We're talking hair, dry hair, damaged hair, healthy hair.
Oh, I don't know what I'm doing.
Hi, I'm Kelly U.
And today I'm partnering with Dove to share my hair damage story.
Growing up Asian, I always looked at my mom
and she had the most gorgeous, luscious, healthy, shiny locks and I was like, oh,
mom, your hair looks like it could be in a frickin commercial.
And my hair wasn't exactly like hers.
Self-Consciousness and being insecure about your hair
is something that almost all of us go through.
What made my journey so much harder is I have this habit
of tugging at my hair or pulling at my hair and actually splitting my ends.
Even if other people aren't judging you by your hair.
I would judge myself by my hair.
When I was growing up,
I went to an all Asian school because it was in Chinatown in Chicago.
I had never really been around people of different hair textures,
different hair colors.
So when I went to high school, it was in downtown Chicago, very, very diverse.
And I all of a sudden saw people who had wavy hair, curly hair.
And then I thought to myself, my hair is so boring and dull and flat.
This is when I started really damaging my hair.
I would wake up three hours before
it was time to get to school so that I could curl my hair.
But tons of product in it.
I was so insecure about the fact
that my hair just looked different than a lot of people.
I never felt comfortable in my own hair. I was always trying to change it.
The thing that really woke me up was something that a boy said in a class.
We were joking around in a math class,
and I don't know what prompted him to say this.
But he looked at me and said, hahaha you with your frizzy hair haha
and everyone started giggling,
and my heart, just sunk to the bottom of my chair. And I felt so
insecure. And I think that's when I just decided, you know what,
I got to stop doing this.
I did so much damage to my hair in high school, curling it so much,
putting products that I never read the labels on.
I would pick hairspray that just said maximum hold,
and fights against humidity, which meant that my hair was hard as rock.
I would use mousse.
I think I thought it would create volume for me.
I'm pretty sure I wasn't using it at all in the right way.
I also did a lot of teasing to it,
which means you kind of take a piece of hair, you take a comb
and you really rake it like it's like a rake here to try to get poofy.
So after high school, I kind of laid off doing all that wild stuff to my hair.
But then I did beauty pageants.
So at that time of my life, it was so hard for me to build a
loving relationship with my hair.
I didn't feel pretty if my hair wasn't done.
Every day for about five months, my hair smelled like burnt toast.
At least a couple of times a week, I would have to curl it
and put tons of maximum hold hairspray.
And I just remember at the end of the day, after doing photos or performance,
I'd sit down and lay in the couch or my bed and just
I couldn't be with my own hair. I didn't like it.
I would try to just put it away because I knew it was so damaged.
And I felt really guilty about that.
It's so easy for us to want what we don't really have,
and we think we should always be better and make our hair different.
That is just kind of the wild thoughts that I had and the beliefs.
I was always trying to look a certain way and portray this image of perfect hair.
And it was so much pressure.
And my poor hair was just taking the brunt
of all of that pressure.
Fast forward to now as a content creator and an influencer.
I do feel a lot of pressure to look a certain way and have a good hair day.
Sometimes I just want to let it go.
I just want to be natural. And that's why I did that for this video,
I want to just show my natural hair and not put any heat on it.
Not damage it if I don't have to.
And there are ways to protect your hair from damage,
even if you want to curl it put heat on it, all of that.
Here are my favorite tips and tricks for caring for my hair on a regular basis.
First of all, I try to schedule a haircut or hair trim every 10 to 12 weeks
to just make sure that I'm cutting off any dead ends.
The second thing is
because I struggle with picking at my hair
or tugging at it a lot or splitting my own ends.
I touch it a lot.
What I try to do is a very gentle ponytail and I'll just gently put a little hair
tight and not make it super tight.
And now it is totally out of your way.
And I feel like it really helps
to just remove it from your temptation zone. Next tip.
When I wash my hair,
I really try to prolong the time between I wash my hair
so that the natural oils can kind of marinate.
But when I do have a wash day, I will do shampoo twice, just focusing on the scalp
and really get into my roots
to remove all of that oil and any residue and dirt to really feel a deep cleanse.
So I will do the breakage remedy shampoo.
Then I will do the breakage remedy conditioner in the shower,
then I will towel dry my hair.
AKA, flipping my head over like this.
I'm wrapping it in a towel, having my hair up in that towel.
I learned doing that from my mom and I thought it was so cool
when she would do that.
It was like in a movie, you know, you'd walk around
with your towel up and here and you feel so adult.
And after my hair is just towel dried, I will do leave in conditioner.
This is my go to.
I love to curl my hair, I love a nice wave, so I'm going to show you
how I take care of my hair and prevent it from damage
when I'm putting hot, hot, hot heat on it.
Now, the first thing that I never really learned
is temperature of your hair curler, hair straightener, whatever truly does matter.
If you have thin or fine hair, any heating tools,
you want to keep that at two hundred degrees Fahrenheit or below.
If you have thick or coarse hair,
you want to keep that between 200 and 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
That is something that would have really saved me all throughout high school.
Once you've done a temperature that is safe for your type of hair,
you are going to need to purchase,
if you don't already have, a heat protectant spray.
What I do is I take the strand that I want to curl.
I spray spray spray spray spray spray anywhere.
That heat is going to touch.
Let it dry a little bit.
I don't want it to be super wet when I'm curling it.
I put the hair strand in there
and I run it through one time to kind of get it hot and warm.
And then I go in the middle of the piece and I keep the barrel upwards vertical,
and then I just hold it for about 10 seconds.
You don't want to keep it too much because heat, heat, hot, hot.
And then I will hold this down and let it go down a little bit.
Clamp again. Twirl up, twirl, twirl keeping it upright.
That's another 10 seconds.
And then I press this again to kind of loosen it and then twirl up again.
And I always leave a little piece out because I actually don't
want the bottom of it to be curled up.
I kind of like that more natural looking wave.
So what I do is I just let it unravel a little bit and I pull at the end.
Look at that. Nice, just very gentle little wave.
And what I do is
right after I curl it with the heating, I actually wind it up again,
just kind of the pattern that it was curled.
And if I'm curling one piece after another, I will actually curl up.
This is what I really do.
I craft that piece over, take a clip and pin it down
just so it kind of keeps its shape.
And I can continue curling the rest of my head of hair.
The way to really preserve a curl for me and Asian hair is texture spray.
It helps keep the body of that curl.
Oh, yeah. And then I cannot live without hairspray.
And I finally, as I got older, realized
the type of hairspray that I choose is very, very important.
I really love this dove compressed micro mist, because it has a touchable feel.
It's a number four strong hold and it's still flexible and movable.
Any time I used hairspray when I was younger,
it would just turn to rock solid and look at that.
My hair journey has been
one where I've wanted to learn how to take better care of my hair.
I've learned that hair care is a form of self care.
And I really realized, too, that comparing my hair
to other people my whole life has never gotten me any where.
Thank you so much for letting me share my hair story,
my hair struggles, my hair journey.
I'm with you. I feel you.
I'm cheering you and your beautiful hair on.
Don't forget to subscribe to the Dove
YouTube channel for more hair content like this.
And please share your dry and damaged hair stories in the comments below.
And for now, please take care of you and your wonderful
and worthy hair for the rest of the day. Bye.