The simple answer: The Curly Girl method.

I have had decades of hating my hair. From my mother pulling it unmercifully when combing it out to the other girls at school asking (yes, literally), “Did you stick your finger in a light socket?” to the heartbreak of split ends, I loathed my hair. When I was 10 or 11 I actually cut my hair off because I was so tired of being made fun of for having frizzy hair. The only time it behaved was when I put it up in a ponytail or tight braids. I never had long hair because long, frizzy hair is basically a one-way trip to Roseanne Roseannadanna-ville. To grow my hair one inch vertically requires about two inches of actual hair.

Since I’ve gone all-in on Curly Girl, I think my hair has grown 5 inches and it’s past my shoulders now. It’s shinier, bouncier, and, yes, curlier than ever. I’ve even gotten a bonus side effect I wasn’t expecting, but which I’m absolutely sure is a result of my new hair care regimen. (I’ll put it at the end of this blog post, under the TMI section.)

You can read all about the Curly Girl method in Curly Girl: The Handbook by Lorraine Massey. You can also read more than you can believe on the method and the products you should use at NaturallyCurly.com (note: I’ve got nothing to do with that site, I’m just a satisfied customer). And here’s another pretty good page on how to get started with the Curly Girl method from WikiHow.

Here’s the basics to get you started.

1. Stop washing your hair with the vast majority of hair care products.

You don’t want sulfates or silicones in your shampoo or conditioner. Sulfates strip your hair of its natural oils, and silicones coat the strands of your hair, making it feel soft and silky for a little while…at the same time keeping out moisture and making your hair dry, frizzy, and generally miserable. (So you wash harder. And use more silicone-rich conditioner. And so on, and so on…)

So the first thing to do is basically throw out every hair care product you have, because most of them contain sulfates or ingredients that end in -cone, -conol, or -xane. And all of them have ingredient lists too small to be read by the naked eye.

Most (but not all) of the hair care products at Whole Foods are good. (Yes, it’s time to go all vegan on your haircare regime and Read the labels.) A lot of the Suave products (but not all) are good. You can do a search at naturallycurly.com or use their iPhone app called Curls on the Go to look up various products and what people say about them. Most of the products at curlmart.com are perfect.

YES, buying all of these new products may be expensive, but a)you have to buy new haircare products anyhow, don’t you? and b)it’s cheaper than therapy. Also…you get to try new beauty products!

2. Actually, while you’re at it, stop washing your hair.

Yeah, I know. Sounds gross, right? I exercise 4-7 days a week and I thought, I mustmustmust wash my hair every time!

Going to every third day—a feat I would have sworn was impossible when I started—has done wonders for the health of my hair.

(If you have really oily hair, you might need to read what other oily curlies on CurlTalk (naturallycurly.com’s forum) have to say about what they do. Curly hair tends to be dry; oily curly hair is a pain in the tuchis. So read up.)

3. From now on, the only time you get to comb your hair is when it’s wet. And you only use a comb with big, widely-spaced teeth.

The number one bete noire of the curly girl is the split end, which we get with alarming frequency. So we use conditioners and haircare products with silicones in them to damp down the frizzies, which only exacerbates the problem.

You can practically cure the frizzies overnight by throwing your brush away and only combing when your hair is wet and thickly coated with conditioner. There’s a reason your hair is always easier to handle when it’s got conditioner on it; work with this knowledge.

And comb it upside down. Bend over at the waist and comb down. You need to get the hair away from your scalp. This will help with the ever important “lift” (that thing movie stars always have, so the hair “lifts” off their head and looks much richer and thicker?).

4. Put hairstyling product in your hair when it’s sopping wet.

Not when it’s dry. Once it’s dry, you don’t mess with it again until the next time you wash it. (The only exceptions to this: when you “scrunch out the crunch” from your product or when you scrunch in a little curl activator. But other than that: nonono.)

This is what I do: take a handful of product (I like Curl Junkie Coffee-Coco Curl Creme or Curl Junkie Curls In A Bottle, both available from CurlMart)—and when I say “handful” I don’t mean “quarter-sized dollop,” I mean “a goodly amount”—and bent over at the waist I scrunch it into my hair, lifting up from the ends and scrunching the hair upwards. Do not spread your fingers and comb the product through your hair! Let the product spread over your natural curl clumps. (This process sounds weird, but you get the hang of it very fast.)

5. STOP BLOWDRYING. NOW.

Absolutely the worst thing we can do for our hair. Straight hair people can do things like blowdry their hair, because hair oils and sebum drip straight down their hair from the root to the ends and the shaft is protected. Curlies do not get oil and sebum all over their hair, because of (duh) the curl. The shaft is basically nekkid. You. Cannot. Blowdry. You are drying out your hair and begging for split ends doing that.

You’re killing your hair with a blowdryer. I don’t care how long your hair is or how long it takes to dry—you need to stretch out the washes. Experiment with some of the key changes, and work your way up to every other day. And then every third day. Your hair will love you for it.

With my hair still sopping wet, I put it in a “plop” and leave it in the towel for a half hour or so. I know, all this stupid new terminology. What “plopping” allows is for your hair to dry with the roots laying naturally and not being dragged down toward the ground by gravity. This is very important to get lift into your hair. (The best way of all to dry your hair would be to lie on the side of a bed and let your hair hang down from your scalp, but that’s not always possible, now is it?)

“Plopping” is way better than twisting your hair in a turban, which just stresses your curls, so STOP doing that too. (Google “How to plop hair” and you will get lots of links and videos on how to do it. It’s not hard, and it’s GREAT for your hair.)

If your hair takes too long to dry before you go to work, wash your hair the night before and plop it overnight. (Ever noticed your hair looks a heck of a lot better if you wash it at night and then fall asleep with it? Because it’s not fighting gravity, that’s why.)

<Joan Crawford voice>NO. BLOWDRYERS. EVER.</Joan Crawford voice>

6. Put your hair up for bed.

If you’re not going to be combing and brushing your hair any more (and you’re NOT), you need to keep it from being a tangled mess. Here are a few ways of doing that:

1. Braid your hair before bed.
2. Put your hair in a ponytail or a pineapple (a ponytail on the top of your head).
3. Wear a satin nightcap.

Some women also have a satin pillowcase for their pillow.

I felt ridiculous putting my hair in a pineapple ponytail. Dorky gigantic fountain of hair is dorky! But the next morning, when I took my hair down and it looked PERFECT? Well, Darin was welcome to make fun of me if he wanted to: I was pineappling my hair every night. And it doesn’t get all messy and tangly the way it always has. And I have “lift” in my hair every day.

Your hair will thank you.

7. Get a new hairdresser.

Okay, this is probably the worst one to deal with, but very, very necessary.

Most hairdressers are taught how to cut straight hair. Straight hair is the same whether it’s dry or wet, so cut away! When it’s wet, you know how it’s going to look when dry: exactly the same, only with less moisture involved.

Not so for curly hair. We all know that wet curly hair (with the big straggly curl clumps and weird shape) looks 100% different than when it’s dry. So why on Earth would you cut it when it’s wet, when you don’t know how it’s going to look when it’s dry.

You have to find a hairdresser who will cut your hair dry. It’s as simple as that. They cut it, and then they wash it. If your hairdresser won’t cut your hair dry, FIND A NEW HAIRDRESSER.

I ran into a woman at the local coffee roasters who had the most perfect curly hair I’ve ever seen in my entire damn life and I asked her where she got it cut. One of the places she mentioned is Madusalon, which is a curly salon in San Francisco. I drove up there one day (hey! I was desperate!) for a two hour haircut (I know, right?) that left me with the best head of hair I’d ever had in my life…and I got the same results when working my hair at home.

I’ve since found curly salons much closer to home, but Madu was the first place to give me hope that I really could get a great haircut that looked good the next day.

Naturallycurly.com also has a list of hairdressers who cut curlies dry.

And now the TMI portion of this blog entry

I have suffered a horrible patch of psoriasis on my scalp since high school. Probably since I got hormones, you know? Terrible, horrible, flaky, itching, red. I hated having anyone (read: guys I was dating) touch the back of my head, because I was sure they were going to be able to tell I had this horrible, bumpy, grotesque patch of skin. Since at least freshman year of high school, okay? So I’ve had it a few years. I’ve seen several dermatologists. I’ve washed in gallons of zinc shampoo, both over the counter and prescription—mostly this served to tone down the itching, but the patch stayed right where it was. Psoriasis was simply a chronic condition I was going to have to live with.

Within a few months of going completely Curly Girl, the psoriasis has disappeared.

As in: Totally Gone.

Nothing but scalp skin.

Do yourself a favor and at the very least stop using those horrible drugstore shampoos, okay?

Another thing I started doing was taking care of my nails. I’ve bitten my nails for years. And I started saying, No, I’m going to take care of my hands, so they look nice. This hasn’t been 100%—this week, in fact, I’ve had a hell of a time keeping the stresses of trying to get the house in order off of my nails. But for the most part, over the past year I’ve had very nice nails.

My first point of order a year ago was to buy more of my favorite nail polish, MAC Vino. Alas! MAC no longer made this shade. So I dived headfirst into what was available, trying to find a duplicate. From there, I branched out into brighter reds. Then pinks. Then purples. Then I went nuts and hit my favorite shade, a dark purple/grey named OPI My Private Jet.

While looking for all of these faboo nail polishes, I made quite a collection.

And now they all have to stay here until I find a place for them in the new house. Alas.

But still. These sizes. It’s crazy.

I recently measured myself and I’m basically the same size I was at 22. Yeah, I know: Go Team Diane! But finding clothes is getting hard. I bought a pair of size 4 Gap Long and Lean jeans on Mother’s Days, and they’re somewhat loose now. This body, 20 years ago, I was a size 8, maybe a size 6 with these legs—how in the hell can I be a size 4? Size 4 is for skinny people! And no matter what my running bud Nina says, I don’t feel especially twig-like. It’s not me, it’s the clothes, which is to say, it’s the population.

(What we learn from this is: Anyone who’s kept the same pants size for a decade or two? Hasn’t, if you know what I mean.)

What’s ridiculous is, a size 6 skirt I bought shortly before I got pregnant with Sophia (that would be 10 years ago! gack!) is still tight. And that Calvin Klein skirt (also size 6) I was so looking forward to wearing again? Yeah, it just looks kinda silly on me now—I’m guessing my parts are not quite shaped the way they were, even if they measure the same. Apparently clothing sizes have been adjusted downwards a lot in just the past 10 years. Alas, I am going to have to let the CK go, because I just don’t feel comfortable in it. Wah wah wah.

(And just in case you’re wondering, I have almost the exact same measurements as Marilyn Monroe did, according to this page, except my waist is 29, not 22. I can’t quite fathom a 22 inch waist, frankly. Your envy of Darin’s good fortune may commence now.)

Nina and I did a 15 mile run today, and at mile 13 she said, “Are you tired?”

“Hell yes, I’m tired. I’m still waiting for my runner’s body to show up and this won’t hurt anymore.”

“I know, I’m wondering where mine is too.”

It’s just not fair that we’re doing all this running and all this training and it’s still hard. A six-mile run feels pretty normal these days; a 15-mile run feels like someone whapped me hard with a tire iron. And over the past several weekends I’ve done: 15 miles, 17 miles, 15 miles, 20 miles, and 15 miles. You’d think I’d have adjusted by now. But no: 15 miles still feels killer.

I’ve got to remember to bring ibuprofen for the marathon, because I need to be proactive on the pain.

(The fact that I thought was kinda puffy and fat? Makes me want to go back in time and throttle that girl so hard I could scream. The fact that the Apple Fitness Center told the 130 lb. me that really, for my height and build, I ought to weigh 120? Makes me actually scream.)

I was a size 8 in everything. If I needed to buy clothes, I always immediately headed for the size 8s and the Mediums. I remember being surprised when I needed to get new pants and I got the size 6s.

My measurements back then?

Chest: 88 cm (oh yes, I was going to train myself to use centimeters back then) 34.6 in.
Waist: 26.8 in.
Hips: (actually measured at hipbones—who knew you were supposed to measure lower down?) 33.85 in.
Thigh: 21.85 in.
Calf: 13.18 in.

As I said in the previous entry, I’ve lost 30 pounds recently and I am planning on a few more besides. During my recent shopping expeditions, I’ve discovered that I am at least a size 8 at every place I’ve tried on clothing, and often have been size 6, and today I managed to snag my second size 4 denim skirt (this time at the Gap, woot!). My current measurements?

Chest: 35 in.
Waist: 29.5 in
Hips: 34.75 in.
Thigh: 23.5 in.
Calf: 14 in.

(And while everything else has gone down, sometimes dramatically, my calf size has not changed at all since I started this weight loss journey. TOTALLY UNFAIR.)

But…but…how can that be? How can I be a smaller size now when I am clearly larger than I was many years and 18 pounds ago?

The answer that many people give me is: Vanity sizing.

To which I say: Not so much.

“Vanity sizing” is the term many people give to the fact that clothing sizes today seem to be grossly inflated over their counterparts for yesteryear, yet the numbers haven’t changed. Why else would a woman who’s bigger than her 22 year old self be able to fit into smaller clothes?

There are lots of good explanations of this on the Web. Here’s a particularly cogent one, nicely entitled The Myth of Vanity Sizing, which includes many links to discussions of the topic. The short answer is: Sizes are simply a reflection of the customer base for that manufacturer. A “medium” is the middle size, and the small and large sizes are derived from that. Most of the customers for a brand are going to hit the Medium size (or size 10? 12? I can’t remember what’s considered exact medium). So when trying to gauge sizes, a manufacturer brings in a couple of hundred women in their target market, takes their measurements, figures out what the medium of that is, and makes patterns accordingly.

If you want to blame anyone for grade inflation when it comes to clothing sizes, take a look in the mirror: it’s the American public.

(It does sound like women who are very tiny are really having a hard time of it—there aren’t enough of them to make it worth most manufacturers time to design clothes for them. Perhaps there is a marketing niche some designers need to aim for: ready-to-wear sizes beyond 0 and 00.)

One response often given when discussing the unfairness of clothing sizes is, “Why can’t we do what men do and measure things by waist + in-seam, or by inches, or whatever?” And the fact of the matter is, you still wouldn’t be able to find anything directly in your size. Women’s bodies tend to be somewhat more varied than men’s, I think—the stick who still has a large chest, the curvy girl, or everyone’s favorite, the one whose top and bottom vary by 3 sizes or more. A manufacturer can’t possibly make enough garments to cover all of those possibilities, so you’d still be buying the dress that’s much too large for the rest of you simply to fit over your thighs.

And now you know why I don’t wear pencil skirts. I can’t find one that fits both my waist (which tends to be tiny) and my thighs (which tend…not).