Growing your hair long? Time to invest in a boar bristle brush

I’m growing my hair for our wedding because when I picture a bride she has long hair, and I feel I should fall in line. It’s unlike me really, and for the last few years I have been quite happy with my blonde bob.

I suppose there’s something about long hair that you can just “do more with” on the day, (or maybe I’ve just been reading too many wedding magazines). Either way I’ve reached shoulder length and I’m beginning to remember why I got rid of in the first place.

Long hair is time consuming and unruly. From one day to the next, I’m not sure what it’s going to do. It takes much more washing, drying and brushing.

And in my search for tips on how to maintain long hair, I’ve learned that you should perform washing, brushing and drying as infrequently as possible.

Fine balance

I’m not condoning bad hygiene but think of what would happen to a nice jumper if you kept putting it in the wash, then drying and brushing it. Of course you would start to lose fibres and it would become frayed and damaged. Hair is just the same. Marcia Brady has been doing it all wrong.

It’s a fine balance however, because not washing inevitably leads to dry shampoo, and guess what? That’s bad for your hair too.

If the situation wasn’t bad enough, this year’s hair trends include super-straight-I-just-got-my-first-GHD style tresses; the pulled-back high ponytail and hip-reaching ultra-long, Cher-style hair (helped no doubt by extensions). None of these are exactly conducive to natural hair repair.

What I’ll be investing in is a proper boar bristle hairbrush. I know, I’ve never really thought about that as something important until now either. But apparently the wrong brush can do your hair a lot of damage, that and everything else, I’m hoping for a miracle.