Fifteen minutes with a round brush and a blow dryer, both arms over your head until your shoulders ache — and by your second coffee the volume is gone. Flat against your scalp like you slept on it wet. So you reach for the dry shampoo, get a white cast you have to rub out in bad bathroom lighting, and by lunch the roots are flat again and chalky. You tease the crown. It holds for forty minutes and leaves a tangled knot that takes ten minutes to brush out at night.
And the usual fixes don't fix much. Heatless volumizing clips need twenty minutes and give you a crease where the clip sat and a bump that dies the moment you walk outside. Velcro rollers grab so hard coming out they take strands with them. Volumizing mousse, root-lift spray, texturizing powder — thirty dollars a month on things that promise body and deliver buildup. Most days you just give up. Ponytail. Hat. Not because that's the look you want — because flat hair made the decision for you. It doesn't have to.