Going straight

Are many people going straight these days? Going for straight hair, that is. Lately I’ve been reading articles about and by people who’ve had their hair straightened. Even my friend who is a writer for the "other" youth section has joined the bandwagon. She is now among a growing number of women who are free from all that ala-bruha hair — heavy, dry and no bounce. It was not like this in the past when you could only watch in envy as the models with their silky black hair in those shampoo commercials, and hope against hope that in time your hair would be like theirs. Apparently God has answered the prayers of many girls — and guys, too. Now, my friend can confidently pass for a model in a shampoo commercial — but of course she isn’t mad enough to do that. Even my mom has written something about this before. Obviously all of them are women.

I have yet to read about hairstraightening from a guy’s point of view — there must be guys out there who have gone through that same experience. Or, I could be the first. Let’s get one thing clear — I had my hair straightened even before my mom and my friend did theirs. I was thrilled with the outcome but I just kept my joy to myself, until now.

First of all I would like to make this clear, this is article isn’t about vanity — I think everyone should at least make himself or herself look good and feel good. That is not really vanity, that’s just pampering yourself. If you don’t take care of yourself, who will? (Your boyfriend or girlfriend will count the costs.)

I’ve always been finicky about my hair, as a lot of guys I know are except that they don’t write columns, like I do. I can only imagine how much a lot of guys spend these days trying to look good and smell good. Using gel is not the long and short of it.

And although I fuss a lot about my hair I wasn’t really content with it. My hair has always been wavy — not "kinky" (before the term got to have some naughty connotation), just wavy. It was heavy and beginning to be a tad boring. I tried doing almost everything with it in the past, used a lot of shampoo and conditioner hoping that my hair would become straight.

For years I endured with my old wavy hair, it felt heavy, dry and hot. I did not want to switch back to the so common short, spiky hair where you have to put a glob of gel to make it more presentable (take note, the hairstyle in my column photo) — but that kind of hairstyle is oh so common and everywhere you go you see guys sporting that hairstyle — it was just really "blech."

I wanted to try something different and new for a change, getting away from the tried and tested. I’ve always wanted to have long, straight hair — which I particularly define as "anime hair," taken from those anime cartoons — specifically where you see "name a character" in his dramatic pose holding a sword and his long hair being blown by the wind — well not that long of course but close to that.

And all that came to reality last year when I was dragged by my mom to accompany her and her friend Ricky Reyes to Hong Kong for a Hair/Cosmetics Fair, I gladly went along since it was in Hong Kong, and tagging along to meet manufacturers and retailers at the fair would do me good since being a management grad, I might pick up a thing or two for business ventures someday. Turned out, the only thing I remember from that fair was a funny-looking automatic hair washer made by a Japanese inventor. While in Hong Kong, Tito Ricky just looked at my long wavy, rather old-styled hair and asked me if I wanted to have my hair permanently straightened (unless the new strand of hair would grow again or I just decided to be a skinhead). This would be different from other straight-perm treatments, he said, where the hair strands curl back to normal in only a few days or weeks. One morning in our hotel lobby, he showed me the different kinds of straight hair of the people passing by — all I did was gasp with awe — and it looked good on them of course. Apparently straight-perm has long been a trend in Hong Kong. The whole time all I did was stare at people’s hair, thinking if the hairstyle would look good on me, and since it’s Hong Kong, people didn’t really give a heck if I stared at them.

Only a week after getting back, I was in the salon of Ricky Reyes in Greenhills to finally say goodbye to my stubborn and irritating wavy hair. Planning to go with my mom to have our hair straightened together was out of the question since if she says "next week" it could mean two months or even two years from now. I was already psyching myself up that the procedure would take as long as four hours, and to think I don’t have the patience to sit in a chair with a gooey substance on my head for that long. But I was among the lucky ones, it turned out, because it didn’t take an eternity. It took all of eight hours to get the hair of my friend straightened. That’s a day’s work, with a "gimik" thrown in.) I could not imagine what she had to do to keep herself entertained, or even to keep herself sane through the procedure. Two hours longer and she could have made the travel time from Hong Kong to Amsterdam. But all that inconvenience was well worth it.

So after a lot of texting and a nap, mine was done and in only three hours, an hour short of the estimated time.

It took a lot of getting used to straight hair at first, because I was shocked to see my hair really flat. The first word that came to mind when I saw my hair was purontong. I only had to don a camisa de chino, slippers and a farmer’s hat in my hand and I could sing Oh Ilaw in no time (sorry that’s the only kundiman song I can think of right now.) My hair looked like it was literally run over by an iron — which it was. It was pressed by ionic plates.

And I could not wash my hair for four days, but that was the least of my worries, why did I have a feeling I’d done that before? But a few weeks later, it looked great, and my two other cousins — a guy and a girl — even followed my example; they had their hair straightened.

I have had my hair straight for six months now and it’s still soft and silky, the summer heat and the humidity aren’t a bother anymore. And it feels good to look different for a change. Sometimes I have to agree that the Pinoy fashion sense can be boring because they’re more afraid of what society might think about their hair rather than being able to express and feel comfortable with themselves. Some of my friends did not like my new hairstyle because they were used to the old me, it wasn’t the same Luis, for them. But people change and it felt good to get out of my comfort zone for a change — dare to be different. Down with conformity. But the people who liked the style far outnumbered those who didn’t.

Now my new theme song to myself is, Ang gaan gaan ng feeling — literally and figuratively. There, a guy finally admitted to a straight perm.

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Email me at ketsupluis@hotmail.com