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All tressed out
By Deepa Paul
Friday, September 28, 2007
Born into your curls? You are a rarity among the infuriatingly swingy- and sleek-haired heads of the typical Pinay — and prey to the caprices of stylists who seek to torture the curl out of your hair by all available means. That is, if you don’t already do that yourself.
I grew up with big fat sausage curls that distended into long, loose and oddly uncontrollable waves, so I get you loud and clear. I once had a hairstylist refuse to cut my hair until I had it relaxed, whereupon I marched out of the salon — and started learning how to use Mom’s blow dryer. It was an inauspicious start to a lifetime of manual and chemical struggle with my curls. Fast forward to the present day: my hair is alarmingly poofy when left alone and requires an armada of styling products and tools to sort it into an appreciable shape. I’ve grown to like my hair, sort of, but after all it’s been through, I don’t think it likes me very much anymore.
Or let’s say your strands are of the stick-straight variety in the age of the digital perm. You thought your hair was boring; you zapped some curl into it. People liked it; you did it again. And again. And again. Now you’re left with repeatedly processed hair, an amorphous form of curl, a ton of new hair products, a bone-crushing understanding of why your curly-topped friends used to stroke your pin-straight strands with such longing, and maybe the occasional itch on your scalp.
Congratulations, your hair is now not just curly — you might just have blow-dried, relaxed, rebonded, permed and possibly even colored it into dryness, too. Faced with stressed-out curls, what’s a curly Sue to do?
Rx for stressed-out curls
Stop experimenting with a new product every other week, give the ceramic iron a rest, and head to the Kerastase Institute, where science is about to become your hair’s new best friend.
Using the Kerastase Professional Diagnosis System, a trained consultant takes a camera to your crowning glory to decree, once and for all, the truth about your hair and scalp. Your days of frowning over the staggering array of shampoos and conditioners at the grocery and decoding which of the cleverly-cooked-up-by-marketing labels describes your hair (Spongy and puffy? Damaged or dry? Rebonded then permed? Colored but not highlighted?) are at their merciful end.
Seeing your scalp magnified up to 500 times can be quite disconcerting. I personally thought it was nice to have a scalp so blinding white — until I was shown a picture of a perfectly healthy and normal scalp, which was as smooth and pink as a baby’s bottom. Whiteness meant I had a scalp like the
Choosing your cocktail
After diagnosis, a Kerastase expert prescribes the right hair or scalp ritual for your particular situation. This is selected from over a dozen treatments for hair types ranging from normal to moderately dry hair (Aqua-Oleum, which uses nano-nutrition technology to zap instant shine and softness into locks) to the driest and most damaged strands (the heat-activated Kerathermie).
Got shiny strands, but a scalp like the
For frizzy hair, the Masque Oleo-Relax softens and nourishes hair while keeping it frizz-free — despite infuriatingly off-the-charts Philippine humidity levels. Addicted to rebonding or relaxing? This treatment is also a perfect breather to the chronic grip those chemicals have on your hair.
For starters, I was prescribed the Concentre Vita-Ciment ritual. Engineered for chemically-treated hair, this potent potion promised to fortify the cracks in my hair shafts, rebuilding them by as much as 56 percent. Plus, it would prep my hair to receive the full benefits of my Masque Oleo-Curl, whose curl cocktail of softening oils promised perfectly defined curls (or waves, too) and anti-deformation protection. Sounds good, I thought, but it was just about to get a whole lot better.
Reveling in the ritual
The Kerastase Institute uses the word “ritual” instead of treatment, and it was just as well. After all the torture your hair has survived, it certainly deserves to be given the royal treatment, nay, practically adored back to life. (And maybe you do, too.) This is where the fluffy robes, satisfying hair bath, mind-numbing, eyes-rolling-back-into-the-head scalp massage and sigh-inducing back rubs of the Kerastase Institute do their best work.
After your chosen product is slathered on, your hair is popped under the Kerastase Micro-Mist Machine to be softened like no other salon steaming machine can. A blast of cool air from the machine ends the ritual, fixing the product from within. An expert blowout from the adjoining Salon ESA reveals the results of the ritual — gorgeously defined curls and vibrant shine, as promised. And if you have any doubts about the efficacy of the treatment (or are just innately suspicious, as I am), you can always have your hair re-diagnosed just to check.
Baby’s bottom my scalp is not (yet), but it definitely isn’t the
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