Haul Buns

Does your hairdo stop you?

Today’s Chicago Tribune features an editorial on women’s attention to their hair may be getting in the way of them getting a good workout. Any dudes reading this are all, “Does… not… compute.” But I’m sure plenty of you faithful female Haulers have had at least one instance in which you had to decide whether exercising was worth the time and effort necessary to clean up your sweaty self afterwards. I know this can be an issue for women of color; it’s a regular topic of conversation among the awesome chicks at Black Girls Run. Even U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin has something to say about the fact that women who’ve recently gotten their hair done may skip a workout or two in order to maintain the look a little bit longer.

“Oftentimes you get women saying, ‘I can’t exercise today because I don’t want to sweat my hair back or get my hair wet,'” she said in a recent story in The New York Times. “I hate to use the word ‘excuse,’ but that’s one of them.”

I can understand why you wouldn’t want to mess up hair you just paid someone a whole lot of money to make pretty — it’s the main reason I haven’t cut my hair shorter than shoulder length in three years. If I can’t pull it back into a ponytail, it means I have to dry and do it — which won’t work. Mainly, that’s because I am a A) lazy and B) a slob. Though I always shower after my lunchtime workouts, sometimes there’s just not enough time to shampoo, condition, dry and style my mop. Today, in fact, I happen to be rocking the “I-came-straight-to-work-from-bootcamp” hair, the linchpin of which is a well-placed hairband. (The braid doesn’t hurt, either.)

You'd never know, right?

Yes, guys, I’m gross. But I smell lovely (I promise!), cutting back on twice-a-day washings has made my hair much healthier, and — most importantly — today’s workout is DONE. Join the revolution! Sweaty heads unite!

August 31, 2011 at 7:49 pm 2 comments