Curly Girl Confessional

I have a confession to make.  I am a curly girl.  I always have been...and I always will be.  But now I'm out and proud about it.  

I haven't touched my straightening or curling irons in over a month.  

Or wore a shower cap on days I just need to scrub my butt.  

Or used a brush.

I no longer worry about what's happening to my hair on humid days (not that there's many of those in the dead of winter in Idaho), or how I look when I'm done at the gym (vain, I know).  Instead of crushing and frying those curls into submission, or bemoaning the weather, I just go with it now.

All through my life, I've had straight girl envy (being jealous of girls with straight hair).  I still do to a certain extent.  I still catch myself coveting that head of beautiful, glossy, easy-swinging, stick-straight hair I see when I'm out and about...but I'm learning to love my head of schizophrenic hair.

I was thinking back to growing up and spending summers in Ventura and how, after a day of surfing or just being a kid at the beach, I would wash my hair with whatever product my grandmother had gotten me, vigorously rub my hair with a towel, and then proceed to blow-dry AND straighten my hair...a process that maybe lasted a few hours.  If the fog rolled in, I was screwed.  All that time spent fighting nature, thinking I just had crazy frizzy hair when I could have been out just being a teenaged beach bum.

I still remember the one time I had my hair chemically relaxed.  I was about 15, and as if life wasn't already difficult enough before I sat down in that chair...sweet Jesus.  I ended up having to lop my almost waist length (straightened) hair off to my shoulder blades because it was fried beyond recognition.  Not that I learned my lesson.  When I got out of the military, I seriously considered doing it again.  Thank God I didn't.

Back in November, I went to get my hair trimmed and colored.  When I walked into the salon, I had just let my hair do whatever I wanted and it was a crazy mane of kinks and curls.  That was the smartest hair move I ever made.  The stylist recognized the potential and then worked with it.  She then turned me onto a book that changed the way I view and deal with my hair:

My hair has a mind of its own...I'm learning daily how to accept and work with that.  Finding products that enable me to achieve something other than a mess has been handy.  Do yourselves a favor, curly girls...treat your hair right.  May those straight girls get curly girl envy.