The Day I Learned My Hair Was Basically A Rock Collection:

I Thought My Hair Was Just Frizzy

When I last wrote about my hair, I had recently given myself what I lovingly referred to as a “full reset.” That haircut also introduced a new recurring character into my life:

Alfalfa Bang.

One particular piece of hair at the front of my head had apparently decided that participating in the overall hairstyle was optional. No matter what the rest of my hair was doing, Alfalfa Bang was going to point upward, sideways, or wherever else she pleased. I thought that was going to be the main problem I had to solve.

It was not.

At this point I knew I had a curl pattern. I just couldn’t figure out why they were permanently surrounded by a weather system.

Because while I was experimenting with mousse, T-shirt plopping, root clips, drying techniques, and various methods of persuading my hair to curl in approximately the same direction, I started noticing something much stranger. My hair was becoming increasingly difficult to get wet. Not “it takes a second for thick hair to saturate.” I mean I could put my head under running water and feel like the water was hitting the outside of my hair instead of actually soaking into it. I had to deliberately work the water through before it would finally feel completely wet, and, because this had apparently happened gradually enough, I mostly accepted it as another one of my hair’s weird personality traits.

Then I learned chelating shampoo exists.

I had heard of clarifying shampoo. Chelating shampoo? Absolutely not. And when I learned what it was supposed to do, I suddenly became extremely suspicious of every shower I had taken for most of my life. Hard water contains dissolved minerals. Most notably calcium and magnesium. That can accumulate on hair over time. Regular shampoo can remove oils and styling-product buildup, but chelating shampoos contain ingredients designed to bind to mineral deposits so they can be washed away.

I have lived in places with hard water for a lot of my life. Apparently nobody thought to tell me that my head could slowly become a geological exhibit. So I tried a chelating shampoo. My hair immediately became much easier to saturate with water.

That was the moment this went from “maybe this will help my frizz” to:

Oh.

OH!

Apparently I had been styling a rock collection.

Now, I can’t prove that hard water was responsible for every bit of frizz I have ever had. Curly and wavy hair frizzes. My hair has plenty of little flyaways. Humidity exists. Sleeping on it exists. And I have discovered through rigorous scientific investigation that LEAVING THE FAN ON WHILE MY HAIR DRIES IS A CRIME!

But looking through my photos has made the progression really obvious. Earlier in the experiment, I could see curls trying to form underneath a big fuzzy halo. There were waves and even some spirals in there, but individual clumps broke apart easily and the surface of my hair looked much rougher.

Then I started figuring out the styling part. More mousse helped.

A longer T-shirt plop helped. Root clips helped enormously with the flat-crown problem I kept having.

Part of the ongoing experiment: Convincing my roots that gravity is not mandatory.

And then chelating seemed to remove another obstacle entirely. My curls started forming into much more obvious, cohesive shapes.

Not just vague waves, either. Actual loops. Actual spirals. Actual curls beginning surprisingly close to my roots.

And because nothing in this hair experiment is allowed to happen normally, one of my best curl days came completely by accident.

Enter: Sleeping Me

One night, after chelating my hair, I put it into a T-shirt plop.

Then I fell asleep. Apparently at some point during the night, Sleeping Me decided that the plop had been on long enough and removed it. I have no memory of doing this. I therefore cannot provide a tutorial. Sleeping Me refuses to release her methodology. But somehow, between the mousse setting, my hair being supported while I slept, and whatever mysterious curl-arranging activities unconscious me performed, I woke up with some of the strongest curls I had gotten yet.

There was still frizz, because, again, I had literally slept on damp wavy hair. But the underlying curl pattern was fantastic.

Which also introduced another member of the cast.

Honorable Mention: Alfalfa Curl

Alfalfa Bang apparently needed a friend. One full-length curl near the top of my head dried almost completely upright, creating what can only be described as Alfalfa Bang 2.0 with significantly more acreage.

It wasn’t a little flyaway. It was an entire adult curl standing at attention.

Eventually I managed to clip Alfalfa Curl down with one of my enormous periwinkle bows, while Alfalfa Bang herself continued doing whatever the hell she wanted.

Fortunately, she has since acquired a new best friend:

a tiny butterfly clip approximately the same color as my hair.

The clip is small enough to disappear into the curls, but strong enough to convince Alfalfa Bang that perhaps vertical isn’t the only possible direction.

We have reached a tentative peace agreement.

The weirdest part is watching the frizz change. Looking through all of these photos in order is what really convinced me that something had changed.

My hair isn’t suddenly frizz-free. I don’t think it ever will be, and honestly I don’t think I want it to be. Some softness and halo frizz are just part of having textured hair. But there’s a difference between having frizz around defined curls and having so much roughness and separation that the curls themselves struggle to stay together. That second kind is what seems to have decreased.

The more mineral buildup stayed under control, and the better I got at leaving my curls alone while they set, the more individual curl clumps stayed intact. And now I have something even more useful than a strict schedule for chelating:

I know my warning sign.

If my hair suddenly starts taking forever to get completely wet again, I pay attention. I’m not planning to use chelating shampoo constantly. It’s a stronger cleansing step, and I don’t want to strip my hair unnecessarily. But instead of blindly assuming my hair has randomly decided to stop cooperating, I now know that mineral buildup is one possibility worth considering. Which feels slightly ridiculous considering how long I have had this hair.

I spent years thinking:

“Wow, my hair is just really frizzy.”

Meanwhile my hair was apparently going:

“Ma’am, I am encrusted.”

So the current routine is still evolving. There is mousse. There is plopping. There are ridiculous pink root clips. There are bows large enough to restrain rogue curls. There is a tiny butterfly clip assigned specifically to Alfalfa Bang.

And above all else:

THE FAN STAYS OFF.

But for the first time, I feel like I’m actually seeing what my natural curl pattern looks like instead of trying to find it underneath everything that had accumulated on top of it. Turns out my hair wasn’t necessarily asking for seventeen more products. It may have just needed someone to remove the rocks.