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I have dead-straight hair. So, of course, I curl it! As a girl I plaited or made little buns (my brother called them ‘hair-worts) overnight, dappled with perming in my teens and twenties, and until recently I took to it with the curling irons on a regular basis. Most of the women I know with hair like mine do the same, and most of the women I know with curly hair put a lot of time, energy and money into straightening theirs. We are constantly taking up arms against our hair. But why? Somehow we have become conditioned to believe that the hair that we DON’T naturally have, is superior, and looks better on us. We go to all sorts of extents to try to make our hair do something that it doesn’t naturally do. Even when I do curl my hair, the curls fall out and look limp and droopy, because that is just not the way my fine hair structure works. And yet I’ve kept doing it… literally for decades!
But no more. I’ve had a revelation… I’m going to work WITH my hair, rather than battling it to be something it’s not!
So what brought me to this revelation after years of crimping, primping, perming and plaiting? A meeting over a glass of wine with Jen and Tash from Lusid Beauty. They were telling me about their plastic-free and environmentally friendly shampoos, conditioners and hair products, but also about their ethos of ditching a copy-and-paste definition of “normal” and encouraging us to find our own healthy normal. The core-belief behind Lusid is self-acceptance and self-love, because what is ‘normal’ hair anyway? Who on earth has a right to label one type of hair ‘normal’ and leave the rest of us feeling like something about our hair is wrong? We all have unique hair, and therefore unique hair needs. How ridiculously boring would it be if that wasn’t the case?!
That was it. I was hooked. 30+ years of fighting, changing, envying and faking fell away, and in a complete ‘eureka’ moment I realised that yes, I have dead-straight hair. Lucky me! I was given straight hair for a reason, and instead of trying to create something that I just don’t have, I’m going to work WITH what I have to make it, and me, shine! (I was also secretly relieved that I hadn’t had a chance to curl my hair before the meeting!) I haven’t curled my hair since.
You see, I can think of my straight hair as dull, boring, flat - or I can think of it as edgey, sleek and smooth. You beauties with curls might see your hair as boofy, frizzy or out of control, or as vivacious, textured, glorious.
I challenge you to wear your hair with unshakeable pride. Make it your crowning glory. Rather than rejecting what makes you unique, choose to embrace it, emphasise it, enhance it! LOVE it – it was given to you by your ancestors, it holds your culture and history. You are the only person in the world with hair just like yours.
Or as they say so much more succinctly at Lusid Beauty: “Find your difference, normalise it, and celebrate it’.
Juliet Dale
Founder, The Great Eco Journey