If there is one thing I’m well-known for, it’s my hair. It’s pretty hard to miss, some days I look like a cat got electrocuted and then died on my head. Other days I could be the Dallas High School Prom Queen of 1999 or a hair model from the 80s that they trialed (and failed) the perm on. As I said, my hair is kind of my thing and it’s generally what I’m known for. ‘You know Carly…? The one with the hair?’. That’s me. The one with the hair.
I have a love/hate relationship with my crowning glory. Yes, sometimes it’s great to wake up in the morning with hair that resembles a tribal Vogue shoot, but it gets really tiresome having hair that is completely belligerent. Sometimes, it looks amazing. I’ll admit it. Other times it gets PMS, won’t speak to me and starts behaving like a total bitch. Another reason why I have a love/hate relationship with my hair is because of the odd reactions that I get from the general public. I’ve had people ask me with utter disdain ‘Why on earth do you style your hair that way?’. Um… I don’t, Jerk Features. It grows like this.
My lovely friend Christina over at Hair Romance wrote a thought-provoking article the other day. She asked the question ‘Is straight hair more “professional” than curly hair?’
I don’t think straight hair is more professional, I think it’s more normal and normal is very highly valued by certain people. The fact that I don’t straighten my hair is widely viewed as a choice and I suppose it is, but why would I choose to alter a part of my appearance that so perfectly represents me?
Women with curly hair are dangerous. We aren’t well-behaved. We won’t conform and straighten our wild mops because it makes our hair look silly and sad. Our hair will never look like Victoria Beckham’s. We don’t want it to. We have curls. And as our grandmothers always say, people pay a lot of money to make their hair look like ours.
Every time someone says something negative about my hair, I always think about the Hubbel episode of Sex and the City and smile to myself that I’m undeniably a Katie girl.
This isn’t meant to be a diatribe about the superiority of curly hair to straight hair. I think straight hair is beautiful, I think wavy hair is beautiful and I think shaved hair is beautiful. The point of this article is that I know that I’m often viewed in a different way to women with straight hair, because of an apparent refusal to conform. I could change my hair to look like everyone else’s but I don’t, and that scares the shit out of some people. I’m not afraid to look different and this is very perplexing to those people who say things like ‘Have you ever thought of having it chemically straightened?‘ or the vacuous hairdressers who give me a fiercely straight blow dry without asking because ‘You didn’t want me to leave it curly did you???’. Actually, yes I did want you to leave it curly. It’s kind of my thing.
What do you think? Do you have curly hair? Do you straighten it? Why do you straighten it? Do you agree that straight hair is more professional? If you have curly hair do you feel that you really identify with it? Or that you don’t identify with it?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.