Context

Oh my God, your hair is incredible! What are you doing to it in order to get a result like this?
— Random people in the streets

These are the words I’ve been hearing in the streets over the last four years.
Why not more? Because before this, I had some really short hair.

What happened?

My father was an accountant in the army, so he wanted his child to wear an army-like hairstyle then go to the army!

The result was kinda disappointing, not only I grew up hating the army, I discovered myself as an egg, not realizing it at that time, but I deeply felt a hate towards my short hair.

So, when the occasion rose up, I did let them grow (thanks Covid, you helped me back then, also thanks to Silenn, who stood up against my father back then).
So my hair did grow, in four years, I went through small hair, headband-style hair, a weirdo fro and then what I currently wear.

I never really understood my hair or why it grew like that. One thing that was certain is that I was unhappy with it until I discovered that my headset with my hair gave me more volume. So, I did wear a headband, for like 3 months then stopped caring about my hair.
Years later, I tried to take care of my hair, with no one to teach me about it. I ended up using the same products that my sister recommended me, which were inefficient for my type of hair, and I mean, not totally efficient, it was a nice start, but not strong enough to make a significant effect to transform my frizzy hair into something that I truly want.

Some unexpected help

One night, after some beverages, while walking home with a friend, we were talking about my hair and how it negatively affects my passing¹.
She then told me about her girlfriend which happens to have a hairstyle similar to mine and uses a lot of products to keep her hair in a “correct” state, while talking about a lot of products like conditioners.

So there’s finally a possibility to look like something pretty? Could I finally free myself of this mass without cutting my hair short?

So, I went downtown in hunt of some products related to that.

In search of the impossible

I ended up at a local store where there’s a load of cosmetics lying around, where I spotted a brand that kept my attention in the past.
The brand was “Curl Girl”², simple name but efficient on what it does.

They made the things quite easy, they sell a lot of products with an order of usage, from one to five with some that you can freely swap.

In the end I went through the Leap of Faith and tried them out. First of all, let me say that these aren’t cheap, but what’s the price for some quality hair and finally some peace of mind?

For now, they seem to do their job, as advertised. Will see in the future about how it goes.

Conclusion

I wasn’t really expecting to write a blog post about that.

Since my childhood, I felt bad about my hair, because of being a ginger, because having no hair length, then having some unconventional one.
It pinnacled to the point where I was panicking when people told me out of the blue, in the streets, that they loved my hair.
They say they do, but I clearly didn’t. I hated it, I wanted something else! I wanted something… Normal?

I never mentioned anything to my partners over the years, but it was here, omnipresent, living rent-free in my mind.

Thanks to this friend and my recent discoveries, I can happily say that these thoughts has been chased away… For now.
Maybe I’ll make a follow-up soon to see how it’s evolving? Who knows?

Cheers~!
— A. C. Kestrel

Cover photo by Noémie Roussel on Unsplash