If you’ve been keeping up with my articles over the last few weeks, specifically one called “Autumn of Breakups Do’s and Don’ts,” you’ll remember that I box dyed (or rather TRIED to box dye) my own hair from brown to blonde for six months and cut my own bangs for at least half that time during an unfortunate life crisis my freshman year.
On top of that, I was also straightening or curling it with a flatiron on full heat almost every day AND I decided in the midst of all these poor hair decisions that I wanted to get five or six inches chopped off too.
Needless to say, when I woke up one day in May and finally acknowledged my unhappy scalp and fried split ends I was at the store buying brown dye to start growing my natural hair back out as soon as I could.
Of course—because I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t really learn certain lessons the hard way—I kept flat ironing my hair at every opportunity, on full heat, taking no measures whatsoever to protect my hair besides using cheap damage control products every other wash.
Then (FINALLY) I woke up one day in August and realized that, hey, I started growing my hair out three months ago and I still couldn’t put my bangs behind my ear and my roots were barely coming through the brown dye. For some people that may not have been too big of a red flag but coming from a family with pretty fast-growing hair genes there may as well have been someone in the room waving a real red flag in my face.
Around that same time, I was Snapchatting with a friend in my natural hair—curly but also poofed out and frizzy because of the damage—and complaining about having to straighten it for a date the next day when she said something that totally changed the game for me: “I actually like your natural curly hair better.”
In that moment, I was the epitome of the mind blown emoji.
I sat there, looking like that, and had a full on existential hair crisis. Why had I been straightening it for so long? Why did I start in the first place? Why instead of using my natural curls did I think I had to flatiron ‘better’ ones? When did my natural hair stop being enough for me? (Ultimately, I decided to blame the patriarchy for all of the above.)
I still ended up straightening my hair for the date I went on the next day, but I decided that after that I would spend thirty days without heat styling and try to repair what I had been ruthlessly damaging for so many months. The thirty days were up at the end of September, but it’s two weeks (maybe three by the time you’re reading this) later and I haven’t so much as plugged in a flatiron.
My thirty-day challenge not only let my scalp heal and kick started my hair growth, but it also gave me an appreciation and love for my natural hair that I hadn’t felt in a really long time, and for that reason I would really recommend committing to thirty days with no heat styling to see if you get the same results.
Of course, I’m all for doing things that you enjoy or make you feel your best and most beautiful for yourself, but if you’re ever doing it because you think you have to or you think what you have doesn’t fit some kind of unattainable beauty standard, then this is definitely a challenge worth trying.