Their beautiful textures are even more scrutinized, degraded, and demeaned by mainstream culture. When I got a job working as a fashion assistant in New York after my college graduation, straight hair seemed like the only way to go.
But then, earlier this year, I landed a freelance gig and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel. I was really, really lucky to be to be put in a position to say "F it" and give up the city, the career path and the accompanying "look" that I had come to resent. Pro Tip : The ends of your hair tend to be the most delicate and prone to breakage.
The ends are also thinner, requiring less heat to straighten. To help protect them from excess heat damage, stop mid-shaft when straightening your hair in sections. Then, at the very end, gather all of your hair and straighten the ends together. Give your newly straightened locks a good once-over in the mirror. Did you miss any spots? Then, put the finishing touches on your new sleek style with a hydrating, frizz-fighting smoothing cream. Be sure each strand is completely dry before attempting to straighten.
To avoid scorching your hair, start at the lowest setting, and increase the heat as needed to achieve the desired results. You used too many styling products. Styling products are key to achieving your perfect look, but too many products can weigh down your hair.
Focus on using only the products mentioned above that hydrate your strands and provide protection against heat. You tried straightening too large of sections. Straightening thick, curly hair is best done in very small, 1-inch sections. Smaller sections are more manageable and will allow you to straighten more quickly and effectively. Avoid putting your hair up right after straightening. Newly straightened hair is much more susceptible to bends and kinks from hair elastics than two or three-day-old straightened hair.
Deep condition to repair damage. Curly hair is already naturally dry, and heat styling can dry it out even further. And although the grim economic climate has seen visits to hair salons drop off, an increasing number of women are styling their hair at home. A consumer report by Mintel states that ownership of hair-styling products has expanded by 4. But why do we bother? Why do we feel this need to tamper with our hair?
Hersheson sees it as part of an inherent human covetousness: "It's part of our being to want something we haven't got. We've got a natural, built-in desire to enhance, change or experiment. This could be true. A natural brunette, I remember being desperate to have blonde hair as a teenager because it seemed that all the boys fancied Pamela Anderson.
It turns out there is plenty of historical precedent for blondes being more admired. The Edwardian explorer M French Sheldon claimed to have dazzled the locals in East Africa in with a white gown and a long blonde wig that apparently rendered her all-powerful and untouchable.
But colour is a fluid concept. Hair cut, too, has long been a social signifier. When the bob gained popularity in the s it was emblematic of a new era of modernity and women's emancipation in the aftermath of the First World War — a literal cutting-off from outdated Edwardian traditions. In the s both men and women grew their hair long to rebel against accepted establishment norms.
In the s the first wave of women in the workplace often cut their hair short in order to fit into a male-dominated environment in Working Girl , Mike Nichols's film about a secretary who yearns to become a businesswoman, there is a seminal moment in which the protagonist, Tess, is so desperate to be taken seriously that she cuts off her soft blonde hair. These days, according to Cox, the dominant trend is for styling rather than cutting, and for "glamorous, long hair, and lots of it".
It is a look that crosses the social divide and yet simultaneously emphasises it. There is an assumption that pneumatic glamour models and female cast members of Towie rely on "fake" hair extensions, whereas the luscious natural locks of the Duchess of Cambridge bespeak a woman with the time and money to devote to a deluxe blow-dry.
Other famous proponents of the glossy mane include the caramel-tinted Kim Sears — when her boyfriend Andy Murray won Wimbledon, the BBC devoted almost as many camera angles to capturing the rippling movements of Kim's astonishing hair as it did to the tennis. There are even reports of Russian prisoners having their heads shaved against their will and the harvesting of hair from corpses to meet the surge in demand. In terms of fashion and feminism, it's like: oh my God — what was I fighting for?
Big, fake hair has reached the workplace, too — as evidenced by the female candidates on the recent series of The Apprentice , one of whom made repeated references to her "voluminous" bleached-blonde locks on her CV. Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, a professor of critical theory at the University of Reading and editor of The Last Taboo: Wo men and Body Hair , sees this as part of a broader trend towards cosmetic enhancement.
It's the same with cosmetic surgery or Botox. It goes with the idea of 'having it all' — because if you're a boss and also a woman who doesn't comply with trying to look sexually attractive, then really you're like a man and you become a castrated bitch.
And because the semiotics of a woman's hair are so complex, so inextricably linked with the story she wants to tell about herself and so shaped by the outside forces of gender, commerce and culture, it is truly shocking when someone subverts the narrative. When Britney Spears shaved her head in full public view in , it was viewed as disturbing physical evidence of a mental breakdown. And although in recent years it has become more common for women to have partially shaved heads as fashion statements, it remains rare to see a female celebrity embracing a full buzz cut unless it is for charity as Jesse J did to raise money for Red Nose Day or professional reasons as Charlize Theron did for an upcoming role.
By: Kelly Nuttall. How to Curl Medium Layered Hair. How to Do a Blow-Dry Wrap. How to Put Rods in for a Perm. How to Scrunch Straight Hair. How to Get Ringlet Curls. How to Create Spiral Curls With a Velcro Rollers Vs. Hot Rollers. How to Avoid Curling Iron Creases in How to Use Hot Rollers on a Wig.
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