My Hair is Officially Thin (And HAIR MATH!)

[holothuroidea]

I've been avoiding the main forum in an attempt to ignore my hair. Well last night I couldn't help myself and started playing with it I was surprised to find that I could fit it into two ponytails (yay at small milestone!)

Since my thickness stat was estimated from my memory of when my hair used to be long over 3 years ago, I thought it would be fun to figure out my pony tail circumference.

So I did some math to figure out from my two pony tails what the circumference of one would be. I used the circumference of each to calculate the radius of the two circles, and used that to calculate the areas. Then I added the areas together and then solved for the radius again to calculate the circumference of the one circle.

I'm pretty bad at describing math in words LOL. You get down to a simple formula that the circumference of the combined areas is equal to the square root of the square of the first plus the square of the second. Which I'm sure is a formula that has been around forever but I was too stupid to look up.

c= (c1^2 + c2^2)^1/2

Anyway, my pony tail circumference came out to 5cm (Just under 2inches). So I am solidly a i.

I can't say I'm surprised, but I am a bit dissappointed. I was hoping that maybe my hair wasn't as thin as I remembered it, or that the damage thinned it out and it would be thicker now that I'm taking proper care of it. Apparently that's not the case, I just have wispy thin hair.

So now I'm on a mission to learn to appreciate my newly confirmed thinness.

ETA: It is very possible my math is wrong. I haven't done any algebra in 4 years so I'm a bit rusty. I had DH confirm everything I did, but he was kind of looking at me like I had two heads for even trying to do "hair math" in the first place.

[amanda_the_tall]

i have i hair too! the good thing is, it doesn't take too long to dry/comb. that much i appreciate.

[Aeltt]

And thick hair is a pain when it's hot outside.
It takes hours to dry.
More hair = more tangles.
You have to use way more conditioner (and oils, and whatever you put on your hair)
You have to have much longer hair than fine haired to do most of the buns.
Buns don't stay in place.
You can't use fragile/cheap hair toys because they break.
They're often too heavy and you have to redo them to distribute the weight evenly.
Braids eats up all of the length.
...

Shortly put : every type of hair has its down sides, just focus on the good points

[Tabihito]

While thin hair can look rather sad and pathetic in braids, you can also manage some amazing buns that would be impractical or impossible for thick hair at the same lengths. Thin hair is also, in most cases, fine, and therefore tends to be quite shiny. If you're thin and wavy, you don't get triangle-head nearly as bad as thicker hair does.

[torrilin]

Mmm... this is one of those yes and no things. If you're off 1/4" in measuring your pigtails, that can swing the math rather a lot . And it's easy for short hair to try to escape from pigtails, or for it to be impossible to get all your hair gathered up. Basically, there's plenty of possible sources of error, and thickness is mostly relevant for figuring out updos to try anyway.

Anyway, if you're coming up with a number between 1.5" and 2.5", I'd type as a i/ii for now rather than a straight i. i and i/ii both have a strong advantage in how fast they can do particular updos... it's often 6-12" faster than a plain ii would be able to, and sometimes more like 24" sooner than a iii. Variety is pretty awesome .

But I would not be at all surprised either if it turns out that you're a plain ii when your hair is long enough for a ponytail.

[MsBubbles]

Well that's a good starting point, but I don't think you'll really, really know for sure til all your layers are able to fit into a ponytail.

I have been thinking about hair thinness, especially among fine-haireds. I think the ponytail circ is really only a part of it. I think head shapes, hairlines at the nape, and distribution of hair-growth (fuller on the sides? back? Front?) all have a lot to do with how someone's hair hangs.

It's possible people type their hair wrong here, but I have seen so many photos of 1a or 1b/F/i that look gorgeous, and not as sparse or thin as a (i) would scare most of us into believing! I hope that makes sense.

[holothuroidea]

Thank you, everyone.

I do think I we were fairly accurate in the measurements. It is close to the i/ii line but I would rather acknowledge that it is measuring as i now, and then be pleasantly surprised later if it moves into the ii category than label it as i/ii now in the (presumably false) hope that it is closer to ii than I measured.

There are a lot of lovely i hairs around here, and they are very inspiring. I think it's time to acknowledge that my hair is thin and get over all of these hair-confidence issues I have surrounding its thinness.

[Valfreyja]

I used to think that my hair was i at your length, based on previous records and because it hadn't grown all out. Thin hair is lovely and etherial, but even so, I wouldn't count my chickens until they're hatched.

[terylenerose]

All I have to say is that I've seen a lot of pictures of "i" hair on here that look a lot more like ii or ii/iii, and yours are some of them, holothuroidea. If you had yourself down as ii I would believe you. Not that I'm saying you should do that, but just that your hair really doesn't look thin.
And someone else is right, thin hair takes a lot less time to dry. Sometimes I wish I had it just for that. Being on the high end of ii means that you can't get away with putting up your hair when it's 90% dry and having it get 100% dry.

[GlennaGirl]

My hair is a 1 when it's neck-length and just a bit over the ii threshold when it's longer. I have no idea why but I do know that's accurate. I don't know the science or biology behind that.

However...I do have thin hair and I think thin hair can be beautiful. Silky. Elven.