THE HAIRAPIST ™

Hi Gals,

This is probably going to be the most helpful blog in the history of BLOG and the best hair style advice ever. Ladies, start your printers…

Here goes….to keep your hair looking stunning in rainy weather TUCK ALL YOUR FRESHLY STYLED HAIR UNDER A WOOL BERET! Read on.

The wool beret DOES NOT style your hair for you, so you still need to take my styling advice and put the effort into styling your hair. I always tell women, “If you think you’re done styling your hair, keep styling another 20 minutes!” Love yourself enough to give another 20 minutes to your hair styling. There are NO ugly women, only lazy women. A good styling job should last you at least 3/4 days. (Use a shower cap when in the tub or shower.) Back to the beret.

Wool berets can fit in your coat pocket or purse. They fold up very small and travel well. Purchase a few berets and have them ready for unexpected rain fall. Don’t get caught with you “hair” down, plan ahead. The rain is on it’s way.

Please make sure you are tucking ALL YOUR HAIR underneith the wool beret. It should fit snuggly across your forehead and under the nape of your neck. No hair should be showing. Do this before you leave the warm, dry building, home, grocery store, etc.

Before you remove the beret, make sure you are safely indoors. Remove the beret, shake your hair out, fluff and go. You can even hide a roller or two under this cap, and primp in the bathroom.

Trust me, my hair looks like Chakha Kahn got it on with Shaft and I’m their love child! I most always wear my hair smooth and have been using and passing along my WOOL BERET advice for years. See the curly/smooth before and after photos at www.THEHAIRAPIST.com

I’d love to hear your personal experience with this advice.

Best always,

Mary Amen, THE HAIRAPIST

Good morning, Ladies.

In the last 7 years, as FLAT IRONS have become the quick and easy way to straighten, smooth, flatten and temporarily reduce bulk in hair, I have seen more excessive damage (in a shorter period of time) then ever before.

It is not that they don’t work, of course they give you immediate gratification. But at what cost to your hair?

Before you reach for your iron, I would ask yourself 3 questions.

1. HOW OLD IS MY HAIR? If you can take hair from the very crown of your head and stretch it to the bottom of your ear lobe, that hair is about 8-12 months old. If your hair is from the very crown of your head to your shoulders, that hair is about 1.5 to 2 years old. Mid of your back 3 – 4 years old. You’re a smart women, so I know you’re following me.

2. HOW MANY TIMES IN A 365 DAY PERIOD HAVE I USED A FLAT IRON ON MY HAIR? Remember, once your hair leaves your scalp, at some point on the length of hair… it’ll be the same piece of hair, even if you are trimming the ends. Let’s break it down into a 30 day month . In 30 days, have you flat ironed ANY part of your hair more than twice a week? Let’s say twice a week. Let’s say in a year, you have used a flat iron on the same piece of hair 400 – 420 times.

3. IN A 365 DAY PERIOD HAVE YOU DONE MORE CONDITIONING OR MORE  BREAKING DOWN OF YOUR HAIR? Have you conditioned  or nourished your hair in some way more often than you’ve shampooed, blown dry, and used heat in any form, on your hair?

Let’s think of our hair as a beautiful royal blue silk blouse. When we first bring it home, the colour is rich and has a fantastic sheen. The fabric has such a lovely texture and feel, smooth.

Now, let’s scrub that blouse with detergent (mild) twice a week. Let’s throw it in a dryer on high, because who really has the patience to dry their hair…uhhh, I mean the “silk blouse” on a low setting. And NOW let’s get an iron good and hot – (most flat irons are between 150 – 250 degrees) – and let’s press that blouse… twice a week for a whole year.

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT MY BLOUSE JUST TURNED TO DUST!

A nice alternative to making your hair smooth is wet setting it on traditional rollers, air drying or going under a bonnet dryer until ALL the water has evaporated from your hair. Once your hair is COMPLETELY DRY, to calm that very wiggy…bad prom date look, ON A COOL SETTING blow dry through your hair. This will flatten the wave and erase the lines of demarcation left by the rollers.

I think we all agree, smooth hair is only lovely if it does not have a mass of split, damaged ends.

Love your hair and treat it gently, with patience and kindness.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away there lived a fair maven…yes, MAVEN! (Hey, who’s telling the story…) named, Uhh, Happy. Happy had a twin sister, Mope.

Even though the girls were identical twins no one believed them. Not even their Mother!

Mope had lifeless frizzy dry hair, split ends with a colour that was so indistinct that it could not be found on any colourists sample charts in the America’s, Europe or any location north or south of the equator. Poor Mopes’ hair did not shine and would not take a definite shape when styled. The ends looked like frayed twine and her scalp was oilier than the Alaskan Pipeline. Sometimes people mistook her for Christopher Walken, with eyebrows. Mope spent her days scrubbing her hair with this shampoo and conditioning with the ”LATEST GREATEST” she found  on the Internet. Mope went jumping from stylist to stylist, each with their own theory on what chemicles would make her hair better. It was a vicous circle and Mope was franatic about trying to DO SOMETHING TO FIX her hair. Okay..you get the picture. Think Christopher Walken, with eyebrows in a dress. Oh, and his hair’s a little past his shoulders and the colour looks a bit green on the ends and Tabby cat orange at the scalp.

Now Happy, was plain old happy.  And I can save typing about what Happy looked like. Just think all things good, shiney and healthy. Bounce and body could have been her middle name.

Happy had 20 kids, so funds were tight and Happy’s free time was  well….let’s just say, the last time Happy had free time the talk about town was that,  ”some guy with three ships was sailing towards the coast.” Things like, HOT WATER, DAILY SHAMPOOING which goes hand in hand with STYLING WITH CONSTANT HEAT, OVER LAPPING PERM AND HIGH LIFT HIGHLIGHT COMBO…well Happy just plain ‘ole didn’t have the time or the doe, ray, me.

One day Mope, against her better judgement, but at the request of Happy came for a 6-8 month visit. Child number 8, ran to answer the knock at the door. Upon opening the door (listen for the creaking sound), he screamed and shouted, “MA, Christer Walken is here to see you!”

For 6-8 months Mope …

DID NOT WASH HER HAIR DAILY, DID NOT PUT CONSTANT HEAT AGAINST HER HAIR, DID NOT USE ANY CHEMICLE SERVICE…she basically just had time for the ends to be trimed a half and inch a month.

Mope walked around with her oily hair. Except that once in a while she did shower and in between used good old Johnson’s Baby Powder (Happy had it on hand in a 55 gallon drum) TO ABSORB THE OIL then BRUSH THE POWDER OUT.

Mope did decide one day to GO FOR IT and got a shorter, sexy & sassy A-Line bob, a little like Catherine Zetta Jones from the movie Chicago. it was a total transformation of hair, mind and body.

 Mope was no dope and in 6-8 months had kicked her addition to hair like a rope. Well that’s the end of my soap…Oh, I mean constant shampoo, heat and chemicle addicton tale.

And Mope changed her name to Mimi.

The HEALTHY Ends!

Hi Gals,

Mary Amen here. Today I’m going to teach you  how to get more volume in the crown area of your hair style. Or, if you’ve just been hired to play the lead in “CATS” you can do this all over your entire head of  hair.

You will need these tools. 1. Patience 2. A fine tooth comb or slender back combing brush 3. Hair spray …if you want the volume to last a couple days.  Go collect your tools and I’ll wait right here. (Quietly humming Yankee Doodle to myself…)

Okay. Here we go. There are three rules with backcombing.

1. CROWN ONLY: Always start in the FLATEST AREA of the crown of your head. The flattest area is in the back of your head and can be found by doing this easy exercise. Place the palm of your hand flat across the crown of your head. Your wrist will be will be at your hair line touching your bangs. YOUR FINGER TIPS SHOULD BE TOUCHING THE FLATEST PART OF THE CROWN OF YOUR HEAD. We will start our back combing at this point and move forward to about 3″ before your forehead. Remember, we want only the crown to have volume. This will create a contrast with your smooth, sexy bangs.

2. SECTIONING YOUR HAIR. Always take fine, thin sections that you can see through. This is REALLY key, as large, impatient sections looks like a rats nest. Sections should be no longer than 3″ across and only about 1/2″ in width. Starting in the back, take a fine section of hair. (You will end up taking about 10/15 of these sections.)

3. CREATING LIFT – TEASE ONLY AT BASE. Pull the section forward (THIS IS KEY) and tease only the first 1″ of hair that is against the scalp. DO NOT take long sweeping strokes down the length of your hair! Properly teasing your hair takes only a very tight small sweep at the base of your hair against the scalp. HAIRSPRAY the teased base for extra hold.

4. GENTLY TUG BACKCOMBED SECTION BACK INTO PLACE. This movement is similar to flipping pages in a book. You will repeat step 3 about 10/15 times. Each section you take should move forward over the crown of your head. Stop about 3″ before your bangs. With a brush, GENTLY smooth over the top of ALL sections.

For long haired ladies, you will find that backcombing only the base of your hair, allows for the longer layers of your design to move naturally, while still having fabulous volume in the crown. Very sexy and mermaid-ish.

For gals with short and sassy styles, this technique will allow you to maneuver your hair into different, fun directions. I always envision the image of wind blowing across really high grass. With our eyes we follow how the air creates that cool sweeping movement. That is the fun and beauty of backcombing short hair styles. You visually create the image of movement on a design that is for the most part stationary.

Okay, gals. Have fun. If you have questions, feel free to call me at 415.806.4247 or email me: www.THEHAIRAPIST.com

Hello Ladies,

One of the most frequently asked questions I am asked is, “How can I save time styling my hair.” The answer is short and sweet because it not only saves you time, it allows you to sleep a little longer!

To save time styling your hair, wash you hair the evening prior, say two hours before you go to bed. Let your hair air dry overnight. In the morning, take you hair in sections that are 2″x 2″ and with HEAT style your hair. Remember, to style your hair you need 3 KEY INGREDIENTS: “Patience, heat and tension.”

Hair is porous and water gets in the way of the innermost part of your hair. The innermost part of hair is where the genetic memory of your hair’s texture is contained. You MUST heat this area to effectively change your hair’s shape. Your own blow dryer MUST get very hot. I have found travel dryer’s to be highly ineffective.

ALSO – DO NOT style your hair in an area where there is moisture. i.e., a steamy bathroom! Remember, your hair is porous.