The Same OLD Hair

 

Want to know what makes a woman look older than she is?  Stress, sun damage, lack of sleep, and her hair.  Now, in terms of stress, we’re all just in the same sinking ship here and if I had some magic cure I’d be raking in the millions.  Sun damage is easy, I just lectured you all on sunscreen so I expect you to to be carrying your little tubes of youth in your purses now.  Lack of sleep is pretty much a worldwide phenomena and all I can say to this is that I bought a sleep machine that plays thunder all night that honestly knocks me out so fast that now when a real storm hits, I get sleepy, very Pavlovian.  So all we can control here is the hair, and I’m here with my cape on to help my best girls!

Hair is a tricky thing and you have to think of it as the frame of your face (that and eyebrows.  Eyebrows are crucial, but another post entirely)  and without a good frame, the picture is all wrong.  Imagine a beautiful classic shot of Audrey Hepburn, a gorgeous black-and-white classic shot, in a banged up, gold chipped paint frame with plastic jewels in it and visible price tage.  Ew.  Let’s fix this hair my sweethearts.  Here are the ways to your best hair:

1.  Crucial Color Codes

Ok, how many of you color your hair?  Ahhh I see all your hands up, as I suspected.  Coloring your hair seems easy to most people, as you go to your stylist and say something like this, “Hi, just do the same as last time.”  Here’s the trouble:  last time might have been all wrong, or your “last time” started 10 years ago and you haven’t realized a decade of change has happened around you.  Look in the mirror at your hair.  What your goal should be is to have hair that looks naturally beautiful.  This means you take your normal, God-given hue, and punch it up a few notches.  A few.  Not 65 steps on the color scale.  The reasoning?  Your hair and skin were made in a lab more perfect than any salon, so straying too far from these natural pigments is going to make your skin look washed out/sallow/pink/etc. It’s also going to be impossible to maintain if it’s too different.  Your base hair color needs to be within the same color family as your natural shade.  My natural shade is red therefore I’m never going to go platinum, sadly, so I have to leave that life to others.  C’est la vie, friends.  There is beauty in every single shade, cherish yours!

The Blondies –Lovely at every shade

The Redheads- Fiery and HOT

The Brunettes- Always sexy and shiny

2.  Highlighting with Intent

Highlights are amazing, they can camouflage grays and brighten up your whole ‘do, but when done incorrectly they can make you look so outdated even skinny jeans can’t bring you into this year.  Let’s look at the goal of highlights in general:  to highlight an area by drawing the eye to the light.  The goal is not to paint stripes into your hair, show eight weeks of re-growth, nor to fry your tips into crispy little tufts around your head.  You want to think of your highlights like sprinkles; a little bit makes the cake pretty, a lot makes the cake a mess.  Your highlights also need to stay within your base color family.  If you have gorgeous black tresses, please do not add in white-blonde highlights.  Think of it this way, the eye jumps to the lightest color naturally, but this should be a subtliminal jump.  You want to be, “Look at her gorgeous hair!” not “Look at her highlights.”

Look closely, these are some amazing highlight jobs.  Not seeing the highlights, seeing the pretty hair, at every shade!

3.  Cut with Care

A perfect color and highlight job means nothing if your haircut is the issue.  Cut is SO touchy for us girls and I understand!  I have had long hair my entire life and every time I go to my stylist I ask her the same question, “Is it time?  Is it unhealthy?  Do I have to cut it?”  It’s hard to wait for the answer, but I know the one thing I don’t want to be:  the girl with the inappropriate, gross hair.  Hair length is dependent on so many factors and comfort levels that I’m not going to dissect the perfect cut for each person, let’s just get into some basic guidelines to determine if you need a new style:

1. Do you ever like your hair? When you get up, blowdry, style, flat iron, curl, etc—do you ever like the result?  Are you constantly yanking it back into a ponytail?  Have you suddenly purhcased a lot of hats?  Do you look in the mirror and just not know what to do with it?  If you hate your hair, we need to address the cut.
2.  Is it healthy? Do you have split ends?  Do you have excessive flyaways?  Are your ends a different color than your roots?  Is your hair soft to touch?  I know you want it long, but if it’s unhealthy you just need to cut it.  Long and fried is never cute.  Ever.
3.  Have you changed your cut, in any way, in a decade? Dude, this is hard.  I KNOW.  I have added longer bangs, changed up my layers, and done enough tweeks to make myself feel better about this question but seriously, have you had the same hair since high school?  You gotta change it up.  You just have to!  You need your stylist to update you and force you, kicking and screaming into 2010.  I’m sorry, I know that you felt so hot at 17 with that hair, but sweetie, you’re not 17 anymore.  Time to move up with the big girls.
4. Is your stylist the one for you? Do you leave his/her chair happy?  Would you recommend them to a friend?  Do they listen to you?  Do you feel like you’re in good hands?  Do they ever suggest anything new for you?  Do you get complimented after seeing them?

I know it’s hard to think about changing your hair, feeling like you just don’t know what to do with your hair, and wondering how that girl in your office just magically wakes up like that each day (she doesn’t,  she spent 4 hours on it and is wearing extensions).  The way to fix this is to seriously speak with a professional hair stylist at a respected salon.  Find a friend with great hair and ask her who she sees, then go see them.  Tell them your frustrations and let them do their job, they wouldn’t have it if they knew nothing!

And ladies, don’t be afraid to invest in yourself.  Yes, it might cost a little more than you can see yourself spending, but once you get ONE great cut and ONE great color that really suits you, the maintenance on it can be done somewhere less expensive.  And you know what?  Eat out a couple less times that month and like your hair—isn’t that a pretty good trade?

I can see you all now, sashaying down the street shaking out your sexy hair!  It’s going to be great, you’ll see.  Somehow it’ll make your jeans fit better too, I can’t explain it, I’m no scientist, but I swear it happens that way.