(no subject)

[sigmaleph]

long hair is inconvenient to me in many ways but it's like the part of my body i'm least dysphoric about

there's probably some kind of thing I can do to short hair that I'd be happy with but I don't know what and efforts in that direction usually end up in some sort of anxiety attack

Comments

[sigmaleph]

braiding is a thing i tend to look into then find complicated advice about it I'm not sure how to apply and kind of end up noping away. it's probably worth trying

I tend to find people saying you shouldn't braid hair while it's wet; this is kind of a problem, because by default if I'm doing anything to my hair it's gonna be in the morning after I get out of the shower and before I leave for work, which is not a lot of time if I need to both wait for it to dry and also figure out an unfamiliar thing to do with my hands. is there a standard solution for this?

(well, the unfamiliarity would presumably be solved by practice over time. the drying is more the problem)

[brin_bellway]

I was taught that *ideally* hair should be damp when braided, though perhaps "wet" is going too far. I usually ignore that and do it dry, but I expect damp hair would make it easier for beginners.

I shower in the evenings, in significant part so I don't have to worry about whether my hair is Sufficiently Dry.

There are complicated *forms* of braiding out there, but I just go with a simple symmetrical three-strand. If you are not someone who finds the idea of three-strand braiding intuitive (apparently many people don't), maybe practise on some strings or something so you can separate out that part of the learning.

I didn't listen to the audio on this, but the video seems like it might be helpful. Notice how she actually dampens the hair before working with it. Bear in mind that you don't have to have the ponytail that high up on your head if you don't want to: I usually keep mine low, against the base of my neck.

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Also, probably worth noting that I keep a couple hair ties in my bag, so that I have the option to change my mind when going out with my hair loose.

[sigmaleph]

The idea of braiding is intuitive, but I'm not a particularly dextrous person, it's an unfamiliar skill, and my own hair is a more challenging medium than string (because of the necessary angles, and because hair is made of lots of individual hairs that don't especially want to stay in the strand they've been assigned to and so on)

All of those problems are salvageable, but they add to the difficulty curve

(I braided my hair this morning for practice. As expected it did not come out especially neatly, and the ends of the braid were complicated by difficulties with keeping track which hair was in which strand, but it *has* stayed in place for several hours which was an important requirement. I will continue to practice and see how it goes)

[brin_bellway]

Good luck! <3