What Should I Do With My Hair If I Get Caught In the Rain?
After getting caught in the rain (or after a workout, or it gets wetter in the shower than you meant for it to), it's great to
smooth your hair to refresh all your pretty curls. This technique also works to smooth any frizzies between washings and combings.
If your hair is already damp, like if you got caught in the rain, take your hands and firmly smooth them over your hair. You can smooth your hands first starting at your hairline, heading back. Then take your ends and gently run them over your ends, squeezing gently to make sure all the water is evenly distributed. Since I live near Seattle, and I always forget to bring an umbrella with me where I go (and I don't drive, so I do lots of walking), I'm constantly getting caught in the rain. So while I'm getting rained on, I'll smooth over my hair about every ten minutes are so to keep all my curls to even them out.
The reason I do this is to keep all my curls coiled at the same tightness of curl. If you don't smooth, the rain will hit different parts of your curls more than others. The strands of hair (or the section of your curl) that gets wet will begin to curl up tighter than other strands of hair in the same curl. Then when other sections get wet, they will curl up differently than the other strands of hair lying right next to it. Soon all your strands will be doing their own thing, separating from their neighbors, and your curls will start to puff up and get disorganized and frizzy. If you keep smoothing your hair, this re-distributes the water so all your curls get wet evenly, so they will curl up at the same rate.
Actually, I love how my hair looks after getting caught in the rain. One of my favorite hair pictures I took after being in the rain (it's the one of me sitting on the chair, second from the bottom of the page of the
Photo History page). My hair gets really thick and full after walking in the drizzle or rain. And because I smooth it periodically, it all stays unified while it draws up a bit.
Once you get home, you can wet your hands (if your hair has dried by then), and add a dime-size drop of a combing conditioner (or more, depending on how fuzzy your hair is), rub that between your hands. Then smooth your wet hands over your hair to smooth out any fuzz on your hair line and refresh your curls there.
You might need to do this a few times (adding more water and conditioner each time). Often this will refresh your whole head, making your curls spring back as they dry, and this keeps them more defined, and causes no damage, and moisturizes them. Then, wet your hands again, add more conditioner to them, and smooth over your ends to refresh all your curls.
If you find you have fuzzy areas, wet your hands again, add more conditioner, and if needed, go through your hair, and find fuzzy parts. Start at the root of the fuzzy curl/section, and smooth the curl by running your wet conditioner-fingers up to the tips a few times, helping meld the curl together instead of picking it apart. This helps snap it back into a curl instead of fuzz, and again, this causes no damage, and moisturizes it. It's best to use a
good conditioner for this. Do this until all or the majority of fuzzy spots are gone, or you have gotten the even look you like.
Doing this every morning when you get up, and after any sort of wet activity, should help your hair stay frizz-free all week, until the next time to wash, condition, comb and define your beautiful curls.