The Hair Talk That Wasn't About Hair

Earlier today, my hairdresser and I were deep in conversation about hair — specifically, how neither of us was ever really taught how to take care of ours. No one showed us the right way to wash it, what our texture actually needed, or why everything we tried in our teens and twenties seemed to make it worse (hi, Suave extra control styling gel). We figured it out eventually, in our 30s, mostly through trial and error and the occasional humbling TikTok.

I told her I've been trying to do it differently with my daughter — teaching her the things I had to learn the hard way, whether that's hair, or her body, or how to actually listen to what it's telling her.

Which is also, not coincidentally, my entire job.

Researchers contributing to Women and Health, a new book co-edited by Boston University School of Public Health professor Yvette Cozier, surfaced a stat this week that I haven't been able to shake: women live an average of five years longer than men in the United States, but spend 25% more of their lives in poor health. Longer, but not better. More years, more suffering.

I think about that a lot — while managing an autoimmune disease I only half understand, scrolling through wellness advice that somehow makes me feel worse, and watching everyone around me chase a version of health that looks more like a second job than an actual life. We were never taught how any of this works. We inherited confusion and were handed a supplement routine in its place.

My daughter is seven. She has time. And I have just enough hard-won information to make sure she spends a little less of her longer life figuring it out alone.