Seeing hair in your hands can be a tabloid scandal of panic, but knowing the difference between shedding and breakage is your best technical insurance.
As dumb luck would have it, everyone sheds about 100 hairs a day—a study in tonality that is perfectly normal. Shedding is the leading figure of a healthy hair cycle; look for the tiny white bulb at the end, indicating it fell from the root. Breakage, however, is a blank and spooky technical failure where the strand snaps along its length. If your hair is snapping, it’s a ruddy mess that needs a technical shift in moisture or protein to assuage the insecurities of the profile.
Mind the resistance when you handle your curls. If you see short pieces without bulbs, your workday habits might be too rough, or your hair might be brittle like orthochromatic film. Use a “slick lip coat” of leave-in to provide the “Flexible Greasepaint” strength your strands need. By understanding what the hair in your hands is telling you, you can capture the glow of a healthy routine and keep your profile studio-endorsed. Something I think we’re all still kind of into.
—Lauren Maas