Dr. Kate’s Guide to Beauty and Fashion
All men love long hair. On our heads that is. Although they may appreciate our ongoing efforts to remove hair from every other part of our bodies, when it comes to a woman’s lovely locks there is only one rule; more is beautiful. And maintaining shiny, sleek, long hair is going to become even easier with a new generation of flat irons and curling irons; a small number of which are available in stores now, and many of which are still in the R&D stage.
You may not believe me when I say ALL men love long hair, especially if you’ve ever taken the time to ask a few men if this is their preference on a woman. Some will have said yes, others, no. In both cases the true answer is the same, but the given answer depends on who’s doing the asking.
A man will tell a woman with long hair that he prefers it long, and to a woman with short hair he may tactfully say he prefers hers short. The only way to decipher the truth is to ask his opinion before your next trip to see your stylist. Ask him if you should have your hair cut to a Rihanna-esque cropped style and he’ll plead with you not to. On the other hand, ask him if you should have a minor trim in preparation for growing out your current style to lengths to rival even the Kardashian sisters and you will find that he encourages this whole heartedly. I was once in desperate need of a makeover and gave my boyfriend at the time an ultimatum; either I was going to get a spiral perm or I was going to have my hair cut really short.
That perm took forever to grow out.
But for all the added sex appeal it gives us, long hair is hard work and difficult to maintain. Thankfully the invention of the ceramic flat iron at the very end of the 90s enabled all women to have long hair that looks sleek, shiny, and healthy. There were flat irons around before then of course but the heated surfaces were the wrong type of material to allow efficient heat transfer and to smooth the cuticle. I remember grating my younger sister’s metal-surface flat irons over my hair one morning before school and being painfully disappointed with the frizzy mess that resulted.
Ceramic “technology” took flat irons from mediocre to functional, but ceramic is a brittle substance and is prone to breaking if the appliance is dropped. Now nearly all flat irons have a ceramic-like coating on the styling surfaces which works just as well.
If all flat irons incorporate this one key advance in hairstyling technology – the ceramic surface – then why buy a $300 model when surely a $10 model will do? It is true that if you remove the cover of an expensive flat iron, inside you will discover that it is very similar to a much cheaper model. After all they do the one same thing – get really hot. But a new breed of flat irons and curling irons are now being developed which incorporate a very important aspect of using heat to style hair – cooling.
The concept behind this is simple to explain if we use the example of two products closely related to flat irons; heated rollers and hairdryers. When using heated rollers the golden rule is to leave them in until both the rollers and the hair is cool. If you take them out while the hair is still hot then the curls will just drop out. Along this same line, many hairdryers now incorporate a “cool burst” button to allow you to blow dry your style then set it with a burst of cold air. Incorporating this cooling function within flat irons is going to greatly improve their styling power.
While I’m dying to get into the science of all this I know you’re probably impatient to know if you can buy one of these next generation stylers with cooling technology right now. The first to hit the market was the Babyliss You Curl. This product allows you to perfect a style known as the “flat iron curl” which can be achieved to some degree with your regular old flat iron by rotating the device as you pass it over your hair. The cooling of the hair as it passes over the back side of the iron is what creates the curl. Realizing that this becomes less effective as the back of the straighter heats up Babyliss attached two cooling panels to the outside surface to help guide the rotation and to cool the hair and therefore produce a better curl. The one limitation is that the panels aren’t actively cooled, so they do eventually heat up.
In the R&D labs the race is now on to incorporate active cooling into flat irons and curling irons. Philips is one to watch here as they currently hold a patent on a flat iron design for straightening which incorporates an actively cooled panel. I know this because in grad school a friend and I, in a moment of distraction driven by entrepreneurial-fever, filed a patent application for a very similar design.
A bit of science is necessary to explain exactly why the next generation hairstylers with cooling technology will be so effective. (If this is boring then skip this bit and read on). Our hair is mostly made up of a protein called keratin. Keratin forms long fibers in the cortex of the hair and is responsible for its shape. This hair shape can be changed by altering the bonds between the keratin molecules: permanently, using chemicals when perming, but this is damaging to the hair; or temporarily with heat and/or water. Whether we use water or heat we are altering the style of the hair in the same way; by breaking a type of bond called a hydrogen bond which forms within and between the keratin. When the hair either dries, in the case of using water to style, or cools after the use of a flat iron or heater rollers, the hydrogen bonds of the keratin fibers reform and set the new style in place. Do you see where I’m going with this? While we’ve become really good at breaking the hydrogen bonds with flat irons that heat to temperatures above 400 degrees Fahrenheit, this isn’t effective unless we can control the shape of the hair as it cools. The next generation of styling irons will factor in this need for active cooling to ensure your hairstyle holds.
The new enhanced-technology stylers will come with an even more enhanced price tag, and at first you may find that only your professional stylist is able to get his hands on one. Once they become available in shops though, will this investment be worth it?
I was out at a Palo Alto bar one week (as it seems I am nearly every week) and my BFF looked around and pointed out that most women there that night had long, straight, sleek hair. She has beautiful long hair herself but it is naturally very curly which makes her stand out in a crowd when so many women these days keep their hair poker straight.
We could have done a quick poll of the men in the bar that night and asked them to rank every woman there on a scale of attractiveness. My bet is that when we ran the statistics we’d find hair length to be a stronger determinant of attractiveness than other more overt factors like face symmetry, leg length or even bust size.
The next time you’re out take a look around the bar or club and see for yourself which women, and their hair, are getting the most attention.
Dr. Kate
With a title like “Dr. Kate’s guide to beauty and fashion” I feel the need to first assure you of my credentials. I am indeed a scientist. I am also a girl; 28 years old to date. I work as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Stanford University, California, and while I might spend a lot of time in lab wearing the stereotypical white coat, jeans and flats; I also do all the usual girly things like shopping, styling my hair, putting on makeup, waxing, getting my eyelashes dyed (a must for someone so blonde), exfoliating, tanning (well, attempting to), dieting, and I’ve been known to get on my sewing machine and sew the occasional dress or two.
