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

REVIEW: Beer is Awesome (You Know, For Your Hair)

Who here loves beer? I do, but it turns out my six-pack of Newcastle Brown has some extra benefits! I read an article this weekend by AllWomenStalk about this beer and egg yolk hair mask, recommended for fine hair. Apparently beer contains lots of nutrients and the ability to bring your hair bounce and verve.

Well, the purpose of #reviewsdaytuesday is to go boldly forth so I can report back and stop you whipping a shot glass full of beer into an egg like some kind of intervention-worthy omelette and then pour it over your head if it is all going to be in vain. I took one for the team and spent half an hour on Sunday with a plastic bag over my head, unable to be taken seriously and smelling oddly sweet. Sometimes you just have to champ it out.

The recipe was originally only meant to include an egg yolk, but I've read that a whole egg by itself can help strengthen hair, so I thought while I was already experimenting, I'd skip separating the egg and just crack it into a measuring cup with 1/5 cup flat beer already in. Then I whipped the mixture with a fork, briefly wondered whether scrambling this might actually taste alright or be socially acceptable, and took the plunge. I used my hands to spread it all through my damp hair just like you do when shampooing and promptly wrapped my head in a plastic grocery bag.

The AllWomenStalk article recommended allowing the mixture to sit in your hair for half an hour, so that is just what I did, with my cat on my lap pondering the odd behaviours of humans. The smell was not unpleasant (kind of sweet, almost on the verge of being cloying), but not very strong, so I had no problem waiting.

I noticed a difference in how my hair felt as soon as I got in the shower to shampoo the mask out of my hair. (Tip for the pros: use cold water to avoid cooking the egg in your hair. This can happen. While technically cooked, the egg is inedible. It's basically a lose-lose situation.) It felt much thicker, like there was all of a sudden more hair I was shampooing. I was really excited to blow dry and see if the results carried through to my dry hair, and I am pleased to report that my hair felt healthier than before I poured beer all over it. My natural waves had more definition and my hair was shinier. I don't all of a sudden have Jennifer Aniston's lush tresses, but my hair feels and looks thicker and glossier than before, so on the whole, if you don't mind pouring out good beer on your hair and you have half an hour to spare, I recommend this hair mask! With only two ingredients, it's simple, and you can use the half an hour to catch up on reading (or writing a guest post for us!)

Did you try the beer-and-egg mask? Did it work for you? Share with us in the comments!

Want to write for us? Tweet the editor @CaleighCross!

Loving Your Fine Hair

You can see right through my hair if the light is strong enough behind me. When I gather it into a ponytail, I can almost wrap my little finger all the way around it. "Ethereal" is a complimentary term for it; "wispy" and "sparse" are some not-very-nice variations. There's no doubt about it: I have baby-fine hair, and there are days when I get so frustrated I want to grab the nearest razor and shear myself like a sheep. (I have successfully stopped myself doing this several times with the knowledge that by the time I have even chin-length hair again, I will be in a retirement home and will be lucky to have hair at all, if my dad's genetics are anything to go by.)

Complaints aside, though, fine hair is gorgeous if properly taken care of. It has been considered in the past a mark of great beauty to have very fine, fair hair and I think today, fine-haired ladies are done a great disservice by people who advise us to just chop it off and make the best of it. The trick to having elegant, envy-inspiring fine hair is keeping it healthy, and today I want to take a few minutes and go over the basics of hair health.

Raise your right hand and repeat after me: I will minimise the messing about I do with my hair. That means heat treatments, colouring, and any chemical alterations to the protein structure (perms, straightening treatments, etc.) High heat, bleaching, and chemicals in general are incredibly damaging to your hair, so unplug that iron and put away the hairspray. The more you damage your hair, the more it will break, and the more breakage you have, the finer your hair looks. It's best to embrace your natural texture and colour, at least for a while, to let your hair recover.

If you absolutely must blow-dry, straighten, or curl those tresses, use a heat protectant. Find a good spray, lotion, or oil (for those whose hair is not naturally greasy) that says some version of "high heat protection" and use it liberally every time you use heat on your hair. It will slow the progress of split ends and afford you more time between trims. Moroccan argan oil is especially great for this. Heat protection is especially important for those trying to grow their hair! (Editors' note: there are plenty of ways to curl and straighten hair without heat. They'll be posted on a #HairstyleSaturday coming soon!)

Try to look for a shampoo and conditioner that are sulfate-free. All-natural is the absolute best you can do for your hair. Shampoos with biotin or wheat proteins will help hair look thicker, but anything natural is nourishing. Stay as far away from harsh chemicals as you possibly can.

While we're discussing showers, wash your hair with cold water. You don't have to use cold water the whole time, but when you rinse and condition your hair, make the water as cold as you can handle. Hot water makes your hair even more fragile than it already is, cuts down on shine, and can be damaging over time, while cold water seals the follicle and gives wet hair a little added strength. Hair is at its most fragile when it's wet, so after a shower, treat combing your hair like open-heart surgery. I try to avoid combing my wet hair at all costs, but if you must do it, make aquaintances with a wide-toothed comb post-haste. The less hair you lose, the better for your style.

For those with greasy hair, this advice is daunting, but only shampoo your hair every other day. Too-frequent shampooing can strip hair of its natural oils and eventually dry it out, making it more prone to breakage. Once your hair gets in the rhythm of an every-other-day shampoo regimen, it should start to look less oily between washes. Try it. I dare you. (Another upside to this is that second-day hair makes the updos we post every Saturday both easier to do and prettier, with more texture.)

However, you must condition every day, and when you do, leave conditioner in for at least three minutes in the shower before rinsing it out. This is a commandment from on high. Leaving your conditioner in and giving it time to soak into your hair allows for maximum moisture, which is a Thing You Want. (Moisture helps prevent all that breakage we've been talking about.)

My final Word of Wisdom this Thursday is really generic and good for pretty much every complaint you have about your body: eat properly and drink lots of water. Your hair is protein, right? And we know from high school biology that proteins are made up of amino acids, which are found in our diets. Eating a proper diet gives your body the raw materials it needs to grow longer, thicker, and healthier hair. Things like dark leafy greens, fish, beans, and meat proteins are especially good. Remember, 6-8 glasses of water a day will cure pretty much whatever ails you. Now, go free, drink water, and be fabulous!

Caleigh is a writer, editor, and blogger who spends way too much time playing with her hair. Follow her on Twitter @CaleighCross!