30 Days to 10 years younger--10 minute tips. Tip 16: Rethink your hair products

From time to time I see a woman who colors her hair, and it's a dull, frizzy mess. You probably know what I mean: dead-looking highlights or beat-up, frizzy dark hair. My first thought is to think "ugh--bad dye job!" But that's probably not it.

Obviously damaged hair is every bit as aging as gray. Now, hair dye manufacturers frequently claim that their hair color "conditions" the hair and adds body. Insofar as coating unruly gray hairs with dye weighs them down and makes them more manageable, that's true. But if you're using demi-permanent or permanent hair dye, dyeing your hair damages it.

For your color to look convincing and natural, you're going to have to bite the bullet and pamper your hair a lot more.

Your hair is covered with rows of thin, clear scales called the cuticle--that's what makes the hair shine. It's like the clear top coat on your gorgeous nail polish color; the clear coat enhances the effect of the color.

But when we dye our hair, the cuticle is lifted so that the color can penetrate. This leaves our hair fragile and prone to damage. Blow-drying, back-combing, flat-ironing, sunlight, and chlorinated swimming pools only compound the problem.

For years I had long, thick, almost-completely straight hair. I had the second toughest, least damage-prone hair on the planet--it was like a horse's tail. And I didn't do much to it that damaged it--no color, no back-combing, and minimal blow-drying.

Then I started coloring my hair. I started with semi-permanent, and now, 15 years later, I get a permanent base color with highlights, low-lights, and a clear glaze to bump up the shine. Basically, I'm my colorist's bitch.

Well, guess what, children. Even if all you're doing is "restoring" your hair's original color, if you dye it, you're beating it up. Before I colored my hair, if I traveled to Florida or any place incredibly hot and humid, and the only change in my hair was that it got a bit more body. Now, my hair swells up like a sponge when it's dropped into a sink of water. Why? Because all that color has damaged my hair's cuticle.

I don't know why this took me by surprise, but it did. I would have expected it had I gone platinum blonde or flaming red, but I was dyeing my hair the color it had always been. It was kind of a shock when the texture of my hair changed.

I'll get into the specifics of what you should do later on. For right now, if you color your hair, I'd like you to think about the care you give it. I can't get away with treating my hair as cavalierly as I could 30 years ago, when it was approximately the same color. And neither can you.

So remember--you can color your hair like crazy and still have it look natural--it'll just cost you a lot of time and product.

When every day is a bad hair day

OK, right away I will mention that I haven't undergone chemo, and whining about bad hair seems pretty insensitive when half the women I know are going around with scarves on their heads (instead of around their necks where I'm sure they would much rather be wearing them, if at all.)

But I'm going to whine about my hair anyway, because at the rate things are going, I'll be wearing scarves on my head sooner or later. I mean, it just seems inevitable at this point. Doesn't it? Almost like everyone's fifteen minutes of fame?

So on to the burning issue of my hair and why it drives me crazy.

Because I am not as young as I used to be (by the way, dear Reader, I can tell without looking--call me psychic--that neither are you--but I digress) my hair is dyed. Because it is dyed, it is fried. (Hellooooooo Dr. Seuss!)

So what I have is a mess of medium chestnut brown hair with some of it highlighted lighter (so as to escape that "I poured a bottle of brown shoe polish on my head" look) and some of it low-lighted darker. My hair dyer assures me this adds "depth and a look of extra fullness," but we're all going to have to take her word for it. It's possible, of course, that this depth and fullness is going on behind my back where I can't see.

So anyway. I'm sitting here with it wet, and I can feel it drying into little wiggly frizzles. Now pre-chemicals, my hair was as thick and straight as a horse's tail. So I breezed through the 70s and 80s pretty much wearing it long and straight or short and bobbed. I bought a can of mousse, developed a faint competence with the blow dryer, and all was well.

Now, however, those choppy layers are in style. And I hereby curse whoever the hell it was who did that to Meg Ryan in the first place. Also the person who did that to Jennifer Anniston the first time around. Because now we all have all these damned layers cut into our hair, and I, at least, have no idea what to do with them.

So for the moment I have two kinds of hair: the envy-producing professionally- colored and blown-out just-left-the-salon high-maintenance look. And the starting-to-show roots, madly frizzy, ineptly-blown-out-at-home look.

Unfortunately, since I loathe beauty salons and only go when things have gotten really, really bad, the ratio of the first to the latter is about 1 in 60.

Speaking of which, I had better go apply some product and blow my hair out now, or I will spend the rest of the day cringeing every time I pass a mirror. I've truly enjoyed ranting, but I have my public to consider.

-P.