Rant: Hair (part II)
Mar. 20th, 2006 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jhameiaThis is a sort of follow-up on a previous entry entitled Hair, History, Personality written back in January.
I'm pottering around my apartment with the TV turned on today and this hair commercial comes up, and obviously it's extolling the virtues of some shampoo or another - a moisturizing shampoo no less, and the voice-over declares, "We have finally discovered the secret to truly beautiful hair - you have to moisten your scalp!"
I do a double-take, and I half-yell at the TV, "how can you long for beautiful hair and just not fucking KNOW that?" Bitch, please!
When I was in Malaysia, I would read the Star Newspaper quite scrupulously, and that included the Clove pull-out that came out once a month - a women's pull-out, dedicated to fashion (go figure), facial care, parenting and assorted whathaveyous. I once read, "2-in-1 shampoos... I don't really see how that works because the shampoo strips away dirt, while the conditioner restores the moisture to the hair. The basic principle is that: shampoo for the scalp, and conditioner for the hair."
Since then, that's how I've washed my hair. Of course, seeing that my hair is so long it's past the small of my back, for every dollop of shampoo I use on my scalp, I probably need two dollops of conditioner for the rest of my hair, and I need to work it in very well. The conditioner is usually less co-operative than the shampoo, and insists on oozing out from between the strands when I "work it in" (which really means massaging the hair). (And I must say, it all seems a bit moot since hair's all dead cells anyway, but we attach so much value to it.)
A lot of people say to me, "You have such beautiful hair! It must be a lot of work taking care of it!" The honest truth is that it takes as much work as it does to clean the house. Either do it every day, or have a schedule, and have the appropriate tools, and just - get - to - it! Spend less time bitching, more time washing and brushing.
"Do you take a lot of time?" No. No. No. NO. Once you get the knack of something, you don't take forever with it anymore. How hard is it to massage shampoo into scalp? How hard is it to brush hair? Not very. The tangles disappear after a while. Do you need a hundred brushstrokes? Only if you're obsessive compulsive.
Like a lot of these miracle product advertisements, these shampoo commercials seem to bank on the lack of responsibility people have towards their own appearance - "Use this and have beautiful hair!" "Do that and your hair will glow!" "Leave this in for five minutes, you'll feel it instantly!" Cut the quick-fix bullshit and just learn how to take time out to wash your own fucking hair - you don't need experts telling you how to do it.
GotToBeU, my favourite brand at the moment, has the most incredible directions on their bottles: on their "squeaky clean" shampoo bottles, it says, "You know the drill. Lather, and rinse. For extra thrill, repeat the drill". On their "moisture rage" shampoo, it quite candidly says, "Can't you guess?" (The rest are a bit more prosaic.)
I mean, they're right, do you really need to be told how to wash your own hair? Are shampoos so drastically different each of them has their own unique method of applying shampoo? That's like Foamy telling people at A-kon: "Shooowerrrr. Have mercy on the rest of us and take a fucking bath! Take a bar of soap and chuck it under your arm for thirty minutes! Scrub and don't come back until you're clean! We'll still be here!"
And you know those models on TV? I'll bet that they keep themselves groomed very carefully - that's their job! Swing their hair about and look pretty, their curls bouncing beautifully, or their locks flying neatly (oh, what garbage). They probably have a haircare regime - which anyone can have, just on a lesser scale because we can't all be hot supermodels with beautiful bouncy hair.
Am I going to say, "yes, you can have beautiful hair like me"? No. My hair took seven years to grow, and it seems so few people have that patience for i) to let it grow in the first place and ii) to maintain it. Then there's my hairstylist who can't resist cutting hers off to style it. And my hair's not beautiful sometimes. It has split ends, is unevenly cut and will not adhere to any style other than flat and straight.
Even those with beautiful hair still have bad hair days. That's life, darling! But whatever you do with your hair, don't get too caught up with those advertisements!
I'm pottering around my apartment with the TV turned on today and this hair commercial comes up, and obviously it's extolling the virtues of some shampoo or another - a moisturizing shampoo no less, and the voice-over declares, "We have finally discovered the secret to truly beautiful hair - you have to moisten your scalp!"
I do a double-take, and I half-yell at the TV, "how can you long for beautiful hair and just not fucking KNOW that?" Bitch, please!
When I was in Malaysia, I would read the Star Newspaper quite scrupulously, and that included the Clove pull-out that came out once a month - a women's pull-out, dedicated to fashion (go figure), facial care, parenting and assorted whathaveyous. I once read, "2-in-1 shampoos... I don't really see how that works because the shampoo strips away dirt, while the conditioner restores the moisture to the hair. The basic principle is that: shampoo for the scalp, and conditioner for the hair."
Since then, that's how I've washed my hair. Of course, seeing that my hair is so long it's past the small of my back, for every dollop of shampoo I use on my scalp, I probably need two dollops of conditioner for the rest of my hair, and I need to work it in very well. The conditioner is usually less co-operative than the shampoo, and insists on oozing out from between the strands when I "work it in" (which really means massaging the hair). (And I must say, it all seems a bit moot since hair's all dead cells anyway, but we attach so much value to it.)
A lot of people say to me, "You have such beautiful hair! It must be a lot of work taking care of it!" The honest truth is that it takes as much work as it does to clean the house. Either do it every day, or have a schedule, and have the appropriate tools, and just - get - to - it! Spend less time bitching, more time washing and brushing.
"Do you take a lot of time?" No. No. No. NO. Once you get the knack of something, you don't take forever with it anymore. How hard is it to massage shampoo into scalp? How hard is it to brush hair? Not very. The tangles disappear after a while. Do you need a hundred brushstrokes? Only if you're obsessive compulsive.
Like a lot of these miracle product advertisements, these shampoo commercials seem to bank on the lack of responsibility people have towards their own appearance - "Use this and have beautiful hair!" "Do that and your hair will glow!" "Leave this in for five minutes, you'll feel it instantly!" Cut the quick-fix bullshit and just learn how to take time out to wash your own fucking hair - you don't need experts telling you how to do it.
GotToBeU, my favourite brand at the moment, has the most incredible directions on their bottles: on their "squeaky clean" shampoo bottles, it says, "You know the drill. Lather, and rinse. For extra thrill, repeat the drill". On their "moisture rage" shampoo, it quite candidly says, "Can't you guess?" (The rest are a bit more prosaic.)
I mean, they're right, do you really need to be told how to wash your own hair? Are shampoos so drastically different each of them has their own unique method of applying shampoo? That's like Foamy telling people at A-kon: "Shooowerrrr. Have mercy on the rest of us and take a fucking bath! Take a bar of soap and chuck it under your arm for thirty minutes! Scrub and don't come back until you're clean! We'll still be here!"
And you know those models on TV? I'll bet that they keep themselves groomed very carefully - that's their job! Swing their hair about and look pretty, their curls bouncing beautifully, or their locks flying neatly (oh, what garbage). They probably have a haircare regime - which anyone can have, just on a lesser scale because we can't all be hot supermodels with beautiful bouncy hair.
Am I going to say, "yes, you can have beautiful hair like me"? No. My hair took seven years to grow, and it seems so few people have that patience for i) to let it grow in the first place and ii) to maintain it. Then there's my hairstylist who can't resist cutting hers off to style it. And my hair's not beautiful sometimes. It has split ends, is unevenly cut and will not adhere to any style other than flat and straight.
Even those with beautiful hair still have bad hair days. That's life, darling! But whatever you do with your hair, don't get too caught up with those advertisements!