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.
OMFG #12. My sister (who has incredibly thick hair) never understood why it upset me when she would exclaim "Your hair is so thin!!"
ReplyDeleteIt would really do my head in to have a sister with thick hair! Everyone in my family has fine hair and mine is probably the thickest, and that's not saying much.
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