Lisa Akbari - Every Womans Guide to Beautiful Hair at Any Age: Learn What Can Be Done to Keep a Beautiful Head of Hair for a Lifetime

LEARN WHAT CAN BE DONE TO KEEP A BEAUTIFUL HEAD OF HAIR FOR A LIFETIME

LEARN WHAT CAN BE DONE TO KEEP A BEAUTIFUL HEAD OF HAIR FOR A LIFETIME

LISA AKBARI

Copyright 2007 by Lisa Akbari
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Akbari, Lisa.
Every woman's guide to beautiful hair at any age : learn what can be done to keep a beautiful head of hair for a lifetime / Lisa Akbari.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4022-0877-5
ISBN-10: 1-4022-0877-4
1. Hair--Care and hygiene. 2. Beauty, Personal. 3. Women--Health and hygiene. I. Title.
RL91.A33 2007
646.7'24--dc22

2007035310

Printed and bound in Canada
WC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

I dedicate this book first to my soul mate, my friend, my husband, Hooshang Akbari, for thirty years of allowing me to Do Me. To my two blessings and truly gifts from God, my daughters Raumesh and Raumina Akbari, for definitely being the loving positive energy and source of motivation in my life.

To my mother Clara Macklin for precisely, completely, and without distrust being the essence of a strong mother and woman. To my brother Tommie Macklin, who has made a commitment to stay and help fulfill the vision.

Thanks to my agent Marlene for helping me to see what was right in front of me.

Thanks to my editor Deb Werksman for always challenging me.

And a special thanks to my family, friends, patients, students, and colleagues for all their support and encouragement.

I must acknowledge, as I have recognized, that there is a power higher than I that allows my point of view. This acceptance authorizes my soul to boast appreciation. This book and all the knowledge and power that are given to me to realize my mission, sanction me to give tribute to my own personal higher power, my Lord and my Savior, Jesus Christ. To God be the glory.

Before writing this book, I thought a lot about women and their hair because I wanted to get to the root of the problems of hair. I thought that in many ways women would be better off if God had never given us hair at all. The reason for such a radical thought is that, if we did not have hair, then we would not have to worry about it. Think about how much wasted money, drama, and even trauma thisour crowning gloryhas caused. Women, on average, spend $1,200 a year on their hair, which does not include the extras, whereas men spend on average $250 a year, which does include extras.

Women also have a lot of drama surrounding their hair. For example, if a black woman straightens her curly hair, she may be thought to be denying her ethnicity by trying to be like someone she is not. If a white woman perms her straight hair, she is often accused of looking too ethnic. These are just two examples of cultural expectations surrounding women and their hair. Everyone has an opinion about how a woman should wear her hair, and many women believe they must take into account what others think in order to be accepted. In other words, women are expected to appear a certain way and stay in their place, even when it comes to hair.

In order to achieve this expected look, women abuse, misuse, bully, and damage their hair as they manipulate it into shape, all of which ages their hair. Sadly, the joy of the look is short-lived, and many women still are not happy. All the money, time, drama, and trauma spent on this arduous process of manipulation causes many women to suffer from what I call hair depression, because the tragic reality is that there are a number of women who are just simply depressed about their hair. I believe that one of the big reasons why we women deal with hair trauma and drama and suffer from hair depression is that many of us have not learned to accept, respect, appreciate, and understand our hair in its natural state.

Well, ladies, it is time to take a ride on the hair freedom train. It should always be your choice to wear your hair naturally, chemically altered, or any other way you want. But you must first stop placing value on what someone else thinks about your hair and stop making choices to alter the style of your hair before becoming educated about that choice.

My prayer and hope is that this book will facilitate the process of solving a problem that we have made bigger than it ever should have become. Your hair is truly your crown. It covers and protects your head from the environment, while providing the image of yourself that you want to project to the world. But what happens when you age? What happens when your hair ages?

My primary mission is to help women solve their hair problems. This book is out to convince women that, no matter what age you are or what changes you are going through, all you need to do is just take better care of your hair and scalp, and everything will be okay. All I want is a way to make women understand how easy it is to stop hair challenges, and that is just what Every Womans Guide to Beautiful Hair at Any Age is meant to do for you.

How can hair age? How can the scalp age? Well, to age means to become old, grow old, get older. Aging hair and scalp mean just that. Your hair grows in its own life cycles, and within each life cycle your hair can grow old and even die before its time. When we think about getting older, we perhaps think about our body becoming weaker, more fragile, and not looking and feeling as vibrant as it did when we were younger. But we know that if we stop and put together a plan of health, eating right, exercising, and just taking care to have a nutritionally sound body, mind, and spirit, we wont become weak and fragile, and die before our time. The thrust of this book is not to talk about what happens to our body as it ages, but to discuss our hair as it ages. My purpose is to help you come to understand and know that you are free, truly free, to choose how you wear your hair. Free to make a choice as a woman with curly hair to wear it chemically straightened and as a woman with straight hair to wear it chemically curled, without it somehow meaning that you are assimilating or selling out. You will learn how to keep your hair young and vibrant even with changes, natural or chemical, at any age throughout your life, as well as throughout your hairs life cycles.