hair help

[rae]

I have a little dilemma here. My hair is wavy, and the only way to get it to be straight is to blow-dry it, which dries it out, leading to split-ends and having to have it cut, lest it looks like a broom. Is there any other way of attaining this without drying it? Whenever I allow my hair to dry out naturally, it is totally unmangaeable, frizzy as hell, and I scare people. Blow-drying gives it the softness, manageablility, straightness and non-bad hair days I crave for.

Yesterday, my Mom cut my hair, because it was looking terrible
and damaged. She cut about 4" off of it, and today I've made a new-years' resolution. I want longer hair, and I'm going to start taking better care of it to attain this. I bought a boar's head brush today (which I hear is much better for the hair) and several conditioning/moisterizing creams for it. This afternoon, I totally slathered my entire head, put on a shower
cap, and spent the whole afternoon like that. Then, I rinsed it out in cold water (more like room-temperature) and tried to blow-dry it using cold air, but it was taking forever to do that,
so I put the dryer on 'warm' and held it further away from my hair as I dried it.

I'm going to buy some Shea Butter tomorrow and apply it to my ends as often as I can so it'll grow longer, without breakage.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me to do anything else?
Thanks for reading.

[purplebubba]

Hi Rae welcome to LHC

I'm Robert / PurpleBubba from Michigan. I've been participating in hair care forums for about 5 years and am a former cosmetology student.

There was a lady I knew who would take her damp hair in sections and wrap the hair around her head as if her head was a big roller. She would then wear a bandana or something and just let it completely dry. It worked pretty well for her. She had a web page with pictures of it but she took them down.

That might be an option to try.

It's nice to have you here. We'll help you.

Edited to add: I think she might have used Bobby pins to hold the sections in place but I'm not sure.

[ChloeDharma]

I have annoying wavy/curly hair with straight bits that never seems to look nice with its natural shape down. So normally i either have it bunned or braided. But the time before last that i washed it i tried smoothing on aloe vera gel then adding a few drops of jojoba oil on top of that then let it become damp then bunned it. I found it turned out really soft and smooth with lovely defined curls, so this got me thinking. After i had washed my henna off yesterday i smoothed a load of aloe gel through it then put jojoba on top again. This time though i let it air dry but finger combed it regularly concentrating on my curly bits. It did a lovely job of reducing frizz and helping it stay straight. So i would say try giving trhat a go. Its nice and gentle and not hard work.
HTH

[TheSpottedCow]

A heavy leave in mixed with a silicone serum might help.