Pinterest is a fun website. You can find loads of pictures of makeup, outfits, recipes, books, decorations, furniture, art, photography, puppies, kitties, polar bears hugging wolves...pretty much anything you can imagine. However, it is a rabbit hole...once you enter, you fall into it and find yourself in an entirely new world.
Yesterday, I took one particularly disastrous tumble. You see, I have wavy hair. Thick, frizzy, wavy hair. Picture Kelly McGillis from Top Gun. That's my hair.
While I'm sure this was considered hot in 1986 (it wasn't), it really isn't my style here in 2013. I usually straighten my hair, but a) it's time consuming and b) it's very damaging to my hair. I decided that maybe I'd see if I could rock my waves. I mean, I'd be okay with my waves if they were tamer, smoother, glossier. More like this:
This is when I made my mistake. My "Pinterest Fail". I started searching for ways to get my hair from looking like Kelly McGillis' to looking like the woman in picture 2. I stumbled upon various different pins showing gorgeous curls and waves by using the "plopping" method. Well, this gave me pause. I've recently had a string of unfortunate Google searches which have resulted in porn. (I wanted to find the .gif from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure of the character Large Marge, so I innocently typed "large marge gif" in the search bar...and got images of SIMPSONS PORN. Did you know that's a thing? Well, now I do and no amount of brain bleach will get rid of THOSE images.) But steeling my courage and with one eye closed (to lessen the amount of porn I could accidentally see), I typed "plopping method" into the search engine. Lo and behold, I found not porn but legitimate non-porn websites explaining "plopping" or "plunking".
Basically it goes like this:
- Step 1: Condition your hair. It is strongly advised that you no longer shampoo your hair (the no-poo movement (enter joke here)), but if you must, do it and then condition. And then re condition. You can comb your hair while in the shower, but not once after! This is it for any knots.
- Step 2: Condition your hair. Seriously, now you put in leave-in conditioner. This is supposed to keep your hair so moist that it can't frizz (dry hair frizzes more than moisturized). But do NOT towel dry your hair. Step away from the towel. Towels cannot touch your hair. Bad towel, bad!
- Step 3: Plop. Ok, so this is when you do the plopping. Since you can't use a towel on your hair, you use either a micro-fiber towel or a t-shirt. Long or short-sleeved, your choice. Leaning over the t-shirt, you position your hair on the t-shirt, put the shirt over your head and then twist the edges around and tie them at the back so you have a sort of turban deal going on.
- Step 4: Dry. You leave your hair plopped for 20 minutes, and then you can blow-dry your hair with a diffuser only! until your hair is 80% dry. No more than 80%. How you can tell then your hair is 80% dry versus, say 84% or 76%, I have no idea. If there's a hair dryness meter, I don't have one. It also says that you can just leave your hair up and sleep in the t-shirt and skip the hair drier all together.
- Step 5: No touch! That's right. No touching your hair. It'll just frizz, so noooo touchy.
What followed were the aforementioned pictures of gorgeous hair, curly or wavy. And I fell. Hook. Line. Sinker.
Last night I decided to wash my hair before going to bed and since it's humid outside, I figured straightening my hair was a lost cause (humidity + straightened hair = frizz). I washed my hair (the dreaded shampoo) and conditioned it. Left the conditioner on for like 5 minutes. I put in leave in conditioner. I didn't so much as LOOK at my combs/brushes. I found a t-shirt (while dripping wet) and went for the plop. Not as easy as they describe, let me tell you. Attempt 1 immediately fell off again. Attempt 2 was slightly better, but I had all this extra t-shirt hanging out the sides. Attempt 3 was finally right...ish. No matter, I jumped into bed prepared to wait my 20 minutes and then see what it looked like. Unfortunately, this is just when my husband decided to come into the bedroom...and laugh. I explained to him plopping (more chortling) and how it would give me gorgeous, frizz-free waves. He replied by asking me where the snake I was going to charm was. 20 minutes and several wise-cracks from the husband later, I was falling asleep. I had no energy to blow dry my hair (only to 80% but still), so I opted to sleep in it.
I woke up still in the t-shirt turban and stood in front of the mirror to see...waves. And no frizz. Ok, so the waves on the right side weren't as tight as the waves on the left, but I just heated up my curling iron and spruced them up a bit. I was dressed and out the door in no time...and walked out into a damp, humid, slightly windy day. Wind + damp/humidity is even worse on frizz than just regular humidity. It's like blow drying your hair with humidity. My hair immediately started to grow. And frizz. I didn't have time to fix it, so I ran out the door. I could feel my hair frizzing as I drove to the train station. It was growing as I waited for the train. It started invading my face and tickling my eye lashes as I made my way in to the city. And on the final walk from the station to my office, I was in full on attack.
My hair was trying to eat me. Like straight out of Looney Tunes, the hair monster was trying to attack and eat me.
No amount of trying to smooth (broke the rule - no touching!) it helped. I tried adding a glossing/smoothing coconut oil, but it was too late. I was in full-on Kelly McGillis hair. The hair monster had won.
So here I am, armed only with one stretched out hair tie and baby clip which can only hold about 10 strands of my hair and having to face my day as Kelly McGillis. It's too bad Halloween is still 2 weeks away. I would totally win any costume contest. I would take a picture and show you, I really would, but my phone battery is dead, so there goes that. Instead I invite you to use your imagination. Create what you imagine me to look like in your own heads. I assure you, it can't be as bad as the real thing.
Lesson learned. Pinterest is a cruel, cruel master and I think I need to slowly and calmly walk away.
Stay tuned for tomorrow. I promised an actual book review and you'll get one! Alice in Zombieland. (Hence the rabbit hole theme. See what I did there?)
Taking place in a different fantastical world, it's the story of a young boy, Garion, who is being raised on a farm by his Aunt Pol. A migrant story-teller, Mr. Wolf, comes to visit now and then and befriends the boy. When Garion is about 14, events in his life take a turn for the strange and dangerous and he, his aunt, Mr. Wolf and the farm's blacksmith, Durnik, leave on an adventure to search for "someone" who has stolen "something". These people and that thing will turn Garion's ordinary life into something extraordinary, and everything he thought he knew gets flipped around. 