How to rehabilitate after professional updo?

[Bucatini]

Help Please!!

I had my hair done professionally on Saturday morning for a wedding. It's the woman who normally does my trims, she knows all the rules. I went there with air-dried hair and she used low heat settings and did not tease it. It looked great. Then she applied a lot of something called "Superego Molding gum" and pinned part of it up.

Well.... last night, I took it down and tried to comb/brush it out before going to sleep. I was in tears. Though I was gentle, I lost a wad of hair twice the size of what I normally pick up with the swiffer after a whole week. There were mats like what a dog gets on its ears and my scalp hurts. It's so stiff and dry and frizzing and awful.

So I slept with it in a bun and have not taken it down or touched it since. I am afraid.

I want to wash it before I go to bed tonight, but what should I do? Should I be gentle and do CO or SMT (or SMT as CO?) or just use heavy clarifying shampoo and deal with being dry and frizzy for the week and get it over with? I'm not sure and I'm soooo upset!!

Also other than SMT and heavy oiling does anybody have any rehabilitation ideas?

[manderly]

Oh no! Well, from my experience, brushing was your mistake!!!


Jump in the shower, soak your hair, and unload a ton of conditioner on your hair. Do some heavy duty COing, that should dissolve all the gunk, then you can gently detangle while your hair is all goopy with condish.

You'll be fine, just NEVER EVER brush out a salon style dry again.

[tuuli]

I would tend to clarify and follow with SMT for several hours or overnight. You could add a small bit of sheabutter in your SMT. Hth.

[SHELIAANN1969]

Oh my, that is not a good product for your hair from the description!

I would take a bath, or a warm/hot shower to loosen and make the "putty" softer.

I would try to use some conditioner as soon as it's soft to loosen it a little better and leave it on for a couple/ few hours.

Then rinse in warm water, if it isn't softening/ coming out, I would do the process again untill you see results.

That's the only thing I can personally think of, I hope you get some relief. Please keep us updated.


ETA: I was doing something else while I was responding, and I see Manderly had the same advice! I wasn't copying, it just seems that "great minds think alike"

[Alethia]

Gentle shampoo, then condition loads. Gently detangle while soaked in conditioner with a wide toothed comb, starting at the ends and gradually working upwards. In my younger days when I went in for more elaborate updos requiring lots of hairspray and stuff, this is how I detangled after the night was over and I did not lose lots of hair. Good luck!

[Cinnamon Hair]

Eww. The first rule of using hairspray or gel. Don't attempt to comb afterward! Anytime I've had my hair styled I waited until showering to comb. A shampoo is probably going to be necessary; just do the scalp and let it run down the length when you rinse. Then condition with something coney and everything should be fine.

[Curlsgirl]

Oh my gosh, the mermaid soak sounds like a wonderful idea! I hate you had to go through that. Next time come here FIRST!

[Gladtobemom]

The mermaid soak with a bottle of VO5 and half a bottle of condish . . . even worked on some sort of molding mud stuff that DD(15 at the time) put in her head at a friend's house. They were copying something from a magazine with the mom's (cosmetologist) help.

It loosened everything up enough that her hair came loose and floated. Then we did a CO with her usual conditioner (Milk and honey back then)

(I had forgotten this incident, this happened after I first Joined LHC and it was the recommendation someone gave me there--I think it was maybe Curlsgirl, but honestly I don't exactly remember, was it you?)

She says I used a whole bottle of VO5 SKR shampoo and half a bottle of VO5 Conditioner.

DD remembers very clearly because she couldn't even stick a comb in her hair and was scared her hair was just going to come loose like a Japanese wig. When she put water on it, it just beaded up.

[heidi w.]

Oh, in professional updo things like this, one is usually after a very smooth look that will last all day for photographs and not showing flyaways such as we all experience on regular updo, do it ourself, days. Hence the application of things that smooth and sleek and shine and HOLD. Like a Helmut! (Dianne Feinstein wasn't referred to as Helmut Head for no reason! Awww c'mon. It's ok to say. Fashion Week beat me to it decades ago!)

Sleeping on this fiasco may not help your cause.

OK, so take the hair down and try to ORGANIZE the hair a bit, but not overly detangle. Just try to align it vertically. Don't pull. Don't twist. Avoid crying and freaking out and panicking. I've been there Sweetie Pie, it's hard to avoid, but the key to overcoming this Super Goo is Patience. Yep, capital P.

Time to clarify.

AND CONDITION.

You are going to be stuck washing hair that isn't completely detangled, which means, out the other end, you're going to have to go slow on that detangling stuff.

I recommend bringing a vat of conditioner in the shower with you and a very wide tooth plastic comb. Go to the "ethnic" section of Walgreens or something or the beauty supply store, Sally's, and find a comb pick, even, such as what a Black Man or Woman would use.

I assume you know how to clarify. You need to remove the gunk off the surface of the hair strands, lying on top of the cuticle, and this is precisely what CLARIFY means. ACV Rinse is not a clarify hair wash in this instance, and if you go this route, life will be worse. Use the home recipe of Baking Soda and Shampoo of your choice. 3 Tablespoons each, blended well. Get in shower, do your first application on very, very, very wet hair (make sure it's all wet as best you can get it and use fairly warm water....not too tepid or you'll have a harder time breaking the bonds and getting good emulsification of product) with JUST SHAMPOO to break that surface tension of the bond so far.

Next application is with the baking soda/shampoo blend which should be creamy and no lumps. It might have a slight color to it depending on ingredients in your shampoo (that make it a color, if your shampoo has a hue to it).

So do at least 2 applications of clarify (either my home recipe or a shampoo that has on the label CLARIFY on it as a main feature of the shampoo).

THEN condition. Use pretty hot water for this. Warm the conditioner, keep the hair humid and warm and wet. Thickly apply the conditioner.

Then keep the conditioner on and dip the comb in the vat of conditioner (ETA: coat the comb with conditioner) and with the aide of the water stream, begin at the bottom and slowly detangle (not to be perfect but to organize). ETA: Pick into the hair with a kind of stabbing motion to loosen the clumps with that comb, don't pull down initially.

Work your way up.

This technique ensures conditioner to every strand. If a curly girl, this is a technique you might like a lot when all is well, too.

Rinse the conditioner out after leaving in for some time. (Do this hair wash when you have plenty of time and no one else needs to bathe after you cuz you're going to run the water heat out of hot water!)

Then out of the shower, and pat the hair dry. No piling, no rubbing, no putting up in a towel. Get it dry. You don't want to undo the detangling efforts made in the shower with the conditioner.

When a lot of the wetness is gone, you can begin to detangle. You're going to pick into the hair as previously described, that is, for lack of a better way of saying it, stab into the hair, and pull straight out. A slight pushing down (work from bottom up). Go slow, work in stages and phases as the hair air dries.

PATIENCE IS KEY IN THIS BATTLE. You will be back to your hair.

You will have some hair loss, and possibly a sore scalp for a day or so (and maybe a sore neck because you slept on it) because of the pins and hair being directed for so long and the first detangle efforts made.

It'll be OK. I promise. Just do your best, sigh, and avoid SUPER GOO in the future. I do the SUPER GOO thing maybe once a year and just suck it up for such an event, knowing well, it'll be not fun to get it out. But I know how to get it out, at least, and frankly, I don't even GOO UP once a year now. (I have nowhere to dress up and GO!)

It's going to be OK. This technique will work, but it's painstaking.

heidi w.

[Gladtobemom]

I'd mermaid soak with about half a bottle of shampoo in the tub as a "bubble bath and pour in conditioner too.

Just leat it soak out. Let the water out and wash as normal.

I'd use VO5 Kiwi & Lime Squeeze for the first step. Probaby half a bottle of the condish and half a bottle of the shampoo too. (P.S. this will get you nice and clean too)

The tub will be slick, so make sure you throw in a hand towel to stand on when you stand up.