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TheMaleRapunzel
April 28th, 2015, 09:47 PM
I don't use cell phones, do I don't have a camera right now. I am getting my digital camera that I left in my friend's hosue tomorrow and then post pictures. I mean, my hair...I look like a monkey. My hair is barely at shoulder length, but is is extremely thick. To make that worse, my hair is very fine, so the overall effects is horrible, like I have glued the hair of two or three people to my scalp. When I used the typical male medium length haistyle where the hair follicules are at 3" to 4" long, it wasn't a problem because the hair strands were not long enough to fall over each other. But now that they are over 6" in length, they are falling over each other creating massive volume. The best com parison is that my hair looks like that melmet that English roayal soldiers use. It's awful. My hair was always extremely thick. When I was a small boy, they used to say that I have a helmet of hair over my head. A stetician told me that people with my hair vlume shouldn't grow it long, that it is best to keep it at medium length. He alsso told me that very short haircuts are bad also because the density of hair follicuiles will make my scalp look like I have a carpet of hair over there.

komodo
April 28th, 2015, 09:53 PM
I wait to see pictures, but, your hair sounds like my hair when it's au naturale.

But, rest assured, there are others here who have their hair longer with such thickness!

Can you use curlers for your hair, perhaps? They will help flatten your hair a bit and perhaps make it more manageable for you - also what is your current hair care routine? What do you use for your hair?

gthlvrmx
April 28th, 2015, 09:59 PM
Your hair probably looks fine! I think thick hair is beautiful! The longer your thick hair gets, the easier it will be to hide it in a bun or braid. You will have to be patient if you plan on growing it out but it is worth it. I don't really agree with that "stetician". Anyone who has growing hair on their scalp can grow out their hair however long their genetics allows them to grow, or to whatever length is comfortable really. I think thick hair is harder to manage the shorter it is! There is no shame in having a "carpet of hair". It probably looks fine!

Kyla
April 28th, 2015, 11:04 PM
It may be just an awkward phase for you, for most people longer hair weighs it down so it won't appear as "poofy." What's your hair routine? With some tweaking you may be able to tame your hair a bit. :)

hanne jensen
April 29th, 2015, 12:49 AM
Use a tiny bit of coconut oil to tame it. Make a single braid. Your hair is long enough to braid, but not too long to start learning how to braid. This will keep your hair in place and tame it a bit. That very thick braid will look fantastic.

If you want long hair, you will just have to get through this stage. We all have had stages where we think our hair looks horrible. Braid your hair and forget about it. Before you know it you will have outgrown this stage.

My Icelandic great grandmother had your exact hair type. Very thick hair but each strand was fine. She had hair to her ankles and never had any problems at all with her neck, shoulders or head. She did wear it braided and up during the day. At night she would take her hair down and unbraid it. De-tangle and rebraid for the night. In the morning she would just smooth the fuzzies and wrap her braid around her head. So that advice of maintaining your hair medium length is a bunch of hooey.

TheMaleRapunzel
April 29th, 2015, 11:40 AM
It may be just an awkward phase for you, for most people longer hair weighs it down so it won't appear as "poofy." What's your hair routine? With some tweaking you may be able to tame your hair a bit. :)

Ay, I don't really have a hair care routine. I shampoo my hair pretty much every day or at least 4 times a week, and I condition it about once a week. I also eat an organic diet that is completely devoid of junk food, since in the end your hair just reflects your health. I also get a scalp massage every once in a while, but that's about it for my hair care.

Nadine <3
April 29th, 2015, 11:43 AM
Ay, I don't really have a hair care routine. I shampoo my hair pretty much every day or at least 4 times a week, and I condition it about once a week. I also eat an organic diet that is completely devoid of junk food, since in the end your hair just reflects your health. I also get a scalp massage every once in a while, but that's about it for my hair care.

Using conditioner every time you wash it will help weight it down a little bit :)

TheMaleRapunzel
April 29th, 2015, 11:45 AM
Use a tiny bit of coconut oil to tame it. Make a single braid. Your hair is long enough to braid, but not too long to start learning how to braid. This will keep your hair in place and tame it a bit. That very thick braid will look fantastic.

If you want long hair, you will just have to get through this stage. We all have had stages where we think our hair looks horrible. Braid your hair and forget about it. Before you know it you will have outgrown this stage.

My Icelandic great grandmother had your exact hair type. Very thick hair but each strand was fine. She had hair to her ankles and never had any problems at all with her neck, shoulders or head. She did wear it braided and up during the day. At night she would take her hair down and unbraid it. De-tangle and rebraid for the night. In the morning she would just smooth the fuzzies and wrap her braid around her head. So that advice of maintaining your hair medium length is a bunch of hooey.

I hate, hate, hate having oil on my hair. In fact, one of the reasons why I shampoo my hair almost every day is because I find the natural oils produced by hair disgusting. To make it worse, I have extremely oily hair. I wash it in the morning, and by the end of the day it is oily already. If I go without washing it, in only 3 days it is dripping oil. Yes, it's that bad.

This is an advice I am unwilling to follow. But thanks anyway.

Freija
April 29th, 2015, 01:42 PM
Well, if you insist on stripping your hair absolutely bone-dry, then it's going to be frizzy and fluffy and huge, I'm afraid - there's just no way around it. Oils (sebum, the stuff your body produces) are the very things that make beautiful hair, of any thickness and texture, beautiful. Oil doesn't automatically equal greasy - rather, it's the presence of oil in the right amount that makes sleek hair sleek, smooth hair smooth, shiny hair shiny. And so, every product and recipe that 'conditions' or 'moisturises', 'smooths' or 'tames' hair, everything that could possibly help you, is either going to be a method of increasing the amount of natural sebum on your hair, a means of distributing sebum more evenly through your hair, or a natural replacement for sebum, or a synthetic replacement for sebum.

I don't know why you're so scared of oil, really? It's absolutely vital for our health. Sebum nourishes and protects our hair and skin, stopping it from drying and cracking, and it is actually part of our immune system: the sebaceous glands, which produce sebum, also secrete the acid which makes up the acid mantle - a thin film on the surface of the skin (and scalp) which acts as barrier against all kinds of bacteria and viruses.

If you want to be happy with your hair, then I think you're really going to need to get some sort of balance back. I mean - I'm fairly certain that your hair would actually be less greasy if you washed it and stripped it less, and conditioned it more. It seems counter-intuitive, but with the skin and scalp, the more you strip away the oil and acid mantle, the harder it's going to work to put it all back quickly, because it needs it (if you have too little sebum, and strip too much, your skin and scalp can develop dermatitis, they can start to crack, and you can lose your protective barrier against infection). In the end, the skin goes a bit OTT and starts actively over-producing oil to compensate for the constant stripping. If you backed down a bit, and left your skin alone a bit more, you'd probably have one or two greasy weeks and then find that a) it wasn't as oily any more, b) you didn't need to wash as often and c) your hair and skin were looking and feeling softer, healthier and generally just better.

trolleypup
April 29th, 2015, 06:27 PM
What Freija said. You have your choices in hair care...if you continue as you are, the "bigger" will predominate over the "longer" for a good while.

Also, you don't need to depend on others' advice. If you get to a place where your hair is OK to you, don't worry about what others think.

-Fern
April 29th, 2015, 06:29 PM
Your hair sounds very much like my hair!! I did buzz my hair in college, and it looked great growing out right until about the length you are at now. Ear-length to chin-length was a very awkward transition for me. (I'm pretty sure I didn't allow any photos to be taken. :rolling:) But there is light ahead--it is both much easier to care for now that it's longer, and it looks much better now that it's longer. In addition, having the extra length weighs it down so that it doesn't stick straight out from my head.

I agree with Freija, your scalp might be producing so much oil because you shampoo it every day! If you are disgusted by natural body oil, is coconut oil or jojoba oil more acceptable? Try just shampooing every other day (3-4 times a week) for at least two weeks. As your hair dries, put two or three drops of oil in your hand and rub your palms together before rubbing your hands through the ends of your hair. Your scalp should start to readjust. You can still rinse your hair & scalp with water when you shower every day--I agree that having sweat on my scalp is gross.

Two things that have completely changed my hair since joining LHC: Snowymoon's Moisture Treatment (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=128) (and my own off-shoot recipes) and the Rinse-Out Oil Method (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=129191) once a week. SMT has vastly improved the health & shine of my hair, and using the Rinse-Out Oil has HUGELY tamed my frizziness and made my hair much softer. Like, for the first time in my life, I enjoy touching my hair.

spidermom
April 29th, 2015, 08:34 PM
More horrifying than this?
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c79/spidermom/BOONEW.jpg (http://s25.photobucket.com/user/spidermom/media/BOONEW.jpg.html)

The makeup is over the top on purpose, but the hair is completely natural. We all go through an awkward phase somewhere between short and long. I coped with this stage by using a large barrel curling iron, but I wish I hadn't. It totally destroyed my hair! By the time it reached the bottom of my shoulder blades, I had to cut a good 5 or 6 inches off.

Around 30 inches, my hair looks more like this:
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c79/spidermom/c224c612-beb2-4c31-ae24-cde8d85b78ae_zps4ef9c00c.jpg (http://s25.photobucket.com/user/spidermom/media/c224c612-beb2-4c31-ae24-cde8d85b78ae_zps4ef9c00c.jpg.html)

You could try moisturizing gel or styling cream to tame your hair down. Since you'll be washing it out every day, that might work well for you. I didn't think of that when my hair looked horrifying and poofy.

PS: I tamed the bushiness with buns and braids, also by applying coconut oil the night before I plan to wash my hair. The length helps, too. My hair is almost tailbone length now.

Ilenora
April 29th, 2015, 08:36 PM
It is said that the more you shampoo your head and strip it of oils, the more the body tries to compensate by over-producing. There will be an adjustment period if you cut back and you might be an oily mess for a while, but if you can cope with it I think you will find you will end up much less oily. Fern had a good suggestion of slowly cutting back - shampooing every other day, then every 3 days - and instead using just water to wash out the oil. If you wash thoroughly with very warm water, you should be able to clean out the oil fairly well.
Also, conditioning without shampooing is actually okay - many people condition only, without any shampoo ever. You could try conditioning every day rather than shampooing.

pamrlyn
April 29th, 2015, 09:44 PM
Hay MaleRapunzel :)

Sounds like your hair is at an awkward stage. Don't be afraid to grow it long, the weight of your hair will help keep things under control later. Between my 2 kids they have enough hair for 6 or 7 people. I'm not sure what type you have, My son has coarse curly hair & My daughter has fine to medium wavy hair. My son has to have layers to get away from the helmet head look. But my daughter can wear hers in a blunt cut. But it has to be to her shoulders, tho for it to lay nicely. short to in between, layers work better for her too. My own hair is just regular - Just taking care of theirs for a while lends a little experience.

I also had some good luck using thinning shears to help cut down on awkward bulk. Hopefully others with experience growing out super thick hair will also lend some tips.

good luck!

spidermom
April 29th, 2015, 09:56 PM
Thinning shears create lots of short ends to poke out through longer hair. Think dandelion seed-head. It was hideous for my hair.