Taking Control of Fly-Away Hair

Fly-away hair is a matter of physics. Friction causes static. In the process, tiny positively charged elements are created in your hair. This process is also known as ionization. The individual hair winds up positively charged with the like charges repelling each other. This makes your hair go haywire. By the way, the annoying problem gets worse the drier the hair is and the more it needs care. A conditioning rinse or spray treatment after shampooing your hair are therefore the best remedies for curing the electricuted look.

Here is a trick to keep dry hair from flying off your head. Rub the tiniest amount of hair wax or pomade between the palms of your hands. Then run your palms about one quarter or half an inch over the still well-behaved portion of your hair. This is how you tame the unruly outliers without distributing wax into your entire hair.

Working your hair with the proper brush will also bring the fly-away hair back in line. Brushes with natural bristles tame your hair better than brushes with plastic bristles, and they are also gentler. In case your hair always tends to fly up, put a little hair spray for dry or stressed hair on the bristles and then pull the brush through your hair.

• Don’t brush your hair immediately after coming in from the cold. The static effect will be particularly strong right after entering a warm room

• When you try on clothing in a store and your hair suddenly stands up and looks wild, rub a little skin lotion between your hands and then move your hands over your hair ever so lightly

• Especially for this purpose ionizing blow-dryers and brushes neutralize the positive electrical charge, which is responsible for your hair’s attempts at flying away

• Graduated haircuts leave the hair more prone to the fly-away effect than longer, evenly cut hair, which is heavier and therefore cannot lift off with quite the same ease