Imagine you’re a freshman again, beginning your first year at Florida State. No matter if you’re living with your best friend from back home or someone totally random, chances are you share your room with someone. On top of that, you have to share your tiny bathroom with your roommate and two others (unless you lived in one of the community dorms, in that case, I salute you). Whether sharing your living space with others totally worked out or you had to be moved by housing halfway through the school year, you survived.
I’m currently enduring my time in the dorms, but with only half the amount of hair I started with.
Before I came to FSU, my gold yellow hair fell almost down to my waist. After a few months of living in the dorms, I started to notice my hairbrush was almost completely full of hair after just one use. Not only was my hair coming out in huge clumps, but it started to get this weird greenish tint to it.
One day, I went to put the straightener through my hair and heard a loud sizzling sound. Although I hadn’t put any product in my hair, the straightener was burning something in my hair. I stopped straightening, curling and blow-drying my hair in hopes that not putting heat on it would stop the damage. To my surprise, my hair started to get worse. Each day, it felt like there was more product in my hair even though I’d used none.
Fast forward to Thanksgiving break: my hair was turning a weird green color, felt like it had product in it at all times and was falling out… and I had no idea why. As soon as I had put my bags down at home, my mom took one look at my hair and immediately called the hair salon. The next day, I went in to the salon to get something called a Malibu Treatment. A Malibu Treatment is a gloss put on your hair to remove all of the impurities from it and protect it from future deposits. People usually have Malibu Treatments done to their hair to help repair damage from the chlorine in swimming pools. However, I wasn’t going swimming and hadn’t been putting any new products in my hair so we still didn’t know what was causing my hair to fall out and turn green.
During the two weeks back at FSU between Thanksgiving break and Christmas break, another deposit had begun to build up on my hair. I came back home, went back to the salon, got the treatment done again and heard horrible news no one who has grown their hair out their whole life wants to hear: “You need a lot more than just a trim.” That day, I said goodbye to six inches of hair. My hair began to look better while at home for Christmas break, so I immediately knew the damage had something to do with the water in my dorm.
My mom sent me back with a few gallon jugs of water to wash my hair with instead of letting the water from the dorm shower touch my hair. After a few weeks of doing this, I stopped because I thought it was ridiculous that I had to go through this whole process just to wash my hair. FSU housing should not be using water that can destroy someone’s hair.
After emailing FSU housing, we got a response that gave us a solution to the problem: buy a filtered showerhead. It wasn’t actually the water damaging my hair; it was the copper piping used in the shower because the metallic substance breaks the hair follicles down. In order to stop the damage to my hair, I needed to buy a filter for the shower water that would get rid of this metallic substance. In their response, it was also included that this happens to about one or two blonde girls each year. I didn’t understand why housing wouldn’t warn residents about the damage the shower water could do to their hair, but I realized they also didn’t warn residents about the mold in some of the dorms as well.
If you’re moving into the dorms at FSU, don’t wait for the water to damage your hair. Prevent the damage by buying a filtered showerhead. Although housing doesn’t provide the filters for you or warn you about the need for one, maintenance will install it in the shower for you if you ask. After the shower filter head was installed, my hair began to repair itself, grow, restore to its natural blonde color and look shiny again.
Take it from someone who lost almost half of their hair and watched it turn green: get the shower head filter.