7 BS Hair Rules You Should Always Ignore

Our beauty culture is full of so-called rules, which many of us have been raised to follow. Most of them are based around hiding or correcting “flaws” to fit certain societal standards. Many of them have worked their ways into our belief systems without us even knowing it. We have internalized our grandmother’s words about the shape of our legs and the disapproving look from the woman in the shampoo ad, telling us our hair isn’t shiny enough.

Our faces have been mapped, our colors have been forecasted, and we know what we can and can’t wear to flatter our body shapes. For example, I am an oval-faced, lanky, shapeless, and hairy woman with a large forehead. My “color season” is winter. My hair is frizzy, my skin is freckled, and I don’t have an ass. The rules say I’m not beautiful.

Well, screw the rules. Who gets to define what beautiful means, anyway?

We took a crack at answering this question by interviewing hairstylists from Vain and Coven, two of Seattle’s best salons. We asked them their thoughts on beauty rules as they relate to hair, and the consensus was unanimous: Some rules were made to be broken.