Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Hide or Seek?

Now that winter has set in many of my guests have been telling me they have been noticing halo frizz. WHY would that be and how could it be happening? Now that the summer humidity is over with, we have a different problem to contend with. Instead of moisture being readily available, (and almost too plentiful in some places!) our hair is now on a desperate search for moisture in the environment and it is not finding it! So, where does moisture hide in the winter time? It hides where cold people like to be: in the boiling HOT shower, over a steaming bowl of soup, your mug of coffee, or, for me, standing over the cleansing basin all day. You will find that there is no in-between with steam. Your hair either must hide from it, or is constantly seeking it. I myself must protect my baby fine strands from the steam of my shower unless I want to look like the Heat Miser. My hair will lose definition, fall flat, and become lifeless if I leave it uncovered for a hot bath or shower.  The following tips are for those hair types that must hide from the steam in the winter, and I will cover in another post how to seek steam and use it as an advantage for those whose hair type benefits from it.

 I have many clients lament that they wear a shower cap, but there are some fatal flaws we can make such as leaving out the hairline, which just so happens to be extra vulnerable to frizzing since the hairline is where some of our shorter baby hairs live. One of the best ways to protect your hair from the steam is to place a hair Buff on your head first, THEN place your shower cap over that. THE MOST IMPORTANT YET VERY SIMPLE STEP IS AS FOLLOWS: Do not remove either the Buff OR the shower cap until you have left the bathroom. That steam is hanging out in your bathroom just waiting to tease up those baby hairs with it's sweet, steamy caress.

Another issue people can come across is feeling the need to adjust curls after sleeping, and they reach for a wet product to do so. This is a tough one to suss out, but if your hair is the type to frizz like crazy when you are in the shower, chances are you shouldn't be using something water-based to try and refresh with. Instead, use a cream or oil based product to settle down frizz, or better yet, prevent the friction on your curls in the first place by sleeping in your buff, or a topknot with a satin pillowcase. If you find you must settle a few curls down, take the approach of placing a small amount of your desired touch-up product (typically not gel) like a leave-in, cream, or pure, unadulterated oil, directly in your palm and moving from the root to the end, sweep the product onto the misbehaving curl and wind it the direction the curl naturally turns.

So what about exercise? This one can be challenging as well because we must work under the premise that the hair will get wet with perspiration. Since this is unavoidable, you can place your hair back away from your face by either wearing it in a topknot of pinning with bobby pins. I do not recommend a headband as the combo of tension and moisture will cause a dent or crimp in the hair, but you could try a buff or a half buff headband. First though, before exercising, use a good coating of spray gel or place some light hold gel on your fingertips and work it all around your hairline, sweeping away from your face. As your hair dampens, you will then have the extra coverage of the gel already present, and your hair will fall into a cast again as it re-dries. Once you are dry, flip forward and scrunch/shuffle gently at the root.

If you are planning to do some major cooking, opening and closing the oven door, standing over roiling pots of boiling water, you could put on your buff, or you could keep some plastic elastic caps tucked in between your cling wrap and tinfoil for such occasions. If you are like me, you will enjoy pretending to be a lunch lady and scaring your kids with your high-pitched Julia Childs impersonation. Plus, this keeps your lovely locks protected from enthusiastically flung bits of food and keeps your DNA out of the dinner.