#hairoftheweek: the Origins

As a general rule, I try to make things a lot harder than they have to be (maybe not try, per-se, but it does end up working out that way most of the time). While #hairoftheweek may seem straightforward, it is and it isn't at the same time. Why oh why must you do this to yourself, Yvette?! Overachiever might be a good word to describe me.

It all started my senior year of high school. At this point in my life, my long, shiny hair was a part of my identity. While I took pride in my hair, I wasn't doing anything with it. Everyday was the same old side pony, high pony, signature braid, or down. I felt like my locks, honestly a blessing to the world, were going to waste. This wasn't an explicit feeling at the time but looking back, it's probably one of the reasons that I started playing with my hair. That, and probably boredom.

One day, I was messing around with my mane and I discovered if you make two rope braids from a single ponytail and twist it a certain way, the rope braids would fit together perfectly and end up forming what looked like chain links of hair.

3.28.14 chain ponytail (x)

I wore it to school and I got so many compliments. That day, I decided that #hairoftheweek was something I was going to do once a week to spice up my hair routine. Knowing so many people enjoyed something I created was so rewarding, especially since I would never in a million years consider myself to be a creative person.

There are a couple rules for #hairoftheweek. First and foremost, no coloring. My gramma, before she passed away, told me to never dye my hair because it would ruin it. I know "dye = damage" is a myth but to honor my gramma, I've decided I will never color my hair. Although colorful hair is really cool, I quite like how my Asian hair changes in different lighting and I can be really subtle with the details of the hairstyles.

Secondly, I try to use as little heat as possible. My hair is naturally stick straight (well, it's wavy when it's not so heavy that it weighs a ton and straightens itself out). This is a blessing and a curse. Heat is very damaging to hair and I don't want to subject my hair to that kind of torture especially since I'm already bad about taking care of the ends of my hair. Sometimes having just straight hair can limit my looks and sometimes it even changes the tone of the hairstyle. (That's probably weird to think about if you aren't familiar with hairdos.) On the other hand, I have used heat, a curling wand, in this case, and it held surprisingly well. I wore the same hairstyle for prom and graduation. So I'm not entirely opposed to heat styling, but not owning any hot tools kinda helps.

6.7/14.14 aurora's twistback (x)

So far, we know that #hairoftheweek happens once a week, I'm not using any color, and heat styling is rare. Another thing to note is that I have seasons, so to speak. My hair philosophy is that it should be shared with the world, so I only do #hairoftheweek on days I go to school. Because of this, I take summers off to recharge and build up my bank of new hairstyles for the coming seasons. When I first started, there were ten weeks left of school. It must have been my destiny to be inspired to start #hairoftheweek when I did because of the way the timing worked out. On top of that, now that I'm in college, I'm on a quarter system rather than semester and that breaks it up into eleven weeks, nice and even. Wait, eleven weeks? I thought you said ten weeks was the perfect amount! You're right. This leads me to my next point.

I consider #hairoftheweek to be the people's project. I like to involve my friends as much as possible and I think that's a fun way to keep everybody excited and caring about #hairoftheweek (I'm not gonna lie, I'm the most indecisive person so their input means the world to me). Most of the final products have been influenced by the opinions of a group of friends through a process I like to call "filter game" (patent pending (not really)).

If you aren't in my ~~super exclusive~~ #hairoftheweek contacts list, there's still a chance to participate! At the end of every "season" I have the people vote for their favorite hairstyle from that season for me to recreate on the eleventh week. Voting is open to anybody and everybody who wants to let me know what their favorite look was. I tally up the votes and the one with the most love gets another feature. Typically, each person gets one vote so they have to use it wisely but there is a secret exception to the rule. I keep track of the first person to like each of my #hairoftheweek posts on Instagram and when it comes to voting time, the person with the most first likes gets a second vote. The winner can choose to use their vote on two different hairstyles or double up on one. This just gives people a little incentive to follow me on Instagram and try to keep up. It's a bit difficult since any day of the week is fair game.

Now that we've got all that background knowledge out of the way, we can take a look at how I plan on doing my blog posts. I say that as if I know what I'm doing. Honestly, I don't know how it's going to work at the moment. I want to explain my thought process and how I felt when learning the hairstyle and I'm also going to include the final product. That's for sure. I also want my #hairoftheweek blog posts to go up on Sundays so no matter what day my Instagram post goes live, you definitely won't miss the post about it here. Other than that, I'm just going to have to see where my writing takes me.

Are you still with me? If you are, congratulations! I have no idea how I managed to write all that let alone having you read it all. I hope now that you know how and why #hairoftheweek began, you'll be as excited as I am for #hairoftheweeks to come.


Talk to you soon!

xo, Yvette