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If a Black woman has at least 3 inches of hair on her head, you can pretty much guarantee she owns two things: a showercap and a silk scarf. If you’re a white woman in 2016, there’s a good chance you’ve only now been introduced to the former, simply because another teeny bopper company came along, changed the name of the product, and deemed the item en vogue.

Enter New York Times’ profile of “street showercaps” and the women who wear them, like Aly Walansky above. The 35-year-old writer told the newspaper she feels no shame pulling out a shower cap and putting it over “coarse, Jewish Eastern European, curly” hair to keep it intact when rain and humidity threaten the “expensive” $30 weekly blowouts she gets — on top of the $400 she spends annually on smoothing treatments.

“I’d much rather embarrass whomever I’m with than arrive where I’m going with bad hair,” she said.

And now that (certain) companies have made street showercaps a thing, we should all be prepared to see more women like Walansky walking down the street. For instance, Drybar has created a Morning After showercap to keep customer’s hair pristine on their way to the office post-blowout. And Jacquelyn de Jesu has launched an entire company called SHHHOWERCAP that sells “waterproof turbans.” Forty-three dollar waterproof turbans.

Personally, I don’t really care about seeing white women running errands in showercaps, though I do agree with hairstylist David Lopez who told The Times, “There are better ways to publicly preserve a blowout.” I just don’t want to hear anything about Black women out and about in silk scarves being called unkempt when we do the same thing.

 
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