Dear Younger Self,
There are many things I’d like to advise you against, like considering a “Big Grab” bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and a bottle of Minute Maid Fruit Punch an acceptable lunch, or not beginning a proper skin-care regimen earlier in life. (The importance of daily moisturizer with SPF can’t be stressed enough, nor can going to bed wearing a healthy layer of antioxidant-rich lotion.) But what I want to write to you about today is your hair. Yes, that thick, dark mess of tangles you spent the better part of your childhood hiding behind. The hair that now spends most days of your teenage life up in a haphazard ponytail.
Let’s be honest, Me Ten Years Ago—you and your hair have never had a great relationship. As a five-year-old, you cried and cursed your waist-long locks as Mom struggled to run a brush through them. The profanities continued into adolescence, when a widow’s peak seemed to appear out of nowhere, enhanced by cowlicks composed of frizzy little strands that refused to grow and were at least five shades lighter than the rest of your hair. I think that’s when you gave up altogether, deciding your hair hatred was greater than your shyness and pulling it out of your face, back into a ponytail, and far from your thoughts.
There’s a happy ending here, and it starts with your meeting Jai, a cherished friend and burgeoning superstar hairstylist who will give you a style that actually works with your natural texture, transforming frizz into bouncy, shapely curls. But you’ll spend far too many years in between convinced that you’ll never have good hair. Not true! You’ve just got to work at it—master the curling iron, invest in bobby pins, and get a blow dryer with a diffuser. Just please do something—anything!—with your hair. Now’s the time to experiment, because as you’ll come to realize, Younger Self, life is far too short to spend even a second hating anything about yourself. Learn to love what you’ve got. It’ll be the start of a beautiful relationship.
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