I tried to fishtail braid my hair the other day and oh boy, what is this nonsense?? I am a competent person adept at many things. My fingers are nimble and my mind is quick. And yet this skill eludes me, I assume, because a witch has not visited me in the night and traded this skill for the promise of my firstborn.
Where did you all learn how to braid hair? When did everyone earn the Hair Origami badge? And don’t tell me slumber parties because I went to a ton of those and we just looked through that DK anatomy book so we could see penises and watched scary movies even though I didn’t want to. You’ve been keeping secrets!!
What is this thing you all do where you can just see what you’re doing with your arms in the air on the back of your head? Did the witch give your fingers eyes too? Where is the dark house in the crook of a mountain where she makes you have hair that falls elegantly to one side no matter how short it is?
Any braiding tutorial that suggests you start the process with brushing your dry hair I will take as a personal microaggression.
In the 1600s the Puritans believed that the devil had the ability to erase memories, leaving many to worry if they were actually witches and just plumb forgot. Do not tell me that fishtail braiding is actually super easy and comes naturally to you. The devil has taught you and cleared your memory.
My secret is that I have bone-straight hair that just lies there waiting for me to make it do something. I believe it was bewitched at my birth, but I can ask my mom for the spell if you want it.
Another answer: when I was a kid we literally had hairstyling dolls to practice on. They even had some wire mixed in with the hair so the style would stay in place. This was mine:
I had a hairstyle doll! She came with mini-curlers, and I learned to braid with “A goes over B, C goes over A.”
But I also have bone-straight hair and I can’t do this. I can do plain braids and that’s it.
Same- I can’t even French braid. My hair is so straight when I used to go to birthday parties at Cozy Cut’s I would ask for curls and they’d curl my hair and it would immediately deflate back into pin straight. Poor small bunnie, wanted just even a little wave so badly.
I feel your pain. I got two terrible perms as a teenager. My hair would pop out of the perm rollers! And a few days after my perm it would be all scraggly until it grew out. As an adult, I’ve discovered that curling my hair requires either two hours with a curling iron (spray section with hairspray until it’s soaked, curl, hold forever, then when I release I have to clip it until it cools, and I have to do tiny sections, and I have SO MUCH HAIR), or sleeping on a wet set with foam rollers and a metric fuck-ton of mousse.
Solidarity with all the bad perm survivors of the 80s.
Early 1990’s, in my case. I should have known better.
My mom spent many years trying to straighten her curly hair by pinning it around juice concentrate cans. She gave me the benefit of her experience and I now spend very little time trying to convince my hair to do much of anything it doesn’t want to.
The only reason I ever bothered was for cosplay, as I have a tendency to cosplay characters with curly hair in a color similar to mine: hobbits, BBC Sherlock, the Fourth Doctor…..
I finally gave up and started buying wigs, just so I could get more sleep at conventions, though it WAS humorous to be sitting at a late-night room party putting my hair in curlers.
I’m with you on this one. Anything beyond the most basic three-strand braid is completely beyond my ken, and that took me months of practicing on my Barbie horse to master.
For braiding practice: Barbies < Barbie or American Girl horses < American Girl Dolls.
And to answer your question, Jaya, my ballet teacher actually told us to practice braiding our hair over and over while watching TV (and preferably sitting in a center split for stretching practice while we were at it).
Hm, I think your ballet teacher had the right idea. I am trying to learn to do a split and I terrible at braiding my hair, so I think the next time my husband and I sit on the couch for hours at a time watching wrestling and/or Always Sunny, I’m gonna try this instead.
This is,in fact,exactly how I became decent at French braiding my hair: by braiding and unbraiding repeatedly while sitting on my bed watching Netflix freshman year of college. It’s still only regular and French braids I can do (fishtail braids are above my skill level), but practice does surprisingly make perfect in this arena.
Junior year, but I can also attest that needing something to do with your hands while watching Netflix is the key. Also maybe spending too much time on Pinterest and feeling inferior is important, but maybe not.
I don’t understand how anyone can fishtail braid their own hair, but I can do a great one in my stepdaughter’s (long, thick, slightly wavy, perfect-for-braiding–sorry, now I’m bragging) hair.
This, basically. I learned to braid by playing with my friends’ hair, one of my friends’ had a younger sister with really great hair for experimenting on – long and thick (but not ~too~ thick) and with just enough body that it tended to stay where you wanted it to. On my own head, french braids turn out inside-out, with the braid resting on top of the pulled-in hair instead of under it, because my fingers are confused and want to be working on someone else’s head. I don’t think I ever even tried to do a fishtail on my own head, it would have been a disaster.
That is actually the slightly-fancier Danish braid, so you’ve accidentally an entirely different hairstyle that is still a thing.
I have the opposite problem–I learned on my own head, so it’s really easy to French braid my own hair but I always Dutch braid other people’s unless I concentrate really hard, and the other way around. Fishtail is really the only one that’s easier on someone else, and that’s mostly just because my arms get tired doing it on myself, since it takes a long time.
Braids can only be done on wet hair that you want to remain wet for the rest of the week. And only the regular three-strand kind. All the rest are elaborate optical illusions designed to try to make us feel inferior.
My daughter has beautiful straight hair that falls halfway down her back, and yet all I can manage is a regular three-strand braid for her. I contend that to produce a decent French or fishtail braid, you need to somehow grow an extra arm.
Have never even tried! I can do a normal plait and a french plait on myself (years of practice plating horses’ tails) but that is as far as it goes.
True Fact: My three sisters and I were never allowed to cut our hair while our dad was alive. =braids. Lots of braids. I never had a haircut in my life until I was 14.
What was Dad’s concern, you ask? He was certain that if we never cut our hair and had lovely names, we would be ladies.
“Snacktime” is a traditional old English name often given to ladies of upper middle class birth. You can ask Jane Austen. 😉
Ha! It refers to my preoccupation whilst hiking, so apparently, given my penchant for walking for miles in the wilderness thinking about nut mix and getting really grungy, the lady thing didn’t work out.
That is my daughter’s favorite part of hiking. I am positive she has agreed to go on multiple hikes with us just because she knows there will be trail mix somewhere along the way.
Snacktime is coincidentally the name of my very first stuffed animal, which my brother picked out for me when I was born. He’s a stuffed skunk and I named him after my favorite thing in the whole world. His legs are splayed and his belly fur rubbed off from snuggling him to my chest so much. A great name choice.
Do ladies never get split ends?
I learned in 3rd grade during story time. The girls in the class would form a circle and braid each others’ hair, and this is how I learned the basics: braid, french braid, inside out french braid, fishtail braid.
Then I made my mom get me the Addy American Girl doll, because she had the longest hair I’d ever seen on a doll. And I would braid it over and over. Then, and here is the key, I would braid Addy’s hair with my eyes closed, to learn the feel of it.
I also practiced on other girls at girl scout camp, where we had actual tutorials from the counselors.
I may not have been quite so dedicated to learning how to braid my hair had my mom had any idea at all how to do it. But her skills stopped at the ponytail. So it was up to me if I wanted fun braided hairstyles.
The girls in the class would form a circle and braid each others’ hair
This is magical. You realize that, right? Magical.
There was also a back-rub circle for anyone who couldn’t braid or didn’t have long enough hair. Story time was the best time.
I want to go to there.
MAGICAL
oh my god we did this too but at lunch!
This is part of the elaborate fantasy I’ve developed where I had friends as a child, and they taught me to do feminine-coded things like braid hair.
This story checks out, I could never afford an American Girl doll and also am terrible at braiding hair.
Just the girls? The boys in our class did most of the braiding because none of them had long hair. So it was like, storytime, girls got your hair soothingly stroked and braided, and a boy would braid. Girls lounge; boys work.
I did not realize I was in the misandrist fairy tale at the time.
Also this is why to this day I cannot braid my own head.
Your misandrist fairy tale is my favorite misandrist fairytale.
This is the loveliest misandrist fairytale I’ve ever heard.
This somehow makes me tear up 🙂 🙁 Thank you 🙂
I learned to braid things that were not behind my head in Brownies. I learned to braid my own hair mostly by practicing. I learned to French braid from a book I borrowed from my sister that had clear diagrams and instructions for how to hold your hands while braiding your own hair, but I did need to do a lot of practice before I got any good at it. I’m out of practice now.
I’m pretty sure it was this book. I think it may have covered fishtail braids, but I only borrowed it long enough to learn French braids.
Oh my gosh I had that book! I wonder if it’s still somewhere in my parent’s house. I kind of want it now.
I also had this one, which I’m sure looks even more dated than the hair book now.
I totally had this book, and it is 100% how I learned to braid my hair and the hair of others!
I need someone to tell me where to put my elbows! Honestly they go all over the place. I seem to pick up a couple extra joints when I try to do anything other than a low rope or three-strand braid.
YES, that book! I posted a picture of it below. 😀
YES that is how I learned to braid my own hair, too.
I had that book too!!!
I had sisters and we practiced french braiding on each other over and over. After you’ve done it enough times on someone else, you have the idea well enough to do it on yourself without being able to see it, although it may not turn out quite as smooth and straight.
I still have no idea how to do a fishtail braid. That was not part of our repertoire.
I have been trying in vain to learn to do at least one elegant grown-up party style updo for special occasions. You know, like a loose-ish chignon, or one of those things with a braid that’s wrapped around and pinned. All my attempts have been utter failures, despite watching many video tutorials. It is black magic, I tell you. How do hairpins work?!?! How do you hide the ends?! How do these people have so much hair that they can wrap it all around and fluff it out and hide all the trickery, even though when they started their hair didn’t look more long or thick than mine?!
Judging from the 2 times I had my hair done professionally (my wedding and my sister’s), about 5 million tiny bobby pins and about a gallon of hairspray. Enough hairspray that when you take the pins out, your hair doesn’t understand right away and kind of still wants to stay up.
And enough hair pins that you keep finding them in your hair when you shower the next morning.
I don’t know how long your hair is, but if it’s long enough, I have the most amazing secret for you: spin pins. The ones I have are from Goody but I wouldn’t be surprised if other brands make them too: http://www.goody.com/Products/Hair_Accessories/Go…
I mostly use them to hold buns in place, am still working on how to make a French twist, and occasionally go for two small buns side-by-side (idk, I saw it on Pinterest and it looks nicer than paying to get my hair done.) My hair doesn’t always do so well with bobby pins*, but I can roll it into a bun, twist the spin pins in there and my hair will behave ALL DAY.
*things that have happened to bobby pins in my hair: turned into a letter U or V; the little nubs on the tips vanish; the bobby pins themselves vanish, only to be found while shampooing.
I actually got some a couple months ago, and have been trying to use them. They’re a lot better than regular hairpins, that’s for sure. I got both the regular size and the mini. I still haven’t got the hang of actually making my hair do something good with them, but it’s a start. Getting my hair arranged in the right configuration to pin is still not a skill that I have.
I love those spin pins! I never did fancy stuff with them but they were perfect for everyday work buns that looked professional but felt less tight than when I used a hair tie.
(Former ballerina here) I can teach you how to use bobby pins if you can teach me how to braid my own hair.
Can I recommend the Gibson girl tuck? I have frankly flimsy hair that refuses to stay in any but a small and specific range of styles. It’s quick and looks more complicated than it is, and if you’ve hair long enough for a ponytail, it’s long enough for this.
Tutorial here: http://www.freckled-fox.com/2012/08/hair-tutorial…
(painful to admit) but Lauren Conrad’s youtube video taught me how to fishtail braid… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyZkowmdZv8 (it does start with brush your hair if you want a smooth braid BUT also allows for a messier braid with natural texture!)
Lauren Conrad’s stylist Kristin Ess is a legit wizard of hair. I always go to The Beauty Department first when I am looking for tutorials. That LC fishtail braid video is great, as is the “everyday curls” one.
I could, when my hair was longer, braid my own hair, and on my own head I could *only* do an inside-out french braid, and on anyone else’s head I could *only* do a normal french braid. I have zero idea how I learned it though. Clearly a witch did take those memories, but also mistakenly took the instructions for fishtail braids also.
This is me!! I do not understand.
I can only ever braid my own hair. Other people’s hair looks like a nightmare witch attacked their heads when I try.
And I learned by figuring out which strand of hair went where and repeating (out loud) to myself as I braided, “Top, bottom, middle, top, bottom, middle…” so I wound the hair together correctly.
But yeah, fishtail braids are impossible.
I asked my mom, recently, to braid my hair before a family function. She kept running her fingers through the pieces over and over and essentially fluffed the top to the point where it was pompadour-esque (I have thick curly hair and it frizzes and/or poofs very easily). I had to go into the bathroom and return to my usual containment strategies.
I, um, kind of thought that fishtail braids were just the result of braiding layered hair.
I thought fishtails were actually inverse French Braids, but the internet is telling me they are something different entirely.
I didn’t learn how to braid my own hair until like… sophomore year of college. My mom had hair down to her butt for much of my childhood and always wore it in a long, elegant French braid and so if I ever wanted my own hair braided, I’d just ask her to do it. So I understood the theory but none of the practice.
So in college I started trying, first regular and then French braids, in the shower before bed. Wet hair stayed parted better, and if it looked terrible, I’d just take it out in the morning and have cute wavy hair. Eventually it got to the point where I’d wake up in the morning, look at the braid, and go, “eh, good enough” and wear it out into the world.
Samesies! I am super good at french braids for myself now, even after years of short hair, and it’s finally long enough to throw a braid in while I watch TV or whatever if I want it out of my face. Not quite long enough to band up and go out in a braid, but soon….
I learnt by watching YouTube tutorials. The theory of it is not too bad – in two, then take little bits – but juggling all the strands is horrific, and my hands cramp up. And I can only get it to sit right about 50% of the time. Otherwise it gets all lumpy and lopsided. (Though, to be fair, that happens to me with normal plaits too.)
Before I got a pixie a few years ago, I could do ALL the braids. Waterfall, 3-strand, 5-strand, dutch, french, fishtail, Heidi, Katniss, Leia, you name it. All on my own hair, which is straight and really thick so it holds a braid pretty well. I learned from youtube videos. I practice while I’m watching TV so I can get the movement down without needing to think about it much. Sounds like a lot of effort, but once you learn how you can do a braid in 3 minutes in the bathroom at work. Much easier than the 20 it takes me to straighten or curl my hair.
My hair is almost long now, but not quite long enough to indulge in all the braids. Yet….
Man. I have thick straight heavy hair, and all I could ever do was one braid or two. Nothing that started further up my head, though.
I learned to braid my own hair from the Klutz book Hair: A Book of Braiding and Styles (toasties, how do you make a link to a page?), from my mother threatening to have my hair cut if it got unmanageable, and many, many bad-looking braids. I started out putting my hair in a ponytail first, and braiding it from there, bringing it over my shoulder and usually getting a kink in it. I learned the fishtail/herringbone from that book, though mine always, always turn out frizzy. I am convinced the elves of Rivendell must have a magical kind of shampoo that ensures their locks never frizz or break.
Oh I miss Klutz. They taught me braiding, magic tricks, and cat’s cradle, all important skills that I have now completely lost.
I learned from that book too! I also had something called a cabbage patch crimp and curl doll that had stiff hair and made it easier to practice on. I hope it is still in my parents basement for the use of my niece and any future children of mine or siblings.
I had that book! It was the best! I was so jealous of the girls with super shiny red hair.
Yes, that book seems to be a favorite.
To hyperlink: < a href =http://www.google.com>text here< /a>
(delete the spaces after the < symbol)
Ohhh, thank you. I knew it was some kind of html coding, but alas, that language is cryptic to me.
I was so waiting for someone to mention that book in these comments. Me too.
I still can’t braid other people’s hair though. And I think fishtail braids are ugly.
I learned from that book too! I was like 20 and way older than the target audience, I think. I had this boyfriend who pretty much had a braid fetish. I picked that one up because it looked easy to understand, and it was–I learned a bunch of fun things from it. I’ve forgotten most of them except the basic French braid, and I also found that they all worked better when my hair was in this exact sweet spot of length. Too short and there wasn’t anything to braid, too long and the ends would tangle while I was working on the upper hair. Just about shoulder length was perfect.
I somehow skipped the how-to-be-a-girl tutorials growing up. Braiding hair (other than the simple three-strand plait), applying makeup or nail polish, any kind of updo that wasn’t tying an elastic around a pony tail, dancing like a normal person. I always wondered where other girls learned that stuff.
Same!
Same! I’m an only child and I figured I missed out on hair-styling, card games, and various songs/dance moves because I didn’t have any sisters and never went to sleep-away camp.
Same!
“dancing like a normal person.” YES. I too somehow missed this.
Me too! My few makeup skills are entirely learnt off of youtube and blog tutorials in my 20’s.
“dancing like a normal person.”
When I was in seventh grade, my mother hired a twelfth-grader (daughter of a friend of hers) to come to our house and teach me how to do the dances that you did at Junior High dances in 1989. (My mother did this out of great love for me, recognizing my high levels of anxiety when confronted with having to perform anything [a conversation; a physical activity; an unusual place-your-order system in a restaurant I’ve never been to] outside of my comfort zone, also recognizing that I would never in a million years draw attention to how bad I felt that I couldn’t dance.)
Anyway I have vividly clear memories of J—– dancing with me in our living room and telling me very kindly that I would eventually get it.
She was wrong. But she was kind and patient and I hope somewhere out there she’s having an amazing fulfilling life, and I hope she never remembers that my mom paid her babysitting wages to teach me, among other things, the Electric Slide.
While at a dance party at a fan con last year, I discovered that people in their twenties still know, and do, the Electric Slide.
There are so many things I wondered how people learned when I was a kid. I got the makeup thing okay (dance recitals from a young age will do that for you), but fancy braids, those hand clapping rhymes, fortuneteller folding, this stupid S shape that everybody but me liked to draw… all a mystery.
I still don’t know where everybody else picked stuff up from. They couldn’t all have older siblings, right?
I learned the hand-clapping thing while a Girl Scout, along with the fortuneteller paper thing.
At my elementary school the mysterious s-drawing-knowledge was some kind of grand secret, and it was very important when my bff taught me the exact lines to draw during indoor recess, thereby inducting me into…something, I was never quite clear on that. She hid our paper with her hand so no one could “cheat” and “sneak in” though.
Fortuneteller folding, otoh, I learned from a kid’s origami crafts book I got at the Scholastic book fair. That was a party favorite for a long time.
What is this S-drawing thing?
Edit: is it this? I googled “S drawing” and found a bunch of things about this. I think it must have been a bit after my time, as I was more an 80s kid.
Super S Stussy
Yup, that’s it. I didn’t know it was a thing outside my elementary school (1990-96, incidentally), let alone that it had a name. I feel enlightened.
I find it hilarious that some schools banned the drawing of it because they thought it was gang-related or distracting to students.
I’ll add “walking in high heels” to the girl-things I missed out on. I put on a really embarrassing newborn-foal splayed-limbs performance the last time I was in the Macy’s shoe department trying on heels.
That was my new years resolution last year! The solution was a pair of really sturdy heeled boots by Clarks.
This year I should probably do “French braid” because that has always seemed completely impossible to me.
(I have a mother and a sister but my mother was a militant hippie and had zero interest in lady-styles and my sister is Not Nice. So I am here for this whole thread.)
Mom was a sensible-shoes kind of person + was not friends with any of the pretty girls + too much ADHD and social awkwardness to pick up on what the other kids were into = am now an adult who can barely accomplish a lumpy ponytail
IT ME
IT ALSO ME
Same!
Non-girly misandrist mother + undiagnosed anxiety + socially awkward childhood = no one taught me girl skills and asking someone to teach me was way too anxiety provoking to even think about.
I finally started using lip gloss when I was like 30 and bought my first pair of heels higher than an inch when I was 40. Just recently occurred to me that I could research eye make up.
Still don’t own a hairdryer, curling iron or straight iron. Still feel pretty good about that.
I think we actually had a Mary Kay lady come in and give us demonstrations in Girl Scouts, as well as learning some hair stuff and how to tell what “season” you are for picking makeup and clothing colors, and what your face shape is. It must have been for some beauty badge. I have a badge on my vest that has a mirror and hairbrush, so that was probably it. Not as fun as building campfires and setting tents, but I’ve probably gotten more use out of that limited beauty knowledge.
Admittedly my hair is now in an asymmetrical pixie, but I had it long and braided for much of my life. How?
1) Practice.
2) This book: http://www.amazon.com/Braids-Bows-A-Book-Instruct… It has helpful color-coded diagrams. I basically memorized it as an eight-year-old. It also told you how to make pretty barrettes!
3) I have fine, straight, slippery hair, and for most of my childhood and adolescence I wore it waist length or longer. Short hair doesn’t braid well.
4) A good amount of manual dexterity. I also played violin, and I’m sure that helped.
5) My mom had long hair (except for one ill-advised shag) and let me practice on her.
ALL OF THAT BEING SAID, THOUGH: fishtail braids are actually awful because having such skinny strands and such short loops around each other means all of your split and broken ends are WAY more visible than they would be in a regular braid. Also, I can’t do a French braid on my own head at all, my elbows don’t allow it.
I had that book too! I’m suddenly realizing just how many Klutz books I had growing up…
I also had several barrettes and scrunchies made from their instructions. Very 90s, but pretty great.
I think I had some exposure to that Klutz book too, but the instructions and diagrams were for working on someone else’s hair, and I couldn’t really figure out how to adapt them to my own head, so the other Klutz book worked better for me.
I always had the delusion that if my mom braided my hair correctly, I would look EXACTLY like the girls in the pictures. I remember putting on a purple shirt and asking my mom to do the braid on the Braids & Bows cover. I was very disappointed when I still looked like myself.
I thought I knew how to do a fishtail braid, but the directions I learned never said anything about there being four parts, so maybe I learned it wrong? IDK. The directions that I found for fishtail braiding were just to start with two pieces, then take a chunk from one piece and incorporate it into the other. It lives there now. Then do the same but in reverse — take a chunk from the second piece and add it to the first. Try to make sure you’re not just moving the same chunk of hair back and forth. And… that’s it, I think. Unless I’m missing some secret extra step of fishtail braiding? As for when I learned it: about a year ago from a youtube video. No visits from the braiding witch for me!
As for how to French braid at all, braid my own hair properly on the back of my head, or get a fishtail braid (or indeed, a regular three-plait braid) to last longer than about 2 hours, no witch has ever arrived to give me those skills, either.
Yeah, that’s what I thought a fishtail was, too!
To do a french braid, just start with three small strands at the top middle part of your head and then start braiding. Every time you weave strands together, grab some hair on either side or in the middle so that your three strands keep growing till you run out of hair. Then finish up your braid.
I’m aware of the theory of how it is done, but I have yet to accomplish this in practice, and now I have a pixie.
I’m sorry. I should not try to help. I just want to help!
Ack, I’m realizing my comment sounded disgruntled. Not my intent, I promise.
Embroidery thread friendship bracelets are a useful way to learn different kinds of braids, also.
I dislike the fishtail because I always end up with a few chunks of hair that don’t ever swap to the other side (or only swap a few times), which annoys me, even if doesn’t *look* wrong. I decided to grow my hair out from a short bob about 18 months ago and it’s bra-band-length now and you wouldn’t believe how smug i was over the summer when i discovered that i could still do excellent twin french braids without a mirror. They look awesome with my ombre pink-to-natural-brown-black hair, too. Now that it’s so long, I basically spend all my not-at-work time with two basic braids that I admire constantly.
OKAY i am showing off my braiding skills. this photo from October is shit because i used my phone in selfie mode in the car but:
That is amazing!
it’s after a full day of wearing a wig, too, which is why I had it pinned up. I was very smug that day. 😀
We have similar hair textures, so: how do you wear a wig when you have long hair?! I didn’t even bother trying until I cut mine to bob length, because I couldn’t figure out how to lay it against my head in such a way that didn’t leave huge obvious lumps.
Thin and stick-straight, but a TON of it? my wig is a shoulder-length hot pink affair, for when I want to go all-over pink and not just partially pink. So I put my hair into two french braids and criss-cross the loose bits, tucking in the ends so they don’t prickle through the wig cap.
There is a lump, but because my wig is longish and not styled, it’s negligible. Also, I do the criss-crossing as flat as I can – now that it’s even longer than in October, I would probably wrap it differently and bring the ends further up the back of my head. I’m also considering doing 4 braids (2 top, 2 bottom) so that i can distribute it more evenly. The french braids are necessary for keeping all the hair underneath the wig, though – and I do it while my hair is wet, so that the plaiting discourages the strands from loosening up.
(ETA: I actually had more trouble when my hair was shorter, because there wasn’t enough length to keep it all pulled up/under, and I’d have to constantly push my bangs back under the wig. Bobby pins and barrettes just don’t stay when my hair isn’t all twined up.)
“Thin and stick-straight, but a TON of it?”
HA HA HA YUP. Every time I get a haircut with a new person: “Wow. you have more hair than I thought.” Now that I have a pixie I always only go to one person, because I know anyone else would make it look weird and poofy. As it is I have to glue it down for the first week or so after a trim.
If you get a bob-length again: Wig caps! The fishnet kind. I would pin back my bangs, and then put on a wig cap, and then pin the wig cap on but with those metal barrettes that snap shut, like, all over, at the edge, but through the holes of the fishnet instead of the elastic band.
Anyway I can’t do french braids but if/when I grow my hair out again I’m dying to learn.
The really sad thing is that I tried a wig cap and it STILL didn’t help keep everything in place underneath, so I was still shoving my wispy near-my-face hair underneath all day.
I ended up using tiny elastics and putting itty braids all around my face to be able to secure the crocodile clips to (and they STILL got loose as the day wore on, at least when my hair is long, the weight helps it hold together)
Seriously gorgeous.
Thank you!
Like all good witches, I was taught how to braid my hair by my grandmother. She also taught me how to knit.
Yes, I was reading this and thinking, “I am clearly a witch” and “my older sister taught me.”
Also, it probably helps that I have coarse, straight hair. It’s easier to hold!
[The downside is that if I don’t secure it properly it will come undone.]
HAIR WITCHES UNITE
All my grandmother taught me was euchre.
Eucher and show shopping! Life long gifts from grandma.
Shoe, not show. Damn autocorrect.
I also learned from that Klutz book, though I really only can do various kinds of french braids (inside out, pigtail, etc etc) and the normal braid. I think certain hair types do not work with fishtail braids. I also can’t do the rope braid. The Klutz book was, in those pre-youtube days, magical and wodnerful.
That was the one I had! Man, that book amazing.
Though because I learned to do it on my own head, it’s super hard to french braid someone else’s. And I still don’t have an idea solution for how to keep the tension even at the bottom of your hair when it is long.
French braiding overnight gives me great curls the next day too.
I think my mother still has that somewhere. It was her bible back when one of the main issues every morning was what to do with my bounty of hair.
All I know how to do is a regular braid, one of those sort of fat ones that falls apart if you hair isn’t quite long enough.
>> you start the process with brushing your dry hair
Right there with you: putting on a damn scrunchy is 100% less fool proof than it should be.
I had so many allergy/sinus/asthma issues and I HATED having my hair brushed so my mom made me keep my hair short and therefore un-braid-able for most of my childhood. And by “short” I mean she would have it “cut away from my face” which could be anything from Ramona Quimby to Ziggy Stardust to a proper British schoolboy. Very short. As a result, when I finally grew out my hair for the first time ever the only braid I knew how to do was the basic braid because I’d learned it from baking holiday bread.
Mine was kept so short and was so white blond that other kids called me Baldy for Bald Eagle. Looking back, that was fairly clever. At the time (second grade or so) it was traumatizing.
I was also on heavy meds off and on for years, so there are pictures of me with very short hair looking scrawny and strung-out like an addict. Add to that look the fact that a good portion of my wardrobe was handed down from my older brother and you get an image of a feral-looking child of ambiguous gender. I spent a lot of time feeling confused and out of place.
Hey, that sounds like me as a child. Except I got the new clothes, but they had to be androgynous enough that my little brother could wear them later.
My little brother and I each have the same fine but dense, very curly hair, and for reasons known only to her, my mother cut mine *very* short and let my brother’s get much-longer-than-was-common-for-boys-in-the-nineties.
Pre-puberty, I got a lot of “Young man, would you stop your little sister from climbing in the fountain?” and the like.
I was a fidgety child and an even more fidgety adult, so consequently, I am EXCELLENT at braiding
(but not if I have to do like, a braid crown or something – just ones that hang there, waiting for my twitchy fingers to braid and unbraid)
i like to make teeny tiny thin braids with the hair closest to my face and then practice knots with the resulting ropes of hair it is my fidgety-while-reading trick that isn’t pulling out my eyebrows and it looks hilarious when i take a bathroom break and see myself in the mirror
I learned how to do all kinds of complicated nonsense in braids via a braid book (a Christmas gift from my grandmother), a Barbie doll (Princess Jasmine, technically), and a couple 12-hour car rides with nothing else to do.
It is still a pain in the ass to do “fishtail” braids (which I’ve always called “herringbone” braids, per my book) on my own hair, to the point that basically, why bother? The trick is that these braids require you to maintain tension in the strands in a really awkward way, and involve tiny sections of hair, so they take forever, anyway.
I didn’t figure out how to properly braid my own hair until I was like twenty-two or so.
Yeah.
Look, there’s just a lot of hair, ok? And I still have this lingering thing where I associate braids with extreme pain because the only thing that could be done with that mass of hair when I was a child was braiding it. (When it wasn’t cut super short. Then it just pouffed.) The detangling and the brushing and the braiding would take at least an hour and it was always an hour of AGONY. Many sloppy ponytails and bad short haircuts followed when I became a tween.
I haven’t attempted the fishtail yet, but now I’m tempted to, despite the fact that it was the bane of my existence when I was young. I’m sure I can pull it off. The witch has taught me many things.
I can only do the Off to the Side basic braid on myself because any time I would get the random notion, “If I practice, I’ll have it mastered in no time!” I would try and almost immediately abandon the notion because of how quickly my arms would get tired. It is as if the braid witch that visited all the other little girls is back there pushing my arms down to discourage me from braiding my own hair. Other witches have visited me and given me other powers, so I’m pretty okay with it.
I had extremely long hair for most of my youth, and learned how to do the more interesting braids from a collection of borrowed library books (I remember the klutz book and that Anne Johnson one! oooh nostalgia 🙂 I could braid my own hair with any number of strands you want (record: 13), french (record: 5 because you run out of fingers), inside-out, right-side-in, waterfalls, twists…even as an adult my hair when my hair was chopped to chin length I mastered a variety of cute french-heidi braids (does this have a word?) made extra difficult by the shortness.
The point is, I am an expert level amateur hairbraider….and I have never ever even vaguely successfully gotten past 3 plaits or so of a fishtail without it descending into madness and I am CERTAIN it is witchcraft.
I learned to braid as a tiny thing because I had this princess castle backpack and its turrets had three ribbons coming off the top, perfect for braiding. Also lots of Barbies. I agree with the several commenters who have said that fishtails are WAY overrated, especially if you are not in possession of long, long, highlighted hair. Dark hair means you can do elaborate braids and it just looks like a chunk of hair and all intricacy is lost; all your work is for naught, your claim to the 10th grade drill team “Best Hair” award is snatched from your fingers (so I’ve heard..).
That said, I love Rubi’s book, and her fishtail braid model does not have long, long, blond hair, so hope remains!
I am completely incapable of braiding, which pains me deeply in the part of my brain that is convinced I need to be good at everything in the world, but in all the other parts I’m just glad it’s one more thing that I never have to deal with (except for that part of childhood that was all sleepovers and french braids and painting nails, all of which I am bad at).
The key is a childhood with butt-length hair, and parents making a huge deal out of it and never cutting it and brushing and braiding it every day while I sat there being a surly little shitass, and then catching a horrible case of lice right around the age where I would’ve had to start taking care of it myself, and suddenly spending hours instead of half-hours a day having it brushed, and finally snapping and telling my mom to just cut it all off, and then never letting it get long enough to braid for the rest of my life.
Which is a lot of commitment just to make less work for myself and never have to let anyone else know that I can’t do french braids, yes it is.
I learned how to french braid at the age of 24, when I was stoned out of my gourd in Copenhagen. I went to a lot of summer camps, made a lot of friendship bracelets and hemp necklaces, and realized that those motions were essentially what I needed to do to my hair in order for it to be braided. My first french braid was actually a braid crown, and I think the fact that since I was stoned it made me a bit less anxious about getting it perfect so I sat on the side of the canal and just went for it.
I’d seen tutorials prior, even watched a few videos, but the only way to get better at it is to practice! Fishtails are beautiful but time consuming, same thing with braid crowns. If your arms get tired easily lay on your bed with just your head off the side so your hair is cascading down and its easier to braid.
Don’t get your tutorials off of Pinterest; they are incomplete and make it look a lot easier than it actually is. Go to those Mennonite and/or Mormon women’s websites and read theirs.
My old-lady goal is to just always have my hair in a braid crown. So this is good to know.
If I may offer some advice, m’ladddyyyyyy
1) Dirty hair works best. If you’re unable to have dirty hair, I recommend putting some dry shampoo/texturing spray/some kind of hair product to give your hair grip. Silky, clean hair doesn’t play as nice as dirty hair does. Some people recommend hair oil but I have big dumb hands that are also kinda sweaty so that didn’t work well for me.
2) Be sure to comb your hair out real good so you don’t have any nots. Just makes your life a lot easier when braiding.
3) Part down the middle, and clip up one side. You can even split it up into quadrants if that helps. Start the crown braid in the back, and know that you’ll have to shift arm positions as you go around your head. Figure out what feels best for you! Sometime I flip my head upside down when I do the back, and as I get to the front I flip back up.
4) I don’t like looking in t6he mirror as I do it; I lose concentration and get caught up in the fact that there are bumps and shit. If looking in the mirror helps you: do it! But maybe try without a mirror first?
5) Before you clip up the tail of the braid, I love loosening up the entire crown a little by by pulling lightly on either side around the head and tail. It makes the braid a bit wider and if you’re like me and braid really tight, it’s nicer for your scalp.
6) Clip up the tail with bobby pins sprayed with hairspray for extra hold. You can also use bobby pins to tame flyaways if you have layers, or lessen bumps.
I really wanted to try and explain how to braid with more than three strands, but it’s actually really hard to explain! All I can figure out how to say is that if you want to braid with 4 instead of 3, you take strand #4 and go the opposite way that you went with strand #3. Over instead of under, or under instead of over. But that probably helps 0 people. Just come over and I’ll braid your hair! How about that?
I don’t have sisters, so any braiding abilities came from the Klutz book and whatever practice I could get with my thin, short-ish hair (i.e., not much). I did once teach my brother a three-strand braid using pull & peel Twizzlers.
My daughter has the beautiful, thick, straight shiny hair of my frizzy, curly dreams … and she won’t even let me put a ponytail in it, much less try out all the fancy hairstyles I could never pull off.
Reason #495 I know I’m turning into my mother: I want to say, “But you look so nice with your hair back” five times a day.
I can do a standard three-strand braid, a not!Dutch braid (I start lower than you would with a regular Dutch braid; it’s an inverted three-strand, really), as well as a French braid. I learned three-strand from a friend, figured out not!Dutch on my own, and similar with French.
I’ve yet to master the fishtail. I’ve seen Youtube videos featuring it, but I’ve not practiced enough.
An old man at church once stopped me in wonderment to ask how I could braid behind my own head (repairing a French braid that had come loose). I obviously should have told him I was a witch.
I still can’t fishtail braid.
I once dumbfounded a male professor by stepping out of a darkroom to french braid thigh-length hair in 90 seconds. It was amusing.
Here is a Cosmopolitan article that the Fug Girls linked to about a year and a half ago. I got an awesome French braid the first time I tried it. I don’t care for the look of most of the other styles, but I was totally impressed with how easy the French braid was.
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/beauty/h…
BRB growing my hair out again just so I can put it in a Halo braid forever
thank you! this makes me think braiding my hair in anything besides messy pigtails when it’s too hot to sleep might be possible!
This alllmost makes me want to grow my hair out again so I can do some of these! But just almost.
This gifs make is seem so achievable, I’m bookmarking this to try during my weekend tv lazing about.
I taught myself how to braid using my sister’s rainbow brite doll. All the braids! I don’t remember anyone showing me how, so I think I just sort of went “I want to braid!” and just…kind of figured it out? Same for self-french braiding.
IDK, I was a weird child; I also started reading Reader’s Digest and Discover magazinefor fun around age 8.
Fishtail braids on thick curly hair always failed miserably.
A sister and a cabin in the summer where you have little to do. That is the secret to knowing how to braid.
Ok Toasts! I just watched a tutorial video and did some hair experimentation for Science to see if I could do it. I have thick, coarse curly hair that gets poofy if you brush it. Looks a lot like Jaya’s but longer but I don’t want to make assumptions. Anyway, I think it’s just a little bit more complicated than they make it sound but also less alien and more like regular braiding.
Here is what I have discovered after fishtail attempt #3:
1) Forget the stupid elastic. If you can french braid, you can start a braid without a ponytail holder.
2) Split hair in two parts.
3) Figure out where you’re braiding. Are you braiding behind you? Are you braiding over your shoulder? Pick a spot and stay there or you’ll screw it up when you switch positions halfway through.
4) Take a strand of hair from the outside of section #1 and pull it OVER the rest of that section and THEN weave it under section #2 so that it ends up at the back of section #2. Redo your grip on section #2 so it now includes the new strand. If possible, keep the braid tight as you do it.
5) Take a new, different strand from roughly the outside of section #2 and put it OVER the rest of that section and the UNDER section #2 so it ends up roughly at the back of that section.
6) Do this until your hands cramp, then look in the mirror with vague dissatisfaction. Think “huh, this probably looks better on straight hair.” Think “why didn’t I just do a french braid?”
7) Shrug and count a victory for science!
Welp thank you for saving me from trying some frustrating hair experiments and as a curly haired person i will just stick with a French braid based on this advice.
It still might be fun to try if you are bored and also trying not to do work, as I was!
I am a witch and that is how I know how to braid, but I have not ascended to full witch status because I cannot make my braids transform into snakes when strange men look at me. I also cannot find a good youtube tutorial for learning how to finally master the whole snake-transformation bit, and honestly it leaves me disappointed in the world.
Girl, you & me both.
I learned on my own obscenely long and white-girl-wavy hair. I can do Frwnch braids, Dutch braids, crown braids, that thing where you braid 9 small braids and then braid them into three medium braids and braid those into one large knotty-looking braid. I am an up do fiend. And yet I NEVER do a fishtail without slinging it to one side as soon as the braid is past my shoulders. Side-part fishtails with a shitload of bobby pins and either hairspray or pre-waved hair are the only fishtails that are willing to stay where I put them. And if your hair is neither straight-to-wavy nor in a shitload of tiny braids, it just won’t stay. It’s a special style for the Punterest hair type: medium long layers, barely wavy, fucked-up bleached ends, and a shitload of hair product.
I learned to braid hair because when I was 12, my brother started growing out his hair and by God, people already said that he was prettier than me so he was not going to have longer hair than me.
And then I didn’t cut my hair for six years. Being a person who didn’t actually want hair floating around all the time, I now know how to do lots of braids.
Someone has probably already said this, but I find it a lot easier to braid (fishtail or french) when my hair is slightly damp. You can either get a sense for this moment when your hair is drying, or you can wet down a brush and run it through your hair a couple times.
I also usually braid with my eyes closed, because it actually helps me to do it by feel and without any distractions.
This book:
As a pre-teen stuck at my dad’s house, there was not a lot to do (no TV or friends, limited access to books), but someone got me this book, which showed an idealized version of my grown-up self on the cover, and so I was inspired to practice and learn many of the braids within.
I didn’t master them all (including the fishtail/herringbone), but I did learn to French braid and reverse-French braid my hair, a skill I greatly prized for many years until I realized my thin hair has the most volume (and looks best on me) extending no further than my jawline, thus too short to braid. I miss it, though.
I don’t remember ever being taught how to braid hair, but I’ve been able to do a basic braid for as long as I remember. I do have a clear memory of the first time I tried a french braid – on my sister while she was sleeping. Also I learned how to do a dutch braid because I remembered overhearing a friend of my mom’s mentioning that it was a french braid upside-down…about 6 years before I ever attempted it. The point is, I’m definitely a witch.
I learnt to do hair because my mum wasn’t very good at it, and I had to do hair for jazz ballet and choir. French braiding still eludes me, although I can do an inside out braid on my own head, it just seems to be the right way around for my hands to work?
Fishtails I found easy because of two pointers I got from a video from the beauty department website (Lauren Conrad from the Hills does the video!): firstly, there’s no hope of doing it directly behind your own head, it’s much easier doing it low and to the side, so it sits over your shoulder, and also put one of those little rubber hair ties in first. Do tie your hair into a low side pony tail, then braid, then cut out the hair tie at the end, voila! This way you don’t have to hold a million strands of hair all at once!
Anyway, I hope my daughter likes sitting still (once she’s older and has actual hair to work with), because I will conquer that French braid!
I learned from that same Klutz book several other folks mentioned! It had really clear illustrations. I don’t actually remember doing a fishtail braid, I just wanted to French braid. I will say though, it is harder for me to braid someone else’s hair because I learned to do it by feel so it’s confusing when it’s not on my own head… Good luck!
I’m 37 and I cannot braid my own hair at all.
Honestly, practicing on your own head with YouTube tutorials and wine is a pretty solid solo weeknight. (this is also how I learned to cut my own bangs!)
I am incapable of plaiting my hair. Part of it is the fact that it hurts my arms (you have to keep stretching them behind your head!), but also my hair just does not neatly separate into three strands and stay like that. Even after brushing it, it needs to be left unattended for just a few seconds before it tangles up again; keeping it in three neat separate sections for the duration of time it takes to plait them together just doesn’t happen. I just leave it down. (If it is windy or my hair needs washing, I might stretch to a clumsy ponytail.)
Friends. I love this post the most. ❤️
I can do a three-strand braid on myself or someone else, but that is the limit of my skills. And I have to talk to myself enough to keep track of where I am.
*chants, internally, “right over middle, left over middle; right over middle, left over middle; right over middle, left over middle”*
I and my mom gave up on my own hair years ago, but my brother, with his mane of hip-long, thick, wavy hair, was too weak to resist. When he was slightly drunk or planning to go out, he’d meekly bring me the comb on his own.
He sometimes insisted I braid his beard, too.
Now that we live half a country apart, it has become our christmas ritual: I scold him for not taking care of his hair, cut the ends, comb and braid it. He pretends to suffer, but secretly, he loves it.
I practiced braiding the tails of the large collection of My Little Ponies I shared my sister. I did French braids on my Cabbage Patch dolls’ heads, too. 80s toys for the win!
This is only very tangentially related, but it’s the best hair tip I ever received and I want to spread the good word:
My hair is past shoulder length and it’s also quite fine and tends to break easily. I used to use a paddle brush, but a woman I work with suggested switching to a broad-toothed comb – apparently the little bobbles on the end of brush bristles can increase the amount of hair you break while brushing.
So I took her advice, and my hair now looks ~20% thicker and more luxuriant!
…I still wish I had something straighter and heavier. *sobs quietly*
Oh, and when it was longer I could just about do a regular three-part braid, but all the broken hairs would frizz out of it and it looked really dumb so I stopped.
I am/always have been hopeless at all things hair that require more skill than blowing out my bangs (and even that is pretty haphazard). If I spend more than 2 minutes on my own hair on any given day, it’s a sure sign of a special occasion! I just have no patience for it, but luckily I have mid-wavy hair with decent body, so it looks OK-ish most of the time with minimal effort.
If my niece is going to have a sleepover at my house, my sister has to give her a braid or some other style that will last through two days because I can’t even manage the most basic pony on someone else without it looking like a hot mess.
I had my hair long and wild til I was 16 then I got it sheared off and bleached white, now I am 21 and it is approaching waist length and I finally decided it had recovered from the bleaching enough to go back to deep red. I grew it out so I could “do things with it” and I plan to get it shorn again in a couple to a few years, but I haven’t really done much with it yet. I think it has just reached braiding length recently (I used to do three-strand pigtails when it was dirty).
I learned how to braid the same way I learn everything, well, two ways:
1. My mum taught me, like knitting and how to fold clothes *properly*
2. I looked it up on YouTube like crochet and how to solve a Rubik’s Cube
I am learning a few different styles through YT, and I think being into complicated fibre crafts probably helps. I like to weave my yarn just for the hell of it sometimes so…I can do a decent fishtail and I can even do a reasonable five strand plait. My hair is thick and curly but apart from a halo of frizz it tends to work well.
I work with disabled kids so I need various styles that leave my hair easy to swoop out of harm’s way, since grabbing a fistful of my mane is just so tempting. Also I teach them how to make candles and if I don’t know where my hair is at all times (I usually keep ahold of the end of my braid) then the chances are strong that it is in a jug of hot wax. I learned most of the fancy braids I know because I didn’t want to just stick it in a three strand braid every day.
My grandmother taught my mother to braid her own hair by making a giant pony tail of yarn and tying it onto her (my mother’s) head. My mother was then required to practice single down the back braids, and two braids, one on each side, until my grandmother felt she was competent for long hair. Up until that point my mother had a haircut just like her two older brothers, which was fine for everything except performing femininity. This was in the early 1940s and my grandmother was striving to be not-a-witch. My mother was ambivalent. I am a witch.
I loved that klutz book when I was a kid! Man, it took me so long to master the rope braid and it's something I never would have figured out without that book.
I don't remember when I first learned to braid (I was 7ish maybe?) but I do remember the summer after 5th grade when I conquered french braids on myself. It was a rough few weeks and then *bam* the fingers suddenly were doing what they were supposed to do. I acquired the Klutz book on braiding at some point and highly recommend it for mastering other braids.
I've never managed a french fishtail on myself, but I could do a decent regular fishtail. The key was 1) tie your hair in a ponytail first, and 2) pull it around to the side to weave it, but when you're weaving it, leave the side that's closest to your body looser than the side that's on the outside, so that when you flip your braid back you don't have a curve (this is also solid advice for regular braids too when you prefer to bring it forward to see what you're doing).
People have different feelings about wet vs. dry braiding, but for my hair I always found wet was easier to work with and it stayed better after.
When it became common knowledge that I was a decent braider as a kid, this was excellent currency at school, but my favorite thing was to do my grandpa's hair. He kept it long down his back but preferred it braided, and it was always fun to do.