Do you have Asian hair? You may be wasting sixty hours of your life each year...

Sixty hours is a lot of time.  You could enjoy a long weekend on a camping trip with your friends.  You could read a long book very quickly or a short book very slowly.  Maybe train a dog or a boyfriend to do cool tricks.  (Yeah I didn't think it was enough time for the boyfriend either).  Or for me, I could spend that time waiting for the train delay to be over. 

According to a survey, women spend an average of ten minutes a day brushing, drying and maintaining their hair.  To me, this figure seems generous.

As a woman with very long hair, my routine used to consist of:

• Wet hair
• Wash with shampoo
• Rinse
• Apply conditioner
• Use fingers to quickly and inefficiently detangle
• Rinse
• Towel dry

Time elapsed so far: two minutes.  

• Step out of shower
• Brush hair...with actual brush
• Take fingers to twist slightly
• Use blow dryer
• Perform contortionist maneuvers to bend and twist between the wire of the dryer and the small confines of my bathroom that would impress any circus maestro
• Halfway through, brush again
• Dry some more
• Brush a little more
• Make a poodle jump through a hoop of fire
• Why isn't it dry yet?
• Twist again with fingers
• Tie up hair into bun so the rest of now damp hair dries wavy
• Take hair out of bun later, finger brush again.
• Look into mirror with slight dissatisfaction.

Time elapsed: I'm guessing more than ten minutes.

Now some women have less of a routine than this, others have way more.  Have you ever spoken to a person of African descent about hair?  It can consist of at least six hours in a chair every month.  If I were black I'd be either bald or rocking an Afro.  Either of which, they at least have the good fortune of being able to pull off.

With an already busy schedule, I would sometimes wonder to myself...what would happen if I just stopped brushing or drying it altogether.  How bad could it get if I only perform the first part of that routine.  Maybe I could grow some cool Asian dreads, or help save the planet as a bird sanctuary.  Surely, the temptation to nest in my unruly coif would be irresistible.

After wondering a few times, I decided to give it a try.

Fast forward to now, here I am, six months later with a dusty hair brush and dryer.  It really only took about a week before I came to the conclusion that, oh yeah...I forgot I have Asian hair.  Silly me!  I had just never thought to try out laziness long enough to be able to conclude anything as life changing and marvelous as this.  My hair not only looks the same as it always have, there are days it looks even better.

What I am saying is...on the average, we may have gotten the short stick when it comes to bra size but don't forget you're Asian...and your hair will excel in areas where you don't want it to do anything in particular.  I guess I had more in common with my hair than I previously thought.