Curl jelly

People, a miracle has occurred.

You know how as soon as you find that perfect product, no matter what it is, it gets discontinued and you don't find out about it until it's too late to stock up? No, you don't know? That only happens to me? Well, whatever. My point is, that happens to me alarmingly often. And the worst was when my hair gel got discontinued.

I had gorgeous corkscrew curls when I was little. And then I got a haircut when I was five that changed everything. From age five through sixteen, my hair was a curlyish, frizzy mess. And I had no idea how to take care of it. I got cheap haircuts from people who didn't have the first clue about curly hair, who gave it blunt cuts, used blow dryers without diffusers, refused to do layers, thought bangs might be nice. I actually brushed my hair when it was dry (which, for those of you with naturally perfect, shiny, straight hair who might not know this, destroys curls, and turns them into hideous, frizzy messes).

But when I was sixteen, everything changed. I had my own money, and I splashed some of it out on a real haircut in an actual salon. The woman who cut my hair had curly hair herself. This was previously unheard of to me. When she asked what I wanted, I told her I wanted hair like hers, only shorter. She looked at my hair for a long time, then said, "You got it."

And she was RIGHT. And the reason she was right was because of a miracle product that she used on my hair, and then sold to me for the amazing price of $9 per bottle. It was made by Goldwell and it was called Glaze. It was essentially a liquid gel, and all I needed was to rub a bit in my hands, then run my hands through my wet hair. Then I scrunched it a bit with a towel and when it dried--well, it wasn't exactly the corkscrews of my childhood, but it was real curls, and not frizzy ones, either. I was hooked.

At one point I had a minor scare when Goldwell discontinued the glaze, but it turned out they had just repackaged it as Liquid Gel and increased the price to $12. When I moved away from North Carolina (and this was before the days of buying everything online), I hunted all over to find more. I actually made a day trip to New York once for the sole purpose of stocking up. (Although I had some amazing plum-flavored lemonade while I was there that made the trip even more worth it.)

And then, almost two years ago, my gel was discontinued. I really think that shouldn't be allowed. People NEED their hair products, you know? You spend years and years finding that perfect product, and once you've found it, you need to know that you will always be able to have it. Goldwell yanked away my security blanket when they discontinued that product, and my trust still hasn't been restored.

Anyway, so I spent the next year searching for a replacement, and as a result my bathroom cabinet is full of barely-used mousses, creams, serums, firm gels, and any number of other useless products. I finally settled on Aveda confixor, a liquid gel that did the job but not quite as well. Basically, the Aveda gel still leads to the occasional bad hair day, and the Goldwell gel never allowed that, ever. And if that's not the definition of a miracle product, I don't know what is.

So even though I've had this inferior substitute, I've always been on the lookout for something else, something magic that is as good as my old Goldwell. So on a whim about a week ago, I wandered onto the Goldwell website and checked out their curly hair products. And at the very top of the page, with a little red banner proclaiming that it was new, hiding under the name of "Curl Kick," was a liquid gel!

I am telling you, I almost threw a party right then and there. But I was still afraid that it would turn out not to be the same as the old product, so I restrained myself and ordered a bottle off Amazon. It was $16, so almost twice the cost of the original glaze. But it arrived on Tuesday, and yesterday I used it for the first time.

And it's the SAME. It has the same amazing effect of taming my hair without flattening it. And it has the same smell. As soon as I opened the bottle and got a whiff, I knew I had found it. I'm no longer worried about bad hair days. I'm no longer worried that my hair will go wrong on my wedding and look terrible in all the photos. I'm not worried about anything. It's amazing what a good hair product can do for a girl. To top it all off, yesterday, for the first time in quite awhile, a complete stranger complimented me on my hair.

And yes, I did just write a whole post about hair gel. And now I'm off to order a million more bottles, because even though this is a new product, you just never know. And I'm done taking chances.