If Your Hair Could Talk

Dear (insert your name here),

You’re lucky I can’t talk because if I could, I would scream. You don’t appreciate me or show me the attention that I deserve, and for that, I have been trying to break up with you. Can’t you tell by all of the split ends?

Don’t think that just because I am a bunch of dead cells, I don’t have feelings. I can hear you when you say, “Wow, I hate my hair recently. It will never cooperate.” And you wonder why? You don’t even have the decency to talk about me behind my back. I know that you love to paint your nails black, use Chloe perfume, and wear red lipstick out on Thursdays. Now what do you know about me? This relationship is so one-sided!

If you would pay closer attention, you’d learn to master natural texture. I’m curly, and therefore much more prone to breakage, yet you insist on ripping plastic bristles through me and burning me to a crisp with your straightener. I know my cowlick is out of control—but I’m just as I was meant to be made. If you put in a bit of leave-in, I can be tamed. I’m sick of you complaining, “My hair used to be so much thicker and straighter in middle school!” I change every seven years. Sorry my texture and color that I had in 6^th grade won’t be what you have for your whole life. And seven years from now, it will change again. Deal with it.

Now, I get that all you want is to have hair that grows past your boobs, and I want that for you too. Really, I do. But you need to trim me more than twice a year. My split ends grow up faster than my hair grows down, meaning that the longer you put off trimming, the deader I become. While I appreciate all of the Biotin vitamins you’ve been taking, even if you use those, growth stops the moment the ends split. Trim me once every two months. I promise you’ll see a difference.

Let’s talk about showering. Use a clarifying shampoo once or twice a week to get the build-up out of my roots. A deep conditioner twice a week would be great too. Post shower is my biggest complaint: don’t rake a brush through me the moment you step onto dry land. When I am wet I am at my most vulnerable. If you brush me with a wide-toothed comb after applying leave-in conditioner and letting me air dry for a few minutes, I will love you forever.

I know you like to make me look pretty before a night out, but I hate when you use a blow-dryer and then a straightener or curling iron back to back. That is like if you took a Calorie Killer class then went right into Washboard Abs without pausing for a single sip of water. I’m so dehydrated; it’s like the Sahara Desert up here in my roots.

I’m sorry I had to write you and that I couldn’t do this face-to-face, but you just wouldn’t listen. I hope we can work on things. My friend suggested a really good Couples Hairapist.

Sincerely,

Your Hair

P.S. I looked better when I was your natural color. Chill with the at-home highlights.