Staff writer
Sarah Dye went above and beyond to make sure her daughter’s hair was just the way she wanted it for school photos.
Dye’s daughter Sophia’s hair does not hold heat curls, so Dye browsed the Internet looking for ideas to help make it curly.
“I got the idea from YouTube,” she said. “We didn’t have any actual hair rollers so I searched for curling hair that doesn’t hold curl without rollers.”
There, Dye found an idea she liked that used a simple household item, drinking straws.
First she washed her daughter’s hair and let it dry until it was only damp. After parting the hair into small pieces, she began the YouTube technique.
Dye tightly wrapped Sophia’s hair around drinking straws. Once the hair was wrapped, she tied the straws and used bobby pins to secure them.
The effort took nearly 50 straws and around an hour to complete, Dye said.
“The rolling part was easy,” Dye said, “and she thought it was fun.”
Dye said Sophia didn’t have a hard time sleeping despite the 50 straws all over her head.
“When we got up in the morning we unrolled her hair and it was super curly,” Dye said. “She has medium length hair so I wasn’t expecting the same results that the girl had on the video.”
Sophia’s hair was in fact too curly and had to be calmed with water until the right curl density was achieved.
“I would use it again,” Dye said, “but I definitely need to define it for her hair. Sophia liked how her hair turned out.”
Michelle Kersten of A Cut Above said she has heard of people using rags to achieve the same results among other ways to achieve the perfect curl for those that have stubborn hair.
“I’ve heard of people using empty frozen juice cans to create big curls, but I’ve never done it,” she said. “In salons we have to used products that follow state guidelines.”
Kersten said the reason techniques like this work is because when hair is wet, the polypeptide, or inner core, of hair strands breaks down and become more pliable.
“When it dries, the polypeptide hardens to create stronger curls,” she said.
Curls caused by heat are much softer and natural looking than curls set in wet hair, but sometimes wet curling can be the only way to coarse stubborn hair into holding a curl.