hair texture. Some women go from straight to curly or vice versa after they have a child.
I have an average amount of hair with an incredible amount of body (so it looks thick as hell even though it isn’t at all) that forms pretty spiral curls if I add the right product. I didn’t learn how to style it until I was about 17 or 18 so I wore it in braids or a ponytail 24/7, then I cut it all off which was a huge mistake, but now I have a solid routine and find it quite easy to maintain. I keep it long, at the top of my shoulder blades at minimum, which makes things a lot easier IMO. I can put it up in a variety styles when I want it out of my way and it looks lovely down.
My routine: wash it (with a mild non-SLS shampoo) or just wet it down in the shower, every other day usually but I can stretch it to twice or three times per week, especially in dry weather. Add some conditioner and gently finger-comb under running water to get all loose hairs out. Get out of the shower, squeeze most of the water out, squeeze some regular conditioner evenly through (I apply product to my hair like you would to a solid piece of fabric - I NEVER comb through it unless it’s under running water, otherwise I lose my curl definition and/or it turns into a poofy cloud), and smooth a light layer of gel over the canopy to hold down the frizz. The only PITA thing is that I let it air dry, which takes a while when it’s humid.
I don’t own a brush or comb (or blow dryer or straightener) and do nothing to maintain it or style it on a daily basis. My only hair products are 1 shampoo, 1 conditioner, and 1 gel. I put it up to sleep and it looks presentable in the mornings when I take it down. My hair doesn’t seem to tangle whatsoever (although I guess I wouldn’t know unless I had mats, since I don’t ever comb through it dry). Wind doesn’t affect how nice my hair looks. Frizz is not a big problem even here in super-humid Philadelphia - I guess because it’s not all that curly, plus it’s full of moisturizers. I cut it myself and it’s easy.
Straighter-haired people I know seem to have a lot more hair maintenance to keep up with. They have to brush and comb it all the time, it looks greasy very easily and they usually wash daily, they complain about it lying flat or getting stringy, they get static in winter, they blow dry and straighten it, they have to pay for a haircut every month or two… etc.
Yeah, I use deep-conditioner almost every time I shower. If I’m getting to day 4 of so of CO-washing, I might use regular conditioner. I haven’t tried conditioner as a leave-in, though. Well, not on purpose…
One of the few pricier products I have found to be worth the extra cost is Aveda Be Curly. I sometimes buy the tube of curl cream, or whatever it’s called. One month, I noticed that my hair had been looking pretty spectacular every time I styled it, which is pretty unusual for me. Anyhow, I looked at the tube of product I had been using and it turns out I was putting conditioner in my hair after the shower every day to style.
For inexpensive products, I do like the Fructis Curl Gel-Cream and the Herbal Essence Totally Twisted mousse.
One more thing - at this point, I wouldn’t change it for the world. 
What you might not know about straight hair:
Straight does not mean “will not tangle.” I’ve had to wrestle many large knots out of my string-straight hair. Conditioners would help, but since they weigh hair down and add oiliness, well, it’s a no-go.
If it’s fine, like mine, it gets very oily, very quickly.
As I’ve told my two curly-haired sisters who express envy of my hair–having naturally straight hair is NOT like having curly hair that’s been straightened. It is limp and lifeless, without body or volume. Unless I have it permed, then mine won’t hold a curl for even an hour, nor will teasing add any volume. It either just knots up or falls back to limpness. Without a perm, I can’t even get hot rollers to stay up in my hair, they just slither right out. No amount of hairspray makes any difference at all.
I’ve tried the tricks, too. Voluming shampoos and conditioners, drying my hair upside down, etc. Nothing ever works, except perming.
Sure, when I was a kid and had straight hair I went through bottles of Johnson’s No More Tangles. But it tangles even more now that it’s no longer straight.
Oh, I know what you mean. I just think that people who’ve never had straight hair sometimes believe it would mean an end to knots and tangles, if only they could have it.
Same here, although I stopped the perms lately…I really hate the flat on top poufy on the sides look it degenerates into after a few weeks. Mostly I just pull it back into a ponytail or braid.
Today, ( I have a lunch meeting ) I decided to do something special and I spent about 20 minutes making loose curls with a spiral iron, it looked really good as it always does when I do that.
But it was HOT…really hot and within minutes the back of by neck was sweat-soaked. So I pulled the pretty curls into a ponytail and that is where they will stay.
I caved. The shampoo was too tempting. I still did it with the “hold the length up while you wash” technique, and shampooed only the scalp, and followed with conditioner that sat in while I shaved before I rinsed it with the hold-the-hair technique.
I’m actually glad I did. I got a quite a bit of body back, but the gel still tames the frizzies, so now my hair is curly but with softer looking curls. Still feels crunchy, but *looks *softer.
Maybe I’ll try CO-washing for some washes and shampoo for others. I feel like a teenager playing with her hair all the time! But there’s so much to learn when your hair changes this much!
The thing I’ve found with tangles and my new wavy/curly hair is that they just don’t matter so much. There are some there, but since the look I’m going for isn’t sleek like my old straight hair, they aren’t visible, and they don’t seem to progress as long as I condition every time - unlike the rat’s nests I’d get when it was straight.
IMO straight hair is much more prone to tangle. Although I certainly have heard from many curly-haired people about the severity of their tangles, it’s usually those who try to get through their hair with a comb or brush on the regular.
Straight hair shafts are perfectly round in shape, so the mass of hair hangs straight down and together, and hence has a ton of individual movement and friction. Wavy hairs are oval, and the curlier the hair the flatter each individual strand. Due to the nature of a flattened strand of hair, there is ‘body’, more air space and much less friction. Plus curly and even wavy hair has a natural tendency to clump or coil together, which keeps each area of the hair somewhat separated and moving as a unit.
Me neither. I have a small, narrow face and a long head - hair with body and texture suits my anatomy. I’ve straightened my hair a handful of times in my life and it’s not flattering enough to be worth the trouble.
ah yes… curly hair, how do i hate you? let me count the ways…
try growing up in the swingin’ sixties, ladies, when straight hair parted in the middle was THE RAGE. and there i was with The Corkscrews From Hell. gods but i hated my hair…
i’m still not real fond of it even today, but everybody else loves it. it’s about shoulder length when allowed to curl and reaches down past my shoulders when straight.
i announced to friends the other day ago at a pool party that i was getting a brazillian blowout this month and i thought they were going to have a wake right then and there for The Corkscrews From Hell (the BB will be the subject of my post to the dope after i have it done, btw).
count me in as another one who leaves in heavy-duty conditioner AND runs some more of it through the hair while it’s still wet. i can get a big-toothed comb through it when it’s wet but you cannot comb my stuff when dry. i also only wash my hair maybe once or twice a week at most.
if i don’t re-wet it and restyle the curls with styling foam in the morning (it pretty much resembles a dead badger on my head otherwise) i have to scrape it back, laquer the hell out of it to stay down against my head and then wrestle it into a scrunchy. like i did today because i was too lazy to care.
i did buy a professional straightener ($150 a pop), which works amazingly well. in fall, winter, and spring. however, **summer **in indiana is more humid than a seacoast. spritzing my head with a spray bottle would do less damage… if the air doesn’t do in my 'do, the sweat does. poof! frizz central. very attractive.:rolleyes:
i’m 90 percent premature gray underneath the blonde job i have now, which doesn’t help. the gray and white hairs have definitely contributed to Extra Curly i’ve aged.
for a while, bleaching my hair took some of the vinegar out of the curlfest, but in recent years it’s roared back stronger than ever. hence the BB. i look at it this way: if i hate it, i don’t have to get another one.
i’ll be very interested to see how well it deals with The Corkscrews From Hell. 
I call this “super light conditioner”. I shampoo every 3 days and use this once and then use Neutrogena hair mask once and alternate.
My mother is white but with superthick hair. Each parent is half Jewish, giving them (and me) a bit of a curl to their hair. So I have very thick hair that’s (naturally) very wavy and frizz. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being flat and thin and 10 being thick ringlets, it’s a 7. My brothers keep their hair in varying stages of buzz cuts, always.
I stopped straightening my hair and started using this stuff, John Frieda straightening creme in two quarter/silver dollar dollops from 3 inches below the roots to the ends.
No matter what, I tie up my hair in a microfiber towel after washing for 15-20 minutes. This alone has cut the need for straightening with an expensive ceramic straightener at 80% power.
I was traveling last weekend and forgot my hair turban and my straightening cream. It was…not a pretty picture. I looked like a little Jewish girl who’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket.
If I know I’m going to be outside in humidity all day, in Florida in the summer or going to a dance club/densely packed bar, I use Fructis spray gelon damp locks. Problem with this is it only lasts that day; the next day I have to wash it all out.
ETA: Oh yeah, on days without shampooing, I use this dry spray shampoo. I’ve tried every single one on the market and it’s far and away the best (they have a variety of fragrances which are based on personal opinion, but Batiste brand is the best).