Hair Straightening...

I was born with wavy hair. Nothing too major, but when I was around 8 years old, my hair was long and pretty straight with a slight wave to it. One day, the AntiChrist (refer to prior blogs) took me to get my hair cut….it was a “Pixie cut” which basically meant that my hair was about an inch in length…all over my head! I went to school wearing a hat. When my hair finally grew back…it was kinky curly…and thus began my life-long road to hair straightening.

I’ve straightened my hair many times over the years, but for the last 4 years have been using the Japanese straightening method, otherwise known as “Thio”. The first time I paid to have it done was in San Francisco. Unfortunately, the person wacked my hair pretty good, so the results were not what I expected…although the hair was straight.

For those of you unaware of the process, what happens is, you wash the hair…dry it to about 70%. Then a solution goes on the hair (or roots, if you’ve had it done before) for about a half hour to an hour. You have to test the hair to make sure that the solution has loosened the curl. Then you rinse the hair, dry it and precede to flat iron the hair in about 1/8 inch sections, until the hair is FLAT! I have lots of hair, so this takes, at the very least, an hour. Then you put on the neutralizing solution to stop the prior solution and keep that on your head for 10 minutes. Then it all comes off, wash and condition the hair, dry, and flat iron again. This WHOLE process can take anywhere from 4 to 6 hours, which is why the cost is $300 to $600 in a salon. This process is done every 6 months on new growth…you don’t have to do anything to the hair that’s been straightened before.

Ok, the second time I have this hair straightening procedure done; I go to a place in Citrus Heights. They took 8 hours to do my hair, because they kept working on other people. They damaged my hair so much that my hairdresser wouldn’t touch it for 3 months…plus she gave me a regimen for getting it back into condition. After about 2 weeks, I kept feeling this fuzzy stuff on my head….wouldn’t you know it, its the spots where she burned my hair off and new growth is coming in. Diz is not happy!

After that unfortunate episode, 6 months later, I try another place in town, and she does ok, but still manages to burn off my hair. I’ve had enough with going to salons, so I pick up a version of the hair stuff from Sally Beauty Supply. It’s not the same stuff. It straightened my hair ok, but left it feeling frizzy and damaged. So I go out on the net and do my homework. I finally decide on a Matrix version, but you can only get it if you have a license….

Enter Dad. He’s a barber, and he’s got a license. He goes to the professional shop with my Mom (Mom and Dad are “the man’s” parents) and goes shopping around for the Matrix brand. He finds it, and they question him (I guess they can’t imagine a 70+ year old man giving someone a straightening job). He tells them that his daughter knows what she’s doing and buys it. WooHoo.

So now you know that I straighten my hair myself. While Holly is in charge of coloring my hair, and she does a fantastic job, and I trust her completely…I don’t trust anyone else to straighten my hair but me. If I burn off my hair, it’s my owned damned fault. But I don’t leave it on as long as those dirtbags that burned it off. I monitor my hair well.

Why am I blogging about hair straightening? Well, I’m gearing up for doing it tomorrow. So it’ll be 5 hours out of my day…then I don’t get to wash my hair until Monday, or Tuesday Morning. Then I’ll be flat-headed for a couple of weeks. By the time my color job rolls around, my hair will have bounced back in shape for it. Ah…the things we do for beauty.