Hair Extensions: How to Fix a Bad Haircut and Grow Hair Faster

The author without extensions (left) and the day she got them (right).

The Effects of Gloria

Gloria is about three inches longer than my original, pre-Voldemort-cut length, but she's much thicker. Gloria's got gravitas. The first week Gloria and I spent together, we got an unfortunate prom-y blowout with curled ends, less beachy than Barbie. Had this happened to only my own fine, wavy hair, I would've had to rewash and style the whole thing. With Gloria, however, there was a quick fix: I dipped my ends in water, and they dried straight. When is that the answer? I don't know about your hair, but involving water and air-drying is always a bad idea with mine. This outcome was positively Panglossian. That's when I realized Gloria and I have very different definitions of wavy. I like hers better.

Taking Care of Gloria

A few weeks in, I felt I had misnamed Gloria. She's more of a Gulliver, as in Gulliver's Travels. She requires supersized everything. She needs three times the amount of shampoo and conditioner as my own hair. She breaks flimsy barrettes, bobby pins, and hair ties like a follicular Hulk Hogan. After much trial and error, I've discovered the only ones she doesn't destroy are these Ruggeri industrial-size bobby pins and a gigunda clip during styling. Also, while my hair dries within five minutes of blow-drying, I blow-dry Gloria for about 20 minutes and the ends are still soaking wet. So there's that. The good news is, as we know, Gloria dries straight, like magical unicorn hair.

Styling Gloria

If my mixed mane is a high school, Gloria is Travis from Clueless, and my own hair is Election's Tracy Flick. Gloria has a substance-abuse problem in the form of a metric ton of hairspray it needs to keep waves going more than 24 hours. On the other hand, like the rule-following Flick, my semi-curly hair maintains the formation of a braid long after I remove said plait without product intervention. I've never had to touch up my own beach waves within 36 hours, unless it's raining. Gloria's resistance to curl has reignited my love affair with Bumble and Bumble Spray de Mode. I love that it provides hours, even days, of hold, imparts a nice smell, but is always brushable. To curl Gloria, I use a Beachwaver, featuring a long (6.5-inch) barrel around which I can wrap her entire length. A positive side effect of Gloria's amnestic sensibility is that while she remembers nothing about her recent heat-tool results, she stays clean much longer than my natural hair. So committed to her strand stasis is she, she doesn't show signs of being dirty for a full four or five days without washing, especially if I use Living Proof Perfect Hair Day Dry Shampoo.