Attack of the Runaway Mane

Like all good horror stories begin, I started off this adventure with good intentions. My hair freshly washed and cleaned, I decided it was just as good a time as any to try out a Pinterest beauty tip and attempt to pin-curl my hair.

The goal: wake up with effortlessly-styled (and by effortlessly, I mean spending the hour it took pinning my hair at night rather than in the morning, when I am tired and incapable of becoming motivated to style my hair) retro waves. It wasn't suspiciously easy or anything, like some tutorials feel. Pinning my hair did take some effort, so I was feeling optimistic that my work would pay off come morning.

Photographed by Amelia Alpaugh (Image Source)

The above tutorial promised luxurious waves with no heat at all - just curl your recently-showered hair up, sleep, and wake up with a fabulous mane and bluebirds chirping on your windowsill. And I'm sure that the tutorial works on some lucky few.

But I woke up looking like this:

Me, looking like a bird made a nest in my hair; NOTHING RETRO-GLAM ABOUT THESE WAVES

Yikes. Buuuuut...I did learn an important lesson about (a) how Pinterest DIY beauty tips mean well but sometimes don't always go as planned, and (b) how to cope with a Bad Hair Day. Because everyone gets them - even me, apparently!

The key to taming unsightly hair is usually in changing up the texture. Most hair issues occur in the morning, when you wake up with crazy-frizzy hair or unruly pieces. You could apply heat and use flat-irons and curling wands to tame funky hair, but sometimes even that can be a challenge, and you might not have the time (hey, your unruly hair might've been a result of trying to save hairstyling time in the morning, like mine was!), so the best thing to do is get out your bobby pins and get to work on a savvy style,

After the initial shock of my fail-hair wore off, I did admire my unnaturally voluminous hair (which usually turns out stick-straight, but in a boring way) and decided to use my newfound texture to my advantage, going for a half-up, half- down style. After all, the problem pieces were mostly the front ends, so I twisted a small piece on either side of my part and pinned them in the back for what my roommate said was a "totally Serena" (as in, van der Woodsen) 'do. If the boho queen of the Upper East Side could work this style, then so could I!

Pretty!

Et Voila! I managed to turn a hair nightmare into a cute, fun style that held throughout the day thanks to the added texture in my hair!

If all else fails, throw it up in a cute bun or ponytail and make the focus your lovely face with fun lipsticks and dazzling eyes. As long as you feel good about how you look, that's all that matters - the rest will follow through.

And, oddly enough, I even got a lot of compliments on what I thought of as completely disastrous hair, which goes to show that just because something might be unusual or horrendous in your opinion, no one else needs to know that you were supposed to wake up with Hollywood waves instead of fun, wild hair, so just go with it!

What are your tips for surviving a bad hair day?