Of all the excess I've recently chosen to crop out of the JPEG of my life — stress, cheese, low-rise jeans — there's one thing that's been relatively easy to kick: mousse. For years, I subscribed to the notion that, in order to achieve any kind of volume in my hair, I was to accept the crunchy remnants it often left behind. But in the words of Marie Kondō, it did not bring me joy. So, this year, I finally let it go.
Though my roots looked decidedly flat and my hair almost never air-dried the way I wanted it to, the lack of product overload in my bathroom these last few months felt like a win. So when a bag of volumizers from Drybar landed on my desk this week, I immediately shot some side-eye at the mousse. Then, I squirted a tiny dollop of the froth into the palm of my hand — oh come on, I was just smelling it! — and within seconds, a miracle: It completely disappeared, with not a trace of sticky residue in sight.
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Seeing this as a sign, I decided to take it home and give the frothy stuff one more try. (If I'm being honest with myself, I don't think I ever planned to give mousse up for good. I just wanted so badly to find one that was light and airy; that would make me feel like I hadn't just blasted my fine, shoulder-length hair with Aqua Net.)
After applying it liberally from roots to tips and blow drying my hair, I was shocked. My thin strands were full and bouncy, with absolutely no crunch. Unlike the name suggests, I didn't get the kind of closer-to-God volume you might associate with the South, but I did get a subtle boost that also held my curls in place all day. Which, for me, is another good very thing — because hairspray? I kicked that one out of the picture, too.
Drybar Southern Belle Volume-Boosting Mousse, $25, available at Sephora.
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