Blowout, Schmowout

Got my fresh back to school haircut today (yay!) and decided to let Ms. M, my hilarious Sicilian/Greek (how’s that for a nice, quiet house to grow up in?) give me a blowout. mimi is usually all about the curls, but today, why not something different?

Know what? Me no likey. It feels fun, but MAN, is straight hair annoying. It’s In. My. Face. In my eyelashes. In my mouth. Hanging over my eyes. And, since this is Florida and there’s about as much water in the air outside as there is in your normal shower, it’s already starting to curl back up. To which I say, cool.

It’s taken years, but I’ve made peace with my curls. I know how to take care of them so I’m not tripping the hair frizztastic every day. They reflect my personality–I’m far more bouncy than sleek. The only qualm I’ve had with them is the whole curls + grey hair = frumpy (check out the thinking about letting your hair be the color it wants here and here). Now, not so sure. The blowout looks okay, but it is so not me.

So I have to wonder, what is it about the blowout that makes it the Holy Grail of Hair? I have curly friends who would kill rather than part with thier flatirons. One even got a blowout in a foreign country rather than go wavy/curly in front of a bunch of foreigners she’ll never see again. I’ve already fought the haircolor war. Why are so many women willing to enslave themselves to gallons of product and a blowdryer every morning? My life’s crazy enough without having to fight this hair–which fights back a couple of classifications above me, thank you very much–in the humidity which is my natural swamp. Or have I just, in one of the phrases I hate so much from women’s magazines and the like, “let myself go”? Thoughts?

UPDATE: By suppertime, my hair resembled Marlo Thomas’s in That Girl. We’re talking full late ’60s flip. By the 11:00 news, curl city. DNA WIN.