You look around at people walking by at the mall, sidewalks, in the parking lot. People aren’t comfortable with the way things are. The purse is poor and hair is the last thing on their minds. Their hair seems to show it: it looks messy and it was highlighted weeks ago. You’re about to call your hairdresser, but you put your cell phone away. The coifs’ on the street start to look cool. You turn around, go back home, and take your hair into your own hands.
First, you color or highlight the ends of your hair to make it look like it has grown out. Everyone’s looks like that because of the economy; people can’t afford so many trips to the hairdresser. But coloring the ends to keep them fresh is easy and has turned into the style du jour!
You choose a color for your highlights. If you already have color or highlights on your hair, or if you have very dark or black hair, you use bleach. Otherwise, you choose a color that is a few shades lighter than your hair, on the golden side. You’re dow n to a choice of two colors, and you go with the lighter one just in case. You figure you can always tone it down if you need to, but if your hair doesn’t go light enough you’ll be disappointed.
You spend five minutes putting the color on. You then wait for ten to thirty minutes to let the color do its magic. You take test strands periodically to see whether your hair has achieved the color you’re shooting for. You do this by wiping the color or bleach off of a strand and looking at it in the light. As soon as it has reached a light enough color, which may be after ten to thirty minutes, you rinse out the color thoroughly and shampoo and condition your hair.
Your hair is wet and you towel it off a bit. You reach for your blow-dryer and begin the basis of your style. You concentrate on your roots and your ends mostly. You want to make sure your hair has height on the top of your head, so you lift your hair with your fingers and blow-dry beneath them. You repeat this a few times in different section around the top of your head. You find this much easier than using a brush, and it’s no wonder so many people seem to be wearing easy hairstyles.
Then, you rake your fingers toward the ends of your hair and grab hold of them so that the ends stick out a bit. You blow-dry directly on the ends of your hair so that they break off a bit and create texture. You apply this technique in various sections around your head and along your hair’s layers. As you blow-dry a section in this manner, you continue the raking motion away from your head while blow-drying the ends.
Now that the roots and the ends have been blow-dried, for the rest of the style, you blow-dry lightly the rest of your hair in the direction you want it to go. You don’t spend too much effort on this because the final touch, the pomade, will seal the style.
At your last haircut appointment, you luckily got lots of layers. You remark about that out loud, so the young one in your family asks you what layers are. You tell her that layers are basically when your hair is cut in different lengths all around, creating volume and movement. She asks what you mean by that. You tell her she’ll understand when she grows up.
Layers are important because they work well with highlighted ends and piecey, textured styles. It is now time for you to style your hair. You’re fed up with the complicated curling iron, so you don’t even get it out of the drawer. You tripped over the cord and nearly burned yourself last time, anyway. Piecey, wispy, messy styles are best achieved by walking in the wind or by styling your hair with your fingers. The wind being as unreliable as it is, you opt for using your fingers.
Pomades are the best agents of piecey styles. You take some pomade in your fingers, rub it in your fingers to make it the right consistency, and then run your fingers through your hair, mostly through the ends. The pomade makes your hair sculpt able, so you move your fingers in the direction you want your hair to go. You might bring your hair forward around your cheeks and create wispy pieces. If it’s shorter, you might bring it outward on the sides. You use your fingers like a rake, parting the pieces in a natural way.