Waaaay back, when I started this blog, I did a post on hair care and talked about how I was making an effort to take better care of my hair.
Well…um..
Let’s just say it really didn’t matter what shampoo I was using because the fact is that I’m 28 years old and I have been dying, coloring, bleaching, straightening, curling and etc-ing my hair since I was TWELVE.
For well over a decade I’ve been incredibly insecure with my hair and always hid it with extensions. My hair was so thin, dry, frizzy, scraggly and split ends so bad it was like the bottom portion of my hair was see through. I didn’t realize how bad it really was (just turned a blind eye and tried to cover it up) UNTIL I got a trim from a stylist who had the balls to hold up a second mirror and show me the disaster that was my hair from behind. I sat there and cried and my face turned bright red.
This was this past January and now I wish I had taken a picture of my hair in that moment. It was the last time I colored my hair and the moment I vowed to REALLY take care of my hair. It was the day I let a stylist I had just met chop off FIVE INCHES…five inches of dead stringy ends that now looking back I have no idea why I held on to. Monika is the stylist who helped me confront my problem and since that day in January I’ve visited her for a trim religiously every six weeks. The trimming kind of blows to be honest because my goal is to grow my hair but first I have to grow out the pieces that are damaged from years of bleach and coloring.
So there’s the backstory. In the effort to nurture and baby my hair back to health (which is actually happening!!! It’s thicker, shinier, it doesn’t frizz and it’s just happy hair) I don’t really wash it. I wash it once a week. I wash it on Saturday and typically just let it air dry. Now that I haven’t colored or processed it my hair is going back to its original texture — pin straight. Which I can’t even lie, is pretty awesome and makes my life quite easy since I try to hear style it as infrequently as possible.
Anyway here’s the issue. I wash my hair on a Saturday. Sometimes we go out on Sunday..sometimes I need to style it during the week. However, I don’t want to use heat so I can’t straighten it or curl it. My solution lately has been a half top knot! It’s so random. But I’m fucking obsessed.
I can’t take credit for this hairstyle at all because I totally copied my sister. She wore her hair like this to my husband’s 40th birthday party and she just looked so freaken adorable.
She wore hers with straightened hair, extensions and a very neat, tight bun. I’m much more laid back so I go with day to two to three day old dirty hair and an “effortless” messy bun (aka trying to get the right amount of effortless mess probably takes me 10x more effort than it took Casey to do that perfect, no strand loose bun. But then again Casey is naturally gifted when it comes to hair, she knows her shit).
Regardless of what the bun ends up looking like, I can’t get enough!! The style works great on post workout, sweaty hair, a several day old blowout, air dried, straightened or curled. What I love the most about it is that it allows me to still wear my hair down when it’s greasy AF. I don’t think ya’ll understand how greasy my hair is. Like, I spray dry shampoo in as soon as it dries after a shower. If Dan plays with my hair or touches it — if I touch it too much — forget it. Stringy greasy shitshow. Thank goodness for dry shampoo and baby powder..
The half top knot is the perfect solution because essentially what you do is grab the greasy top and front pieces and pull them away! The other thing is, if my hair is several days dirty the dry shampoo can look super obvious if I leave it down. The topknot hides the dreaded powdery looking roots.
It’s just the greatest solution ever. My phone just auto corrected “greatest” to “greasiest”. UMM. My phone even knows I’m the greasiest. This is lovely.
Oh, this is also really easy to do. Grab a section from the front of your hair (I part right above the arch of my brows on each side) and tie it up in a little pony tail. Make sure to use a skinny hair tie that’s the same shade of your hair. Then wrap your hair around the tie to make the bun! You can twist the hair and use Bobby pins to pin it down at the end for a neat ballerina bun. I just take multiple sections/strands from the pony tail and wrap them around the hair tie in different directions and Bobby pin the pieces down as I go. I’ll have like 18 Bobby pins in that one little bun. I don’t use hairspray because I like how it looks when pieces fall out of the bun. I’ve actually even slept in this and worn it the next day and it still looks great.
Oh and if you’re wondering what I do with my greasy hair for a whole week of not washing? I actually rub coconut oil into my hair and scalp every other night. I wear my hair either in braids or a full top knot to try to hide the fact that I’m a walking oil slick.
That right there is a coconut oil topknot. I wore it to my sister’s rehearsal dinner.
And lastly, I just want to touch on the fact that I haven’t colored my hair since January. It’s the BEST decision I’ve made for my hair probably ever in my life. Here’s a picture where you can see my old highlights growing out. The dark is my natural color. There might be greys…I’m not sure, I don’t look for them and I don’t care.
That was from my sister’s wedding – she did her own hair of course and it was flawless. I wish I had stopped coloring my hair and let it heal itself years ago. Even with all the damage I’ve put my hair through, though, I don’t regret it. I loved having different hair colors and expressing myself through it at the time. Now I’m embracing my hairs natural color and texture and that’s a form of expressing myself too! Bottom line is …do what you love. And try the dirty half top knot!
xoxo
lindsayylovee 