How To Maintain Your Summer Buzz Cut
By Brennan Kilbane.
Welcome to the Summer Buzz Cut Club. Zachary Quinto, Jaden Smith, and myself are jacked that you’re joining us. You’ve abandoned the barbershop fade in favor of something a little more low maintenance, and bid adieu to expensive haircuts, pomade, and the once-necessary morning shampoo. Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. Right?
Air horn
Wrong!! That was the Buzz Club entrance test, and man, did you fail it. Sorry, but by choosing to shave your head, you haven't escaped the laws of grooming—rather, the laws have changed. Your new cut requires a different approach to haircare, one that focuses on your scalp instead of the actual hairs on your head. Any hairstylist will tell you that hair is its healthiest when it’s at its shortest, so those are fine.
But your scalp! It is both the foundation for your hair and the roof of your brain, which makes it both extremely important and probably exhausted. Treat it kindly, and with one metric ton of product:
1. Embrace Scalp Shampoo
Regular shampoo is designed to clean your hair, not your scalp. As a result of stripping oil away from hair, they also strip oil from your skin—that’s where dandruff (or worse: eczema) comes from. Scalp shampoos are a recent class of product, describing gentler, skincare-focused cleansers that from an ingredient perspective look more like face wash than shampoo. Briogeo’s Scalp Revival Scrub is the consummate example of this. It looks and feels like a moderately-priced face exfoliant, using charcoal and tea tree oil (plus tiny vegetable-derived exfoliating grains) to purify your head. And it smells like mint and feels cool to the touch—a sensational scalp experience all around.
2. Moisture Is Key
Moisturizer always follows cleanser. It’s true of your skincare and your haircare, which is why conditioner was invented in the first place; to return moisture to your hair after shampooing it all away. But again, we’re treating our scalp and not our hair, so you’ll need something skin-focused. Plain oils from Amazon will do the trick—if your scalp is dry, try avocado oil. If it's too oily, grapeseed oil can actually counteract that. If you’re confused, your stylist should be able to tell you. It’s like beard oil, but for everywhere—you can use it on your face, too.
MORE: 17 Summer Buzz Cuts That Will Convince You to Shave Your Head
3. Wear Sunscreen! (Yes, On Your Head)
Those rolling their eyes at the idea of sun protection for your hair have never experience the unique hell of scalp sunburn. By getting a summer buzz cut and shearing off the emergent layer of your hair, you’ve left your forest floor—this is a layers of the rainforest metaphor—vulnerable to UVA and UVB rays. Don’t be dumb—invest in an easy-to-use SPF product like Bumble and bumble’s Hairdresser’s Invisible Oil UV Protective Primer. A light all-over mist also adds some sheen and pliability for you to smooth and manipulate without looking too shiny. A buzzcut never looked so polished.
This story originally appeared on GQ.
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