How High Can I Get?, Part 3

gerlabaeri Haziran 23, 2021

My great Asian-American hair experiment (which began here and here) is currently on the verge of either groundbreaking success...or complete and utter failure. And if this ends up failing, the Asian thing to do would be to commit seppuku—you know, ritual suicide.

As you may recall, I've been letting my hair grow longer than it has ever grown, pushing me far outside my emotional comfort zones. While I've gotten my sides trimmed over the last several months, the hair on the top of my head has been allowed to keep growing since February/March. It eventually looked hip enough to make me say, "Hey, that's hip enough." Behold:

Come June, things started to go downhill. My hair started to do whatever the hell it wanted to do on its own. Various hair-care products, shampoos, conditioners, and my nimble fingers couldn't get my hair to do anything other than look BAD. It got so bad that I even refused to take pictures of it, even though photographic evidence would've made this blog post more complete and entertaining. (You're so cruel.)

I had previously thought, with my long hair, I could eventually replicate celebrity chef Curtis Stone:

However, as Howard Ho cruelly pointed out in the comments section, "Yeah, I know how to get that hair. It's called being white. Asian hair is coarse, and it don't do that." Friends of mine seconded that notion and tussled my hair without permission.

So what was I to do with my long hair and pipe dreams? What Asian-hair options did I have?

Google "Asian men hair styles," and brace yourself for hairdos that would make me look like a freaking clown:

I mean, c'mon, I'm a writer, not a circus freak!

So I decided to end my great Asian-American hair experiment today—unless a well-respected hair stylist could convince me otherwise.

Thanks to Yelp, I found a five-star reviewed, Asian-American hair stylist named Fran Lee in Atwater Village, about five minutes from where I live. I decided that I would give her the final say.

After giving Fran Lee a detailed history of my experiment, she was confident that I could rock the long hair. She trimmed, she styled, she suggested how I should handle my hair in the future.

And guess what she said about my hair, Howard Ho and naysaying friends?! She declared, "Your hair is actually pretty soft-textured for being Asian. Asian hair is usually coarse and hard to cut. But yours is different." Ha!

While my hair is not quite celebrity chef Curtis Stone's length yet, I am holding out hope. In the meantime, this is what Fran Lee has come up with, as I contemplate race and genetics: