This is not one of the top questions you want to hear from a stranger on Russian public transportation.

I’m sitting on a sweltering trolley-car in Kazan, Russia, riding back to the center of town from the banks of the river. Amid this crowd of strangers, I’m alone in too-big bell-bottoms and I’m clutching a towel. Being a girl, bereft of those “funny little hats” my dad and boyfriend wear, I can only assume it’s the big nose or the sweaty corona of frizz or the matronly bosom that gave me away. Either way—I turn to the man beside me, squinting into his knowing leer, and after a long pause, I nod.

“I could tell,” he says. He leans in further.

“I’m Jewish too,” he says. I can smell herring on his breath, like this is some nightmare, alternate-reality Kiddush club. One of his teeth is missing. “But, you know what? I’m not circumcised.”

Naturally this catches me off guard—I had little interest in what lurked under his brightly colored Lycra shorts. But it’s not the first time someone has keyed in to my ultra-Semitic appearance. It’s hard to ignore, particularly my curly mane, which puffs up like a blowfish at the first hint of moisture in the air, like it’s warding off threats. Wherever I go, my hair gives me away, ungovernable as my stiff-necked people, and as treacherous as our enemies say we are—a fifth column of frizz.

In the past I’ve resorted to creative dyeing. On my gap year, I chopped it short and spiked it with electric purple, and since then, I’ve hidden it under an ever-shifting spectrum of reds, golds, and, once, an unfortunate sallow orange. But even so, it spills resolutely down my forehead—if not a Mark of Cain, then at least a Mark of Cohen. In rural Iceland, I was informed repeatedly that my hair would make “really great dreads.” (Anyone who looked at the rest of my face or body could tell you that this is a “really terrible idea.”) Once, on a bus to Providence, my nose buried in a Saul Bellow novel, I got tapped on the shoulder by the heavyset man sitting next to me. Closer inspection revealed that he’d been listening to Christian faith tapes for most of the journey.

“Are you of faith?” he asked, with a quirk of the eyebrow that suggested he already knew my answer.

“Uh, I guess,” I said. “I’m not Christian, though.”

He nodded, suspicions confirmed, and shot me a look full of saccharine, transcendental pity. “Well, where I’m from”—rural Missouri, as it happened—“a lot of people don’t like you folks. But me, I think that being good with money is a gift from God.”

I quickly protested that I was terrible with money (which is true). Banks laugh in the face of my credit card applications. I once accidentally took home a Spanish-language tax form, and didn’t realize until it was half-filled out. But Mr. Missouri was insistent upon my gifted status, my chosenness, plain as the bulbous nose on my face.

Short of shaving my scalp—something that only one Jew on earth can pull off, and her name is Natalie Portman—or blowing my nonexistent budget on expensive, temporary treatments, it seems that I’ll carry this mark of my Jewishness with me wherever I go. But unlike the mark of Cain, my Biblical forebear, this one seems to tell me that wherever I wander on the earth, part of me will always be right back home in Teaneck, NJ, treading the pavement between Sammy’s Bagels, Schnitzel Plus, and Glatt Express. And yet—something tells me that’s not so bad. If nothing else, it offers up interesting conversation on public transportation. And have you stopped in at Sammy’s? The lox is fantastic. Makes me proud to be a Jew.

The post My Frizzy, Curly, Jewish Hair appeared first on Jewcy.

Hello, FFJD-ers. It is I, Professor Meredith, here to discuss a very important issue with you: hair straightening. I tweet and joke a lot about Brazilian and Japanese straightening, but I have requests for recommendations and tips.

I have had a long-standing beef with my head: my wavy hair. That’s not to say that I’m even entirely sure what my real hair looks like, but I’m pretty sure I don’t like it. I began blow-drying my hair in 6th grade, which was followed by straightening irons – first amateur-hour Conair ones, then the big guns like Chi, and then eventually I just began chemically straightening my hair.

I have Japanese straightened my hair a total of eight times, and Brazilian straightened it four. Let’s just say I have fewer brain cells, but an excess of knowledge.

Therefore, I hope you’re all taking notes.

1. Japanese Hair Straightening

This is a JAP classic. It’s a permanent treatment, so your hair WON’T go back to being curly. The process takes about six hours, and can be laborious and tedious. I suggest bringing a book, 16 magazines, or your Blackberry charger because you will definitely run out after BBMing everyone in your list.

The process is like this: washing your hair, then coating it with goo and waiting and washing it out, and then ironing it with a teeny tiny iron that is so infuriatingly slow you literally could have flow to LA in the time it takes to do this. BUT you have straight hair.

Japanese can be particularly dangerous because if you have very curly hair, it will be VERY noticeable when it starts to grow out. Like, excessively fake Louis Vuitton noticeable. You also probably shouldn’t do Japanese if you color your hair.

I once did with highlights, and half of my hair fell out. That was really traumatizing, and you’d think that would make me stop. Nope.

2. Brazilian Hair Straightenting

This process is newer.

I’m not entirely sure the differences between Brazilian and Keratin or if they’re the same, but there is a lot of talk about the health risks of it. So just know that going in.

The price is lower than Japanese, but it doesn’t last as long. You don’t have to wait as many days before washing your hair, which is good. The most recent process I did, you can even wash immediately. Note: your hair will smell a lil funky for a while. You can do it with coloring, although I haven’t. The process is like this: you wash your hair, put goo in, then blow dry and flat iron the goo, then rinse and condition.

Brazilian, in my opinion, is easier and better because it doesn’t create such harsh lampshade-straight hair. You know what I’m talking about. It’s just not as noticeable. It also stops working gradually and “washes out.”

3. Blow Drying and Straightenting.

Waste of time, money, and arm-maneuvering. Just go with the chemicals. FFJD ain’t no FDA.

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The post FFJD: Straightening My Hair 101 appeared first on Jewcy.