Living curly...

My family moved to California the summer of my sixteenth year. I became a city girl, a beach lover, and a curly girl all within a few months. Up to that point, my hair was dirty blonde and stick straight, just like my mom and my brothers. (My dad's hair - when he had any - was dark and wavy.) My hair had been gradually darkening over the years, but that summer - my first in California - was when I discovered my curls.

Now, almost ten years later, I have dark brown hair that - depending on the day - falls past my shoulders in ringlets, ripples and waves.

When I was eighteen, my best friend (whose hair was gloriously thick, shiny and straight) told me that I should learn to straighten my hair. She thought it would be pretty, or at least prettier than my frizzy rat's nest. I spent the next seven years fighting curls and frizz with blow dryers, curling irons, goopy gels and velcro rollers - anything to have straight swingy hair like everyone around me. Anything to fit into the idea of Pretty. I lay awake in my bed at night, dreaming up new ways to create sleek beauty out of my crazy curls. I dreaded rainy days and sprinklers and avoided swimming like the plague, for fear that water on my hair would turn it into an uncontrollable frizzball. I wore jeans and sneakers when I went to the beach so that I would have an excuse to stay far away from the waves. I tried everything I could think of to be as straight as possible.

Two days ago, my unbelievably-straight-haired mother gave me a book for Christmas: A handbook for girls with curly hair. I laughed, but then I read it . . . and decided to become a curly girl.

So this is me. Curly-haired, creative, laughing at life and embracing all its glory - I'm throwing out my curling irons and the straight-haired life and making my own way, crazy curls and all, and I'm inviting anyone and everyone to come along for the ride, whether your hair is curly, straight or somewhere in-between.