Hair

Has anyone been watching the new extended version of the T.oday show on N.BC? I watched the extra hour for the first time today and found myself enjoying it - it's definitely geared towards the stay-at-home mom (I guess they are the biggest demographic watching tv late morning on a weekday), but I found the segments were surprisingly good. And I was glad that Ann Curry wasn't too involved with it - I don't care for her AT ALL.

Anyway, they did a segment today on how everyone wants what they don't have when it comes to hair style - curly or straight. I've been thinking about this alot, because I have naturally wavy (not curly) hair that I have always blown out straight and then spent 20 minutes with a flat-iron to get it perfectly straight and flat. There was a time in college when I could achieve a pretty decent straight and bouncy look with using those fat hot rollers instead of a flat-iron, but then my hair texture changed or something and the fat rollers didn't work as well, so it was back to the flat iron. So except for the hot rollers and a few days here and there in college and grad school when I just went out with it wet in a ponytail, the blowdryer/flat-iron has been my routine for the past 16 years (wow - that's a really long time! totally unrelated, but the thing about getting older is that it shocks me how long ago I was in high school - it stills feels like it was just a few years ago, but 16 years is a LONG time.).

But lately, I've been rethinking my hair. In part, it's a practical issue - I just don't have the patience or time to spend 40 minutes on my hair - but it's also part of me just wanting to accept my hair the way it is and not fight it. I have wavy hair - not curly, straight, or flat hair - and even though it is thick and frizzy sometimes, it's the way my hair is and what it does. So for the past 6 weeks, I have given up on the flat-iron. I still blow-dry, but only for about 5 minutes and with the diffuser on. I think just let it air-dry and go. It looks pretty good until about 4 pm, when it starts to get really limp and then I pull it up in a ponytail.

But I'm loving the ease of it and the ability to only spend about 10 minutes on my hair. And it's nice to just accept it as it is. Here's a picture of my flat-iron straight hair and a recent picture of it just as it is:

I love how shiny it looks when its straight, but I don't know if its really worth all the effort. I've gotten a few compliments on the air-dried look, but I'm still not sure. Thoughts?