Oh, the scourge of naturally curly-haired. We spend most of our lives longing for straight, sleek, shiny ‘dos, rather than the unruly mops that nature dealt us. Yeah, yeah, love yourself and embrace what you have. Fuck that. Nothing gets a curly girl to open her wallet faster than the promise of a little less poof.
And so I have accumulated approximately three billion bottles of all manner of flotsam intended to tame my hair. Some of it is bullshit, some of it is pretty decent, some of it can be mixed with something else, and some of it I should have thrown out long ago and sworn never to buy again.
In this feature, I will be reviewing and classifying all the hair products that have tormented me with their false promises in the hopes of clearing some space on my bathroom counter.
First up:
It’s easy to fall for John Frieda. Those slick ads show seamless transformations from shiny curls to bone-straight strands and back again. It’s hard to resist all that air-brushed gloss. John Frieda is like a fancy big-city agent who whips into town and promises to make you a shiny-haired STAR!
Except then, as soon as you sign over your life savings and put up with some casting couch hanky-panky, he skips town leaving you unemployed with a dry, frizz-covered head. The bastard.
His Frizz-Ease line is a bunch of crap, full of more false promises than we heard during the last election. You might as well be rubbing hand-lotion on your head (shut up you straight-haired freaks for whom this is an amazing beauty tip). And Secret Weapon: Flawless Finishing Cream is the most useless product I have ever finger-combed through my tangly locks. And it smells weird, like static electricity.
And yet I always want to believe: “Instantly transforms puffy, parched hair into a smooth, supple, shiny texture.” But no. No it does not. It does not transform anything into anything. My hair looks and feels exactly the same (maybe a touch greasier). No smooth. No supple. No shiny.
And sometimes I start to worry that it’s me. Maybe the product is perfectly useful – maybe my hair is just…wrong.
Then I go and eat some breakfast and think dark thoughts about where, exactly, John Frieda can put his “silkening” moisture.
John Frieda hates straight hair too! I can only assume that his “Sheer Blonde” collection is actually just Crisco cut with some yellow pigment, because that’s what it left behind on my head. And products promising to “give fine, limp hair a boost”? Ha! Maybe a boost of ugly.
Well, at least his evil is equal opportunity, right?