REVIEW: Hair Falling Flat? Buy it a Cup of Coffee

I heard once that caffeine can kind of 'prop up' fine hair at the root, giving it lots of volume, but I wasn't sure how exactly to apply it. Intravenously? Like a hair mask? Just...drink a lot of it? None of those ideas sounded either positive or FDA-approved, so I forgot all about it.

As I perused my local Rite-Aid, the rainforest-green bottle was the first thing that caught my eye. "Thicker Fuller Hair," it's called. It was a serum that looked so thick a Pepperidge Farm Pirouette could probably stand up in it. It sounded straightforward enough so I bought it. The first time I tried it after a shower, I noticed the consistency and was a bit worried: it felt very like a gel, which weighs down my fine hair like an anvil. I didn't have the time to wash it out so I shrugged and blew it dry, blazing a trail where I had never gone before.

If you want lift at the roots, push through your doubts and try Thicker Fuller Hair's serum. I don't know if it's the caffeine or the plant extracts, but as soon as I finished blow-drying, I looked like I'd taken a round brush to it. Running my hands through my mane, I definitely noticed a difference; it had texture to it and a lot of body. My ends did look thicker, but not by much; this serum focuses mainly on the roots. The smell is strongly organic in the bottle, but I don't notice any residual fragrance on my dry hair, which, to be honest, is a relief; I prefer the smell of my shampoo. It's not expensive: $7.49 a bottle where I live, although I use several pumps a day for my length. If your hair is shorter, a bottle will probably last you longer.

I will personally be stocking up on the Thicker Fuller Hair serum. I am really pleased with it. My hair is definitely thicker-looking than it used to be, and that is all I ask of the world.

Have you tried Thicker Fuller Hair products? Did they work for you? Let us know in the comments or by emailing the editor at caleigh.cross [a] gmail.com or find us on Twitter!

Eww, Shower Hairballs: How to Minimise Shedding

Hi everybody! I'm sorry I haven't posted in over a week; my little brother just graduated high school and became an Eagle Scout. It was a big week for our family (and my hair, of course)! I straightened it (I know, I know) to see how long it was and right now, it seems to be growing like a weed; it's about an inch past my collarbone. I'm really pleased with it. I think I owe a lot of its new fullness to my diminished shedding.

The average woman sheds about 50-100 hairs per day. I'm not quite crazy enough to collect and count all my shed hairs at the end of the day, but I'm sure I used to shed much more than that. Because our fine hair tangles so easily, with the slightest movement, it's also more prone to hair breakage and eventual loss when we brush it out. My brushes used to have abhorrent, messy hairballs clinging to all the bristles, but lately I've noticed less shedding. If you want your hair to look fuller, the first step is to take care of what you have and cling to it like grim death, so read on for my suggestions for doing that.

The first thing you should do is get a wide-toothed comb and a brush with a cushion, if you don't have one already. The comb should always be used first because it's gentler for removing bigger tangles. The brush can take care of the rest, but you should still be careful and try to minimise the amount of times you brush per day. Over-brushing hair can rough up the cuticle, which will weaken the integrity of your strands.

This tactic gets mixed reviews, but I think it's working for me. I braid my hair loosely before I go to bed every night and make sure to use a soft elastic. I look like a Treasure Troll when I wake up, but I have noticed no hairs at all on my pillow when I used to have quite a few. Make sure to braid loosely or you will stress your roots, which can actually cause more breakage.

Do you reach for the hair towel when you step out of the shower? Yes? Well, stop that. Don't towel-dry your hair, ever. (The towel turban is still fine.) As I've mentioned before, your hair is at its most damageable when it's wet, and any roughness on it can only do more harm than good. Wring it out when you step out of the shower and then let it air-dry. If you're worried about wet spots on your clothes, cover your shoulders with a towel. There are no excuses.

My last suggestion to minimise shedding has to do with the way you condition. I used to run my hands through my hair to spread out the conditioner and they would always come away tangled up in a bunch of hair, which I would then have to struggle to get off. Now, I just rub the conditioner over my hair and use a lot of it. I lose maybe one hair in the shower now.

That's it! That's my pro advice this Thursday. It should be noted that even I am pleasantly surprised by how much difference simply taking the time to take care of your hair properly can make. Consider your hair's feelings: if it looks like it's bad for it, it probably is. Good talk, guys. See you Saturday! We'll be doing an adorable hair bow.

12 Problems Only Fine-Haired Women Have

Okay, I know it says up there at the top of the page that "fine is a positive word." It is. Fine hair can be elegant and lovely, but getting it that way is a monumental struggle, and there are days where no matter what you do, it looks limp and flat and there's nothing you can do about it but put it in the tiniest, saddest little bun ever.

1. The tangles. Oh, the tangles. At the end of Apocalypse Now, when Kurtz manically whispers "the horror, the horror", he is referring to the seemingly impossible ways fine hair can tangle during the course of a regular day. If I leave my hair down, it seems to knot itself in ways even Boy Scouts couldn't replicate and all I was doing was working! Not even in a wind tunnel!

2. It grows so slowly. Some people can cavalierly chop off half their hair like it's NBD and take a #selfie mid-cut with a caption expressing their spontaneity and verve. A girl I work with shrugged, grabbed a pair of scissors, and hacked bangs into her hair last week. I almost threw up from the adrenaline. "Who cares, it's just hair. It grows back." YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE.

3. Most updos look sparse and kind of tragic. Love Elsa's braid in Frozen? Too bad. Go ahead, get Pin-spired. Bust out your mousse and your gel and your wide-toothed comb. It doesn't matter how much backcombing you do, your braid will be so skinny it will start its own anti-body-shaming blog on Tumblr and start dispelling thin privilege.

4. Well-meaning people advising you to "keep it short." I had it short for years because my mom told me it was the only way to cope. I hated it and it did not make it look any fuller than it does now. Fine-haired girls can have long princess hair too!

5. Miniscule, bare-bones buns. Want a messy, "I just threw this together but somehow I look so pretty and elegant" Pinterest bun? Go for it. I did and now I have to go away to the country for a while.

6. Frizz. That will be all. Towards the end of a hair-care cycle, my ends cease to look as though there are individual hairs and takes on the look of a blonde cloud. My boyfriend thinks "fluffy" is a compliment. It is not. Thanks, baby. #Blessed.

7. Letting it air dry is a crap shoot like no other. If I don't blow dry, I'd better just stay home, because bits of it will be straight, bits will have an inordinate amount of curl, and the whole thing will be flatter than the prairies of Manitoba. If I want an adrenaline rush, like I'm really living on the edge, I don't blow dry in the morning.

8. Those wispy bits that stick out from updos. There is no way to tame these, not even with massive amounts of hairspray. No matter how sleek and tight I pull my ponytail, I will always have a halo of baby hairs cropping up from my scalp. Products that claim to be "smoothing" are really just vehicles for grease.

9. When you finally get it perfectly luscious and thick, it fades before you can even glance back up at the mirror, leaving you unsure if you saw a mirage. Much like the moon, my hair is full about once a month, and also much like the moon, the fullness is obscured by any kind of precipitation. If I get rain in the mane, like the moon it wanes (I'll stop now) and I am instantly reminded that all that fullness was never anything but air and LIES.

10. There's no real fix for any of this except extensions. People who hate their hair colour can dye it. People who want their hair thinner can have it thinned. There is no permanent fix for fine hair, and that's why it's the most frustrating hair complaint in existence.

11. Those people who get their hair professionally thinned. "Ooh, I just have too much hair. It's just too lush and thick. Ooh, where's my chode?" Do you know what a tumbleweed sounds like when it scrapes at the wind's mercy across the desert at night? That is the sound of my sympathy for you. THE STRUGGLE IS REAL.

12. When people marvel at how thin/fine your hair is. I have actually had children grab my hair and say "it's so small!" "It's so fine," hairdressers observe. (Sometimes I try to pretend that they mean "fine" in the same way rappers do and that perks me up a bit.) People tug my ponytail and go "Wow, this is all the hair you have!" Well, maybe not, let me just check in the back and make sure there isn't a shipment I've missed. NOPE. THIS IS ALL THERE IS. #BornThisWay.

Want to rant for us? Have any expert tips? Email the editor at caleigh.cross [a] gmail.com or hit us up on Twitter at @FineHairDontCar.

No-Heat Beachy Waves

The textured, "beachy", wavy look is the perfect way to style your hair in summer, which is quite fortunate for fine-haired girls because curls give us a voluminous look. I'm lucky; my hair has some natural curl to it, but even so, I have a hard time getting it just right, especially since I stopped using hot tools. I discovered this method for perfect beachy waves by accident when I unpinned my rolled-up hairstyle at the end of the day and noticed that I had the delicate ringlets I always wanted.

I figured it was one of those flukes where your hair looks flawless right before you go to bed, but a few experiments and tweaks led to this amazing no-heat trick for perfect waves every time. Want beachy waves of your own? Read on!

Start with wet hair and make sure you have two hair clips on hand. Bobby pins will also work, but they can be more damaging to wet hair and they don't hold the rolls as well. Now grab a small section at your forehead, starting at your part, and twist it:

Grab a small section right next to that hair, again next to your part.

You're going to twist that around the first twist, so that the two blend together. In this picture you can see the two wefts of hair I twisted together:

Keep doing that until your roll is long enough to reach the back of your head, then clip in place.

Awesome! Now do the same thing to the other side:

Let your hair dry like this until it feels about 90% dry, then take it out and submit it to your blow dryer (after applying a heat protector, of course.) Once it's dry, roll it in exactly the way you just did and leave it for about 10 minutes. Unroll it and very gently comb it out with a wide-toothed comb. If you want it curlier, just roll it and leave it for another 10 minutes! Repeat until your waves are perfect.

Some days they come out more ringlet-y than others (today I washed my hair, so that may have influenced the texture) but it does give you a little volume boost. Happy curling!

Have you discovered a new way to add volume to fine hair? Simply want to rant about it for a while? Send an email to the editor at caleigh.cross[a]gmail.com or ping us on Twitter @FineHairDontCar!

The Oil Crisis: Keeping Fine Hair Clean-Looking with Karolynn Cziszer

As someone with fine, oily hair, one of the most frustrating challenges is making my hair looking voluminous and avoiding looking like I just rubbed my head in a tub of Crisco. I have tried multiple ways of managing my mane over the years, getting more and more depressed after each failed attempt. After many hours of researching and watching YouTube videos on the subject, I've recently changed the way I manage my hair. I can honestly say that my hair has never looked and felt better and I have never gotten more compliments on it.


The first thing I do may seem like a faux-pas to many people, but I wash my hair every day. I've been told many times that this isn't good for your hair, but if I don't, I end up looking like I deep-condition with vegetable oil. I don't use a shampoo made for oily hair. Since I do have fine hair and I wash my hair daily anyway, I don't feel that I need it. I use a shampoo and conditioner targeted to add volume to my locks. I also do something a little different than most people would do. I condition my hair first (avoiding my roots – since they are oily already, I don't need to add any extra moisture there), then shampoo. I don't know why or how this works, but I saw it on a YouTube video and decided to try it out. Doing it this way leaves my hair looking less oily throughout the day and since they are products to make my hair look voluminous, it's an added bonus!

After a shower, I towel dry my hair as much as I can, then turn my head upside down and blow dry as normal. I then flip my hair up and down a few times (channel your inner Willow Smith) and run my fingers through my roots to add volume.


There are so many products out there for fine hair promising to add volume immediately. I, like many others, have tried quite a few of them. What I've learned through research and my own experience is that the less product you have in your hair, the better. Having too many products in your hair can really weigh it down and that is definitely not the look we are going for. In fact, 98% of the time, I have absolutely no product in my hair.


I hope these tips were helpful to some of you. It's frustrating enough to have fine hair, but to have oily hair on top of that is even more of a struggle. There is something everyone wants to change about themselves, and my hair is one of the things I would love to change about myself if I could. Throughout the years, I have learned to work with it and although it is never easy, it is what it is.

Elegant Dutch Braid Wrapped Bun for Fine Hair

One of the advantages girls with thick mermaid hair have over us members of the fine hair club is their ability to incorporate several looks into one hairstyle, like multiple braids or a braid with a bun. I love intricate braided updos and I get so discouraged when I see a pretty one and try it on myself only for it to look like I'm spreading my hair too thin.

For fine-haired ladies, less is definitely more, but don't let that hold up your braid game! Make no mistakes, this luscious-looking, elegant braid-wrapped bun can be yours in under ten minutes. Try it with us!

The first step is the braid. It's a Dutch lace braid, which is a fancy way of saying that it's an inside-out French braid in which I'm only taking hair from one side of my head (in this case, the hair on the crown). It's important only to add hair from one side so we have some left over to make the bun. If you don't know how to Dutch braid, that's okay! We're going to go over it right now.

The first thing you're going to do is sweep all your hair to the side where you want your bun. For me, it's always my right side, for some reason.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Side-swept and ready to braid!

See my ear? Grab a small section from right above your own and divide it into three.

Braid a full plait section before doing anything else, then twist the two lowermost sections together. (You want to be combining the two closest to your back. Leave the uppermost one alone; it's about to become your new middle section.) Grab a section of hair from your crown that's next to the braided section you just did and braid it underneath your middle section. Braid another full plait before combining the next piece of hair from your crown in the same way. With me so far?

I'm going to weave the top piece underneath the middle one to form a Dutch braid.

Continue braiding, adding in pieces only from the crown, until you reach your other ear. You can't see the back of your head, but you're aiming for something like this as you go along. Notice where I've woven in hair from the top of my head periodically.

When you reach the other side of your head, stop adding in hair but braid the three sections you have until you reach your ends, however long that is. Tie off the braid with a clear elastic and plump it up by gently tugging at each section.

Your braid is done!

Now for the bun. It's all easy from here. Gather all your remaining hair into a ponytail, leaving your long braided end out of this entirely, and tie it with a clear elastic. On your last tightening pass with the elastic, pull your ponytail only part of the way through and wrap the rest around the base. Secure with a bobby pin. You should now have a small bun and a left-out braid section. Wrap the braid section around the base of the small bun and secure that too with a bobby pin. There you have it! An elegant, braid-wrapped bun, fit even for the finest-haired royalty.

See you next #hairstylesaturday!

Did you try the braid-wrapped bun? We want to see! Show us on Twitter @FineHairDontCar with the hashtag #hairstylesaturday or right here in the comments section!

Want to write for us? Have a fun hairstyle idea? Email the editor at caleigh.cross[a]gmail.com! We can't wait to hear what you think.

Going to Great Lengths: Growing Your Fine Hair with Emily Mason

Emily curls her hair with our no-heat method to give it volume.

I was in high school when I decided to stop my annual, traditional shoulder-length cut and tried to imagine myself with long hair. My mother had long hair at my age so I decided it might be a good look for me, too. Mind you, this did not happen overnight; I have been growing my hair out for three years and tending to it in new ways as it grows. I had first trimmed the bottom of where my then highlights were still visible to get rid of the dead hair and occasionally will get a small trim to remove split ends.

As of today, I realize how much my hair-care situation has changed. My hair does seem to get in the way at times and turns up almost everywhere as I tend to lose pieces. Even my shower time is longer, since I always need the extra time to wash my hair. As for my tactics for hair-care, I tend to wash it every other day. On the first day, I usually stick it up in a ponytail or bun to keep it fairly healthy looking on the second day, when I usually wear it down. I enjoy being creative with my hair, getting some ideas from my favourite magazine and attempting them on my own. That said, I do enjoy just styling my hair the natural way. I do not ever straighten my hair, but will admit to occasionally curling it. As everyone understands, having it plain and simple is just easier when I’m in a rush! I always brush my hair daily

Surprisingly, having long hair is not too much work, it just requires patience and learning about what your hair type is like and how it works best. In the long run, it is worth it to see the end results.

Emily, 19