In all my years of life, I’ve always had curly hair. Not your average loose waves, and not quite the tight 4C curls, but somewhere between a pretty ringlet and a stretched out slinky.

When I was a little girl, my mom (bless her soul) did not know how to manage my frizzy curls. Thus, for the first 5 or 6 years of my life, I had a short, curly, frizzy afro. Even at such a young age, I knew that I could not go on with life looking like a young Richard Simmons. As soon as second grade hit, I took control and told my mom “No more haircuts!!”. I didn’t exactly know what I was doing when I took over, and I went through that pesky “just below shoulder length” stage for a few years.

I also dabbled with perming my hair twice in the sixth grade, and that was a serious disaster. My hair did go “naturally” straight after the perm, but boy was the growing out process an ugly mess! At 12 years old (a pivotal time in a young lady’s life), I had to watch my super curly hair grow out of my scalp, while the ends remained dead straight. I’ll be the first to say it looked awful, and I didn’t bother straightening the burgeoning curly roots because I was 12, and the whole point of the perm was so that I wouldn’t have to do anything. Shortly after the perming fiasco, I met my best friend and life long hairstylist.

Safe to say, I’ve embraced my curly locks now and I’ve even found the secret to keeping them bouncy and (less) frizzy – mousse!! (and sometimes gel). Will I cut my hair above my jaw line ever again? Probably not until I’m 95, that way I can say I spent the first 5 years of my life and the last 5 years looking like a young and old version of (a pretty) Howard Stern.