I’ve finally found a Curly Girl success story. It’s not quite the one I expected, but my hair doesn’t look like crap anymore so, hey, I’ll take it. Don’t tell the CGM community, because they’ll probably burn me at the stake, but here’s a little secret:

I’ve been using the Curly Girl Method to style my hair straight.

That’s right. Carry me off in the middle of the night to be drawn and quartered because I am no longer following all those crazy ringlet rules, and (spoiler alert!) I’m getting better results.

After a full month of struggling with my hair through the Maid to Curl Challenge, trying to get the shiny ringlets of my dreams, I’ve realized that maybe my hair just wants to live it’s own life. So I’ve recently stopped trying to style it curly.

That means no scrunching, no plopping, no diffusing. I still follow the CGM wash and condition routine, but after I finish in the shower, I forget about CGM and style as I normally would. I apply some leave-in conditioner, wrap my hair up in a t-shirt for about 15 minutes, and relish in the fact that I didn’t turn my hands into useless flippers from a half hour of scrunching.

Then the final, most important step, which the CGM community MUST NEVER KNOW: After I let it out of the towel, I brush it. AND IT FEELS HEAVENLY. #sorrynotsorry

For the full wash-and-style routine, watch this video from Swavy Curly Courtney!

I know! I know! I’m a terrible person, and I’m causing hair breakage and creating frizz, and I’ll never amount to anything in life! But, guess what? I’m pretty amazed with the results:

If you’ve always been a wash-and-go person, then you might not understand why I’m using such strong words like “amazing” to describe this hair. After all, it’s not like I look like Taylor Swift (but maybe that’s more of a me-problem at this point). The amazing part – for me (and anyone else with it-looks-gross-unless-I-use-heat-tools hair) – is that these results didn’t take a minute of heat styling.

Before I found the Curly Girl Method, I used to heat style my hair any time I wanted to wear it down. Sometimes I would just “run a straightener over it” to smooth it out even if I was wearing it up. I never thought I’d be one of those air-dry-and-go people; I just thought my hair was too difficult to be left to its own devices. If you had told me two months ago that I’d be wearing my hair down without using a curling iron, I’d have tuned you out faster than a Kelly Pickler Hallmark movie.

When I first started the Curly Girl Method, I was after Shirley Temple curls. It never occurred to me that the routine would help me style my hair straight. I think it’s just the extra TLC and the lack of harsh ingredients that has made my hair healthier, smoother, and more manageable, even without heat tools.

So, it turns out I do have a Curly Girl success story after all: I’VE FINALLY BECOME A WASH-AND-GO PERSON! And if you don’t think that’s amazing, then you’ve obviously never snoozed your alarm for 45 minutes straight in 5-minute increments until you have exactly three minutes to get ready and get out of the house.

More Information on Challenge 5: Maid to Curl