Exult: Beauty + Electricity = Beautricity?

Have you ever thought about how much we rely on electricity and appliances to look beautiful?

Late last week, in my residence hall, our power was out for a few hours. As we all sat in the hallway enjoying each other’s company, I started thinking about our dependence on electricity for beauty.

Women back in the day didn’t use flat irons and curling irons. If you think back far enough, they didn’t even use blow dryers.

So many times we say, “Oh, I didn’t get to blow dry or straighten my hair today, so I just threw on a hat.”

Why should we feel we need to put our hair in a hat when we can’t expose it to damaging devices like flat irons and blow dryers?

A  few weeks ago my flat iron burned out. I don’t have a car on campus, so running to the store isn’t always easy. After I calmed down (I was actually really upset!), I hopped online and ordered a new one.

But I had to wait a week for it to arrive.

In the meantime, I wondered what I was going to do with my hair. In August in Athens, my hair was going to frizz badly in the humidity.  Combating it without a flat iron seemed impossible. How could I go a whole week without straightening my hair? It was then that I realized how grossly dependent I was on my flat iron.

Our hair is not made to withstand that much heat, and that’s not all.  I use a heat protection spray when I blow dry and straighten my hair. It works well, but I’m just adding more chemicals to my hair. Can that really be healthy for it?

I’ve also heard that shampooing daily isn’t good either, but our society has put some ridiculous beauty standards in place for us to follow (Read more about it here). I remember girls in my residence hall during my freshman year talking about how gross it was when girls didn’t wash their hair every single day. What if you don’t have super oily hair and didn’t work out or anything that day? Why should you wash your hair when you probably don’t need to? You’d be robbing it of the natural oils that are actually good for your hair.  What if we just quit adhering to these standards? What if we stopped exposing our hair to so much heat and so many chemicals?

All of these products and chemicals make us look just like everyone else. We can all straighten our hair every day with our flat irons, so every girl looks like she has ridiculously straight hair. We’ve let these chemicals and products mold us into carbon copies of each other.  I think it’s awesome that we all have unique hair. None of us will have the exact same hairstyle if we are true to our natural roots.

I’ve decided I’m going to be kinder to my mane. I’m going to limit my use of my flat iron and blow dryer and the chemicals that go with it. I definitely don’t intend to give up my blow dryer and flat iron, but I promise to use them less often and be more in tune with what my hair wants to do.

So, if you see a girl walking around campus with half straight, half wavy, and completely frizzy hair on a humid day this week, that’s probably me, just being true to myself.

Click here for information on how to prevent heat damaged hair!

Ashley Bene is a junior at the University of Georgia majoring in magazines.  She is embracing her natural hairstyle.