The Hot Comb
Part, section, sizzle. Mama stood behind me as I sat in a wooden kitchen chair with globs of grease protecting the skin around my hairline “hold your ear, baby”. My mother would say as she methodically worked from the nap of my neck with the hot comb turning my coily strands into hot flatten pieces that smelled of smoking grease.
Mama took pride in keeping us well-groomed and even added hot oil treatments to help combat the damage of the heat, but man am I glad hair tools have evolved from those days of having my hair straightened with a hot comb on the stovetop.
The Relaxer
It was around middle school that she started paying for us to have it chemically straightened at the salon. Over time the combination of heat, chemicals and poor conditioning practices led to thinning and breakage of my weakened relaxed hair. As I got into my teen years, I furthered the damage by adding color to the mix.
Even though my conscience knew the way I was treating my hair wasn’t healthy it was all about looking the part in those impressionable years. I know that I only have a couple more influential years of controlling what Giana does with her naturally curly hair. Therefore, I’ve taken a direct approach to educating her on the benefits and risk of adding heat to her regimen, I think she is getting it!
Curls from an Eight Year Old’s perspective!
A chat with Gigi about her hair.
- What does being a natural curly mean to you?
It’s important. Having these beautiful curls, some people want curls and they’re curling their hair to try to get them.
- How often do you get your hair trimmed?
About every 6 months
- Why did you choose to straighten your curls?
I hadn’t gotten my hair straightened in a while and thought it might be fun for family fun night.
- Tell them what family fun night is? Every Friday we have family fun night and basically it’s movie night. And sometimes we have extra time and my parent’s watch their movie while we play in the playroom or underneath the stairs.
- What was different about this week’s family fun night? We moved the couch and made a big family bed, we had a snack dinner.
- Whose hair do you admire?
Mine.
You can’t admire your own hair!
Okay than yours (the girl is smart, what can I say).
- Do you and your friends talk about hair?
Not really!
- What about make-up? No
- Anything about beauty? No
- You came up with a salon business for entrepreneur day so there had to be some talk of beauty? No
No hair, no make-up talk in 3rdgrade.
- What was your favorite part of getting a deep conditioning treatment and blow out at Serenity Salon and Day Spa in Madison?
It felt good.
- What part felt good?
The massaging
- The massaging of the scalp during the shampooing and conditioning.
- Cause when your mom does your hair every week, does she not do the massaging part as much?
Well you probably do it maybe once in two weeks.
Dione: Mmmm every other week, not sufficient, got it!
- What did you do to earn the treatment?
I worked for SWURLY, I bagged up the hats for retail.
Enter Misha
Dione- We are in an interview right now. Quiet on the set
I put the stickers, I added the hang tags and tissue paper.
Dione: You did a very good job.
I grabbed the hats.
Dione: She really is a great intern!
- What do you notice about your straight locs vs when you are wearing your naturally curly hair? What is the difference you’ve seen in your hair over the last couple of days?
Straight hair is hard to keep brushed.
- Tamed? It kind of gets messy? Around your edges, around your hairline?
Yeah. That’s why I’m wearing a headband.
Dione: Leave it off, it looks cute.
- What do you notice about your length?
Oh it’s way longer, especially my ends are like this far.
- Dione: Anything else you notice?
- I notice that you keep touching it and wanting to brush it and putting your hand’s through it. It’s a little bit easier for you to mess with?
Yeah
Misha: What are you doing? What are you saying?
Giana: Sorry about her
Misha: sqeallll!
Giana and Dione: Laughter
Dione: Quiet on the set!
- What is your current wash routine?
Well, I get up, I eat breakfast.
Dione: No, they don’t want to know your life routine they want to know your hair routine.
- How often do you wash it?
Once a week.
- After we wash it what do we do?
Misha: Your eraser is broken HAHA
So sometimes we leave it in a cap. A SWURLY cap that you tie up
Dione: Irie….Misha, I almost called her the dog’s name. Misha Quiet on the set.
d. What do we do?
You put your cap on and you twist it up, and stuff. The SWURLY microfiber towel. Then we wait a few minutes and then my mom puts our hair in a protective style.
e. Can you explain what a protective style is?
Something like pigtails is not a protective style, braids are. Buns? Umm… Yep are, ponytails aren’t, your hair just down like this is not.
Dione: So a protective style your hair is protected because it’s placed in a style that is stronger than the loose strands. Yep okay.
- We wash once a week
- Deep conditioning with SWURLY microfiber towel on top of a plastic cap
- Protective style
Giana: They can see Irie in the background and she is not in her place.
Dione: That’s okay no one put her in her place to start with.
- If you could change anything about the way your mom styles your hair what would it be?
Misha: Chocolate flavored hair cut
Giana: I have no idea.
Is there a style you want me to do that I haven’t done that you want me to do?
The UNICORN Horn one.
Dione: That’s your only wish? We will have to work on the Unicorn one.
Giana; You braid it up and then a ponytail in the back.
Dione: We will think about it. For now, that’s it from Laufty Life. Can the see the back of your blown out?
Misha: Don’t give them anything
Dione: This is day three hair blown out and straightened at Serenity. Thanks for watching.
Misha: You already did that two times.
Giana: Go check out Serenity!
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