I have a secret. This one is a deep dark truth I keep hidden for fear that I will be harshly judged and possibly shunned according to the girl code that states I must either actually hate all parts of my physical self or pretend to. Low self-esteem among women is rampant and seemingly expected. If you tell a woman you love her shoes, for example, she will likely say, “Oh thanks, yeah, they were on sale and so cute, but I wasn’t sure. You think they’re okay really”? This being the common answer except among the closest of friends because to say, “I know. They are so fantastic and I feel like Giselle every time I wear them,” would sound arrogant and be taken as a catty diss to the person complimenting you. It can be exhausting learning all the girl rules and I admit I’m not so great at it, being the type to say whatever pops into my head. Knowing all that I try to keep my secret hidden, but today I am brave and will just blurt it out: “I LOVE my hair”!
You might not think this is such a big deal, but in a society where it is commonplace to spend hundreds of dollars on the right cut, color, highlights and even a blow out and style for a special evening, my relatively cheap and low maintenance hair routine could start trouble. I get my hair cut maybe every 3-4 months. I color at home and even do some of my own highlights. I don’t use pricey salon products and prefer to alternate Head and Shoulders for scalp health with Pantene products for cleansing and conditioning. I have a voluminizing tonic and a pomade that I use when styling sometimes, but mostly just go with a light hairspray to tame the flyaways. The real crime against femininity, however, is my refusal to religiously blow dry or curl/straighten my hair, preferring to let it air dry then working with however it turns out.
I know this sounds like a silly blog and a shallow truth, but women know the hours of anguish, teasing, prodding, curling, etc. that go into just one day of decent hair and quite honestly when I wake up in the morning my hair usually looks pretty great. I’m not the type of woman to have newscaster hair, I mean it’s definitely on the more natural side. I’m sort of beachy chic most days, but I can pull off polished in minutes. My hair will do whatever I want. Stick straight, wavy, curly, pulled back, left down, blowing in the wind, you name it, my mane will do it and usually without much effort. The crux of this is that I never really learned the tricks to styling that most women know, because I never spend any time doing it. I finally got a straightener last year, well after everyone else and it took me weeks to figure out how to use it.
Women just seem so much more savvy than I about a lot of these things.I think it’s part tomboy, part more guy friends than girl friends, and a whole lot of my hair is just so frickin’ awesome! The best part is how soft and silky it is. I love to touch my hair. In fact, I run my hands through it all the time, which is also a style killer for those times I do actually spend more than 5 minutes to work it into a discernible coif. I try not to do too much to it or talk about it mainly because it is such a crime against womanhood to admit you love something about yourself. It is much more acceptable to complain about your fat thighs, cellulite, pot belly, man toes or whatever else you’ve decided is wrong with you. People think self-esteem is a state of mind, but that’s crap. Self-esteem is partially tied to whatever society deems is an appropriate response to that which you are genetically gifted. Men have no qualms about walking around without shirts, showing off enormous man boobs and/or hairy belly. While you might think it is because those guys just don’t care, the truth is that we have come to expect and as a result, accept it. Hence, society thinks it’s a-okay!
What we do not think is okay is an arrogant or egotistical woman. True, we may criticize men for these traits, but an ego on a guy is kind of hot. We like that and while we may chide him about it or put it down to our girl friends, in private we want the hot arrogant guy who thinks he’s hot, because it must mean he’s hot. But just meet a woman who knowingly admits she’s got a rockin’ body, amazing eyes, or fabulous hair and you will also meet a parade of people who think she’s a shallow bitch. So I keep my hair love under wraps so to speak. Which reminds me, I even like the way it looks when I wear a hat.
Bottom line, after being a typical insecure, low-self esteem riddled woman for 30 or so years I don’t really know how to like myself. What is the appropriate protocol for being a woman and loving something about yourself? Even more, does it even matter? We always find something else to downplay or criticize about ourselves. So you’ve got a great body, are a fantastic Mother, exciting wife, intelligent, pretty . . . but you feel bad about yourself because you like to have a glass of wine or a cocktail everyday. Suddenly your positives are trumped by a negative you can’t see past. When you look into a mirror you don’t see who and what you are, you see what others might think of you. Keeping that in mind, I know I may not be able to see past my flaws, so I’m just going to concentrate on the one positive I can see, I’m going to love my hair!
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