The mane attraction

“Your hair smells nice,” he said as he combed his fingers through the strands of my hair and took another whiff.  No one has really complimented my hair in the longest time, or in fact, ever.  But recently, it seems like I’ve been having a wave of good hair days.  Last weekend, a celebrity hair stylist complimented my healthy tips, a fashion designer marveled at its near-waist length, and tonight, it seems that my redolent tresses have piquantly intrigued him.  The Hair Gods must be smiling down at me.

For many years, my hair affairs have been much like that of Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf: a love-hate relationship.  And like theirs, they are mostly bitter remembrances of bad dye jobs (entirely fire engine red, blonde streaks, and coppery highlights to name a few), horrendous haircuts (enough to literally bring me to tears), and even a solitary instance of getting inadvertently burned during a candlelit dinner.    

Among my quotidian beauty routines, haircare is perhaps my least favorite.  Any more than hair brushing seems too laborious, and don’t even get me started on shampooing and then conditioning.  That’s one step too many. On top of my negligence, there are the others who have exploited my poor mane as it has been teased, abused, and mistreated from all those years of fashion shows and shoots. 

My hair was dying a slow death, but I ignored its pleas by disguising my crusty, dried-out and feeble coif with bowlers, fedoras, beanies and porkpies.  As if going through the Kubler-Ross model of grief over my own mane, I was merely experiencing the first stage: denial. 

And while season four of Gossip Girl gives us no glimmer of hope for our favorite Upper East Side couple’s volatile romance, I have recently reconciled with my tresses.  Thankfully, my hair was accepted my plea for forgiveness and we have agreed on a compromise: using store-bought products at home that still give it an expert-touch feel of having been to the salon.  And so I wooed my locks with the Best Ever Sunsilk Co-Creations Damage Repair, hoping that it wasn’t too late for me to make up for all those years of hair sloth. 

In the end, I’ve worked things out with my mane, and hopefully I’ll be well on my way with my main man.