Muh HAIR!

Ah, the long-awaited hair post! I wish I had photos of my hair at every unruly stage of dressing, but I'm way too frigging lazy to take pictures of all that. You'll have to settle for spell-binding descriptions . . . or whatever I perchance to dish up.

The Protagonist:
Middle-aged woman of Turkish/Balkan/Italian extraction has thick, coarse, wavy, willful dark-brown hair that curls about an inch below the collarbone. Yes - that would be the hair on her HEAD! Perverts!

The Scene:
A bathroom with a basket of hair-care products on the counter, a Conair Fabio 2000 watt hair dryer, three brushes, and one comb. Two of the brushes are made of metal which holds the bristles. The metal is pierced with many holes of varied and confusing aspect, so that hot air from the hair dryer may flow through and essentially bake the hair into submission. One of the metal brushes is cylindrical; the other is square. The third brush is just a normal brush.

The Products:
Expensive - Paul Mitchell Super Skinny Serum
Expensive - Bumble & Bumble Straight
Cheap - Sunsilk Straighten Up Shampoo, Conditioner, & 24/7 Conditioner
Cheap - Pantene Smooth and Shine Anti-Frizz Serum
Cheap - Smooth N'shine Polishing Spray

The Trailer Script:
In a world where chemistry and biology are locked in a stark battle . . .
Ancient Thracian genes are put to the test.
But then - a new hope arises from an unlikely place . . .
and a girl's best friend just might be found in a bottle. (No - wait! That doesn't sound right . . .)

And a girl's best friend just might turn out to be closer than she thinks . . .
Coming this Summer . . .

Can Chai's Hair Lie Straight?

My hair, if left to it's own devices, will roll up into huge frizzy waves that seem to lodge behind my ears like trash at the high-water mark on the beach. It snarls, poufs, flops and lashes my eyes. Without corrective treatments, my hair re-offends like Courtney Love with a restraining order against her.

My sister, Sweet Tea, on the other hand, has perfectly managed hair that falls into place like a Cyndi Lauper song - Time After Time. When I asked her secret, she told me she mixed Paul Mitchell Super Skinny Serum and Bumble & Bumble Straight into her hair while it was still wet and then blow dried with a flat-brush. Both of those products cost $20 a bottle, but I tried them to see if chemistry could tame my Thracian thatch.

After shampooing I smeared the potions onto my head and then Fabio baked my hair dry while I pulled it flat with the square brush. (The cylindrical brush is for bangs. The regular brush is for putting everything in place at the end, right before hair spray.) The hair gels didn't freeze my hair t-pin straight, but they make it smooth and agreeable. The chemicals kind of got it drunk and made it friendly to it's neighbors for most of the day.

I like having drunken, agreeable hair.

But I don't like spending $40 on two tubes of hair goo. So I started experimenting with other pots, bottles and tubes of smell'um to find the right chemical combo, at the right price, to keep my hair relaxed, tractable and jovial all day, every day. After years of study, two MacArthur Foundation grants and fact-finding trip to Key West, I've come up with the answer. It's so simple a teacup Neanderthal could do it. Everything I need is at CVS.

Here's what I do:

1. Wash hair with Sunsilk Straighten Up Shampoo
   
2. Condition hair with Sunsilk Straighten Up Conditioner
   
3. Towel dry hair
   
4. Work a nickel-sized dollop of Sunsilk Straighten Up 24/7 Conditioner into hair
   
5. Work three pumps of Pantene Smooth and Shine Anti-Frizz Serum into hair
   
6. Part hair with comb
   
7. Use 2000 watt Fabio hair dryer with 9' cord (best hair dryer evah made!) to bake hair dry while pulling it flat with square brush. Do the bangs with the other metal brush. Get hair very dry.
   
8. Brush hair into place with regular brush.
   
9. Spritz all the hair with Smooth N'shine Polishing Spray. This stuff is my secret. They sell it in CVS in the black hair care section. This is one of the things that makes black women's hair so shiny. It also comes in a thicker solution you can smooth into your hair with your hands. I use the thick stuff on the damaged tips. You don't have to use much. It makes hair lay down like Lassie.
   
10. Apply hair spray if needed.
    

I was going to put some photos of the products in here - but I need to start writing a post on how I shave my legs.
;)