Not to say I haven't tried. It seems like every time I get a hair cut, the stylist somehow talks me into buying some new stuff that's soooo simple and easy and you can totally do it it'll take like five minutes. I'll try it for a few days, using the product, blow drying, attempting the bit with the brush and the blow dryer together... But eventually I just stop. Because here's the thing: no matter what fancy business I try with my hair at first, it basically ends up looking the same at the end.
Here's what I'm actually going to do to my hair: Step 1, wash. Step 2, towel dry. Step 3, comb and maybe arrange with my fingers a bit so I don't look like a homeless person. Step 4, occasionally brush throughout the day. If you're lucky, maybe I'll smoosh some product into it every now and then. And you know what? I'm finally getting to the point where I'm okay with this. Do you know why?
Because my hair has become (unbeknownst to me and without too much work on my part)... wait for it... fabulous. I will now regale you with the story of my hair. It's not that long and it has a happy ending, I promise.
I've never had great hair. Not like the stuff you seen on TV and in magazines. My hair has always been what it is: fine, limp, greasy, stringy, and generally lifeless. In high school, I didn't even try. I think that I unconsciously had decided it was a lost cause. Looking back on photos from that era, I look sort of like an impish pickpocket from the streets or something. Not a homicidal maniac or anything, but probably not someone you want to entrust your children to or offer a job. Who wants to see that oily rats nest 9-5?
In college, I decided that I actually sort of cared what I looked like. I wanted to get a date, after all. But despite new hair cuts and products and using a metric ton of this stuff, my hair never really looked the way I wanted it to. I was destined to rely on wit and interesting conversation and being sort of slutty to get a date, instead.
Finally, I began to switch to clean, natural products. Shampoo was actually one of the first products I switched, as I've probably mentioned before. Suddenly, I noticed a difference. I don't mean an "over time" difference or an "after regular usage" difference. I'm talking immediately! One day, my hair was lank, dull, and completely devoid of volume. The next day, my hair had bounce, shine, and life. To be honest, I was pretty flabbergasted. And the only thing I'd done was start using this thing:
I mean, it can't be that easy, right? Because otherwise people would be spending a ridiculous amount of money on product, shampoos, conditioners, serums, etc. for no reason other than to make Unilever a bunch of money... And that would just be silly. At the same time, I also did away with conventional conditioner and started using a mixture of apple cider vinegar and all-natural conditioner.
Like I said before, I'm not going to spend time fussing with my hair that could otherwise be spent looking at gifs on tumblr or staring at pictures of stuff I want to buy. Suddenly my hands-off approach started looking less like some kind of scalp condition and more like normal hair. Normal hair that was soft, shiny, and tangle-free, if not overly styled and coiffed.
These days, not much has changed in my daily routine. I get a trim (when I remember), I wash my hair (probably more often than I should), do the whole combing and brushing thing, and that's about it. My hair is still a bit oily, especially on my scalp and around my face, but I can go out in public looking much less like that girl from The Ring.
More on how to deal with oily hair (naturally) in a calm and not freaking out fashion in Adventures in Hair, Part II: Or, How to Survive Life When You Have Severus Snape Hair!
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