But at least I can say this with sincerity: No matter how I end up wearing my hair, now or in the future, I am relieved

I was downright jubilant when I first got a Groupon promotion for “the Brazilian” in my email inbox back in 2010. The ad featured a woman with light brown skin, brown eyes, and hair that was as sleek, shiny, and straight as frickin’ sealskin. Not only did this model look exactly the way I had always wanted to look, but the straightener was apparently derived from a naturally occuring hair protein called keratin. Furthermore, the service was being offered by a chic salon in the heart of Manhattan’s mostly White Upper East Side. Win, win, win!

Fortunately, this period in my life coincided with the introduction of the pinnacle of first-world services: the Dry Bar. This is the cutesy name of the first salon of its kind, but there are imitators everywhere these days. Here’s what happens at a dry bar: A stylist washes your hair a few times and then blow-dries it. You then get up and go to the front desk to fork over $45. Seriously. This is the entirety of the service provided by this salon. (Fine, they also offer a flat-iron or a beachy-wave finish). And yet they’re making a killing, in part thanks to me! I reached a point where I was going to the dry bar, like, once a week. There was something about having another person apply heat to my hair that made it look sleeker and last longer. Also, I could just sit there and scroll through my phone. (I said it was a first-world service!)

I tried another one called the Japanese straightening treatment (which sometimes goes by its more PC name, thermal reconditioning). This one did do something, but the Japanese didn’t make the process any easier than the Brazilian. My eyes may not have been watering, but I was in the styling chair for literally six hours on the Saturday of my first (and last) appointment. I had my hair washed, blow-dried, and flat-ironed no less than three times. The grand total came to $1,000. And then my curly roots grew in two months later, and my hair started breaking off again. So we were basically right back at relaxer, just with an extra zero on the end and a White stylist behind the chair.

I felt no pressure from anyone else but myself to do this. In fact, my mom, my husband, and a few of my close friends regularly encouraged me to wear my hair more naturally. As my husband put it, “Your hair looks nice when it’s straightened, but it’s just… so clearly not your natural hair.” He’s not wrong, now, is he? I think he was also a bit opposed to inserting “dry bar” as a line item in the family budget. But he said to go for it if it made me happy.

Well, as it turns out, the Brazilian Blowout contains not only the natural protein called keratin but also the natural organic gas compound called formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is classified as a probable carcinogen and can cause respiratory distress and severe nasal irritation when inhaled. The treatment is now banned in a few countries, and a number of U.S. salons that offer it have been under investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) due to the potential risks to the highly exposed stylists.

I had figured that the Brazilian’s biggest drawback was that it cost roughly $400 a treatment, and this wasn’t even really a problem to me because at that time, I was working as an extremely highly paid law firm associate. But there were a few more issues I learned about once I showed up to the airy, modern salon and was promptly led to the back, past the bathrooms, past the stylist breakroom, down a small dimly lit staircase. “WTF?” I thought. I was then handed an N95 gas mask as I rounded the corner. “What the hell did you just sell me, Groupon?!”

In any event, I dutifully sat in my basement chair while my eyes watered. Kind of like the relaxer. In fact, the entire treatment mimicked the relaxer — burn out the curls and then melt the chemical into the hair with blow dryers and flat irons. The big difference is that the Brazilian Blowout cost me about four times more and was done alongside curly-haired White clients. I note that it did get my hair super straight, though.

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ss benefits, Holder recommends a minimum 10-minute workout. Here’s what he suggests that looks like: Warm up for two to three minutes (jog in place, do some dynamic exercises like knee hugs, leg swings, or side lunges with rotations); then do an upper body exercise, lower body exercise, cardio exercise, and core exercise for 30 seconds each; take a quick break after a set, then repeat that set of four exercises four times; cooldown for two minutes, and get back to your day.

When it comes to wearing my hair down and curly—you know, I somewhat agree with a March 2020 critique of the natural hair movement featured in HuffPost. The writer points out that many pro-natural hair products currently exist to help Black women get their locks to form looser, wider curls. In other words: hair that hangs down. And so we’ve come full circle? Who knows.

That’s the thing, though. It didn’t really make me happy. Sure, I liked — in fact, I still like — the look of my hair when it was straight. But I didn’t like why I liked it. It didn’t make me happy to know I was trying to pass as someone other than who I am.

I’m finally being honest about that, even if I can’t say that my journey has reached a destination. I haven’t paid money for a chemical straightener or gone to a dry bar for quite some time now. As I type this, my hair is tied up on top of my head in the “reverse messy bun” thing that has become downright fashionable in the Covid-19 era.

I loved the Brazilian, but I hated the formaldehyde. I just couldn’t get over it. I was not quitting yet, though. I am the type who goes big when she has a goal. I believe that type has a name — “A.” I tried a truly formaldehyde-free (but still $400) treatment called “the Cezanne.” It didn’t do shit.

After I left corporate America and my corporate paycheck behind, I tried to quit straightening treatments. But I couldn’t quite do it. I freaked out as soon as my curly “new growth” hit the previously unheard of six-month mark. Would I be relegated back to the damn braid-and-bun?

No matter how I end up wearing my hair, now or in the future, I am relieved to have reached a part of my identity journey where I am no longer trying to pass as anyone else but who I am.

Let’s clear it up right out of the gate: The Brazilian Blowout is a hair straightening treatment. (You should have seen my husband’s face the first time I told him I was heading out for one of these.)