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Looking back, I realize now that holding a scalding hot laundry iron inches away from my face probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done, but I was a curious teenager, and I’d heard from my friend Jessica that the quickest way to get straight hair was to iron it.

(pause)

Okay, this was the early ’90s, and flat irons hadn’t quite made their way into every straight hair-challenged girl’s bathroom yet, so, one day, after pressing the wrinkles out of my favorite pair of Z. Cavariccis and my black-and-white polka-dot shirt (complete with sheer black sleeves!), I placed my long, wavy hair on the ironing board and…

(Seriously, do NOT try this at home.)

It didn’t take long to turn my unruly lion’s mane into a sleek curtain of straight hair. “Victory!” I roared. Adrenaline burned through my veins! — or I guess it could have been heat from the iron.

This went on for about two weeks until the day my mom walked in on me. What followed was A LOT OF YELLING! And that pretty much put an end to that particular kind of ironing.
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True story: I used to run around the house singing (rapping?) the Beastie Boys’ Fight for Your Right to Party at the top of my lungs when it came out back in 1986, and it totally threw my parents for a loop. Bless their hearts, they were first generation Americans, and they didn’t always grasp the subtleties of pop culture or understand my appreciation for things like rap.

“You gotta fight for your right to party.”
— Beastie Boys

Never mind that I was only 11 at the time. My mum literally thought that I was ready to fight for my right to party, and she reacted like any responsible parent would. She banned me from dating until 25 and said “No parties until you finish medical school at the top of your class!”

That plan didn’t last long, of course. I went on my first date at 14 and never quite made it to med school (I can’t stand the sight of blood). As for the partying, well, I did my share in college, but not enough to turn me into a cautionary tale.
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The heat is on! Okay, not really. It’s been epically cold here in the Bay Area, but that’s not stopping me from looking forward to summer. A few days ago the weather dude said it might even get cold enough to snow here this week, and when you’re a California weather wimp like me, that’s all the motivation you need to indulge in a bout of summery escapist daydreaming. Never mind the fact that it’s barely 50 degrees outside. If I pretend hard enough, it’ll seem like summer. 🙂

What I wouldn’t give for shorts and flip-flop weather right now… Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could drop everything, change our plans and take an immediate tropical vacation today? I’d be happy to share my sunscreen with you (gotta protect that skin, yo!) and, I should warn you, I will nag you about wearing your sunglasses. I’ve already got a bag packed and ready to go with our sunny day hair essentials — a tube of leave-in conditioner and sun protectant spray. And don’t make me bug you about wearing that hat of yours, young lady, especially if you’ve got highlights/color.

My hair and I learned that lesson the hard way on one of our first trips to visit El Hub’s family in Hawaii. I spent most of the time in the water, either surfing in the ocean or swimming in the pool, and by the end of the trip, the golden highlights I’d gotten a few weeks earlier looked lackluster, brassy and basically bad. My mane looked like straight up haaay!

When I got back to the Bay Area, my stylist gave me a good dose of tough hair love as well as some tips for the future to protect my hair color in the heat.

First, she suggested spritzing hair with a sun protectant spray before heading outside, and wearing hats whenever possible. Next, before swimming in either a pool or the ocean, she recommended wetting hair thoroughly with fresh water to let the strands absorb as much clean H2O as possible, as saltwater and chlorinated water can mess with hair color, too.
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Why I Color My Hair

I’ve changed my hair color so many times over the years that I’m not even sure what my natural hair color is anymore (I just know it contains some gray). Yes, despite all the many things I fear about our world — underground caverns, the coming zombie apocalypse, submarines, and earthworms come to mind — I’m downright courageous when it comes to the color of my coif.

Senior year in college, I wore it mahogany brown with a single blonde streak in the bangs, which I kept long, swept to the side and always, ALWAYS tucked behind my left ear. After graduation, hoping it would make me look older and more responsible, I trekked up and down San Francisco’s steep hills with long, jet black hair flowing behind me. A few years later, after a gut-wrenching breakup, I entered my red phase, hacking my hair into a short bob and adding angry vermillion streaks. And when I felt I’d finally moved on, so did my hair, which morphed into an optimistic fawn brown with sunny golden streaks.
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A Curly Girl’s Tale: How I Grew to Love My Hair

Things were all kittens and ice cream until I turned 12. To quote my sixth grade diary, 12 was “a year of devastating change.”

The first event occurred that fall, when my best friend, who happened to be my next door neighbor and partner in crime since I was four, moved away to a mysterious place called “The Valley.”

The second event struck that winter, when the unthinkable happened: puberty. I’ll never forget the traumatic trip with Mom to J.C. Penney to buy my first bra.

Then, that summer, puberty took away my sleek, straight hair and replaced it with a big, frizzy mess.

And so began my rocky relationship with curly hair…

I guess technically my hair is more wavy than curly, but back then all I saw was a head of hair that on its best days resembled a lion’s mane.

As luck would have it, that look was in at the time. It was the ’80s, when curls and the spiral perm reigned supreme. Curly girls roamed the hallways at school. They moved in dense packs of frizzy hair, acid-washed denim jackets and Liz Claiborne purses.

It was just sheer dumb luck that my naturally curly hair happened to be “in” because I was shy and self-conscious at the time. Fitting in mattered above all else.

Truth be told, I had no idea how to handle my unruly waves. This was well before I discovered wide-tooth combs and conditioner washing, yet my hair and I eventually reached a sort of detente that would last for several years. I hadn’t grown to love it yet, but I didn’t hate it anymore either. Nope, I saved that for the ’90s.

By the time I’d gone to college, straight hair was all the rage again. I was back to hating my waves and envying the girls with their lovely linear locks.

The several bad haircuts that followed didn’t help. There was the poufy triangle cut that left me looking like a Bichon Frise, or the cut in which the left side of my hair was a full inch shorter than the right, or the razor-cut from hell (a frizzy nightmare!).

During those dark years, I spent hours in bathrooms with blow dryers and brushes, hopping from one straightening serum to the next to fry my hair into stick-straight submission.
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