My mom really let us do our own thing and play with different trends, and my sister was a little older, so she had all the beauty tricks. I would stuff things like rolled-up toilet paper into my hair to get volume, or do the reverse, and I'd lie on my back, and she'd use an actual iron to straighten it.
I think when I first straightened my hair, I was a teenager. I don't believe that I was consciously doing it to look white or to be on television. It never crossed my mind. All of the girls in my neighborhood got perms and their hair straightened. But I know that historically it was to assimilate and there are some people who do it for that reason.
When I was growing up, my father would not allow me to get a perm, so I straightened my hair for special occasions.
In high school and college, I always, always straightened my hair. Don't ask why; I was just so into my image. Post-college, I started wearing my hair natural.
People bring up my hair quite a bit. It's strategically tousled. The flatiron is the key.
My hair is just like five pieces of very soft straw that needs managing. I touch my hair a lot, and that makes it crazy.
I don't wash my hair very often. Once a week if I can. Because the more you wash it, you end up stripping out the natural oils. What I like to do is just rinse out the products that I've used during the week and then put leave-in conditioner in and let it dry naturally.
At Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet Academy, I studied under a brilliant and fiery teacher. This tiny, stuttering old man flew into a rage if his students' white socks failed to reach mid-calf level. Nor could he tolerate floppy hair. We wore hairnets to class - an athletic brigade of short order cooks.
My hair videos are usually styling videos answering people's questions about natural hair.
I was looking for help with styling my hair and was really struggling to find it, and I have very much been of the mind that if you see a need for something, and you can create it yourself, then go for it, so I started creating content around beauty.
I'm pretty picky about my hair, so I end up always styling it myself.
I was always a little insecure. I had brothers that played football, so I was just a straight-up tomboy for a minute. I didn't know makeup and hair stuff. My friends had to tell me what a straightener was. I didn't know fashion or any of that until the label gave me a stylist.
What people don't get is that hair is such a big part of our identity.
I never actually got noticed on the street for 'Harry Potter.' I did it at such a young age, when I was going through puberty and changing up my hair and how I looked.
When I was 16, it was 1988, and my style was a mess. Fur-lined brown suede jacket, paisley shirt, chinos, and Doc Martens. My hair was blow dried into a large quiff. That might sound vaguely cool. It wasn't.
I get my highlights touched up with Susan Henry at Shades in Beverly Hills. She developed hypo-allergenic hair color products with no ammonia because she's allergic to others; she's an incredible colorist. She does balayage instead of the foils, and I'll go and she will do my entire head of highlights in an hour.
Flyaway, problem hair is the enemy of feminism, and was probably invented by the Man to crush Susan Sontag.
It's Florida. Hair is just an extra sweater I'm forced to wear.
I'm an only child. Mostly raised by my father outside of Saratoga, doing martial arts and snowmobiling. I wore sweaters, jeans and sneakers. I was more interested in four-wheeling in the Catskills than doing my hair and makeup at 7 A.M. before school.
I wish I were taller and thinner but the hair you can do something about.
