IMAGE
October 31, 2010 | By Whitney Friedlander, Los Angeles Times
Despite our differences and grass-is-always-greener attitudes, there is a common enemy that binds women of all hair types: Frizz. This poufy, unruly mess of fluff can affect us all but it's up to the individual to find a way to fight it. "Frizz is caused when water in the air, like humidity, seeps into the hair shaft and makes it swell," explains Kristin Perrotta, executive editor at Allure magazine. "Certain types are more prone to frizz ... thicker hair, curly hair. [And] all the things we do to style it damages the cuticle, which is the protective layer that keeps the water out. Once that's damaged, humidity seeps in and you have a big mushroom cloud.
IMAGE
October 31, 2010 | By Whitney Friedlander, Los Angeles Times
Thanks a lot, Gwyneth Paltrow. It's been more than 10 years since the actress and style icon showed up at the "Shakespeare in Love" premiere with long, stick-straight extensions. And suddenly, boom ? "Blow-out salons [popped up] across the landscape. It also was when hairstylists started Japanese straightening treatments and then Brazilian," says Kristin Perrotta, executive editor at Allure magazine. No matter, she adds, that not everyone could pull off the look. But although we might not have always tried to achieve stick-straight hair, many curly-haired women have been fighting the good fight for generations.
ENTERTAINMENT
October 4, 2009 | Greg Braxton
In the past, Chris Rock has joked about how he is determined to keep his young daughters "off the pole," or away from working in strip clubs. But in his new film, "Good Hair," he talks of a moment that caused him a different type of fatherly concern. Said Rock, "One day, one of my daughters came to me crying and saying, 'Daddy, why don't I have good hair?' " The question reignited interest in an idea that had struck Rock about 15 years ago when he attended a convention in Atlanta revolving around black hair fashions and the extreme lengths African American women with kinky hair go to to obtain "good" or straight hair similar to that of white women.
NEWS
May 31, 2002 | VALLI HERMAN-COHEN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Julie Mitchell's long, wavy hair normally coils into an unruly mass. "I'd spend all this time getting ready, and I'd still be a big ball of hair walking down the aisle," said the 38-year-old flight attendant for Southwest Airlines. That was life P.P.--pre-perm. Now her shoulder-length hair hangs ramrod straight, and her daily battle with the blow dryer is over.
MAGAZINE
May 2, 1999 | CARLA HALL, Carla Hall is a Times staff writer. Her last article for the magazine was on style consultant Suzi Joi Kiefer
Straight hair will always be the holy grail of the curly-haired. I should know; I am a member of the curly class who aspires to the ranks of the straight. In the past, I have blow-dried, rollered, gelled and sprayed to try coaxing my hair into a seal-like sleekness. Now I pretty much just pay people to do it for me. Of course, the straight hair trend of the past few seasons has only encouraged my obsession.
NEWS
February 5, 1999 | BARBARA THOMAS, TIMES STAFF WRITER
It started where so many trends do, on the runways in Paris and Milan. Models sported Cher hair--the long, straight signature hairdo of Cher when she was with Sonny, before "Moonstruck" and all those tattoos. You could catch glimpses of it on the streets of L.A. Madonna vamped in it on the cover of February's Harper's Bazaar. And then a few weeks ago, Cher hair became official--Gwyneth Paltrow wore it to the Golden Globe Awards. "People want simplicity in their hair.