Here’s how I broke up with the internet’s favourite ’90s blowout

The ’90s blowout has officially reached peak saturation. Scroll once through your feed and you’ll see her. She’s got the same glossy, chest-length curls that bounce just so and the soft middle part. It’s beautiful, but somewhere between the velcro rollers, high-tech hair tools and the army of Instagram tutorials, individuality got left behind.

When I walked into the salon last month, my stylist confidently stated, “The usual bouncy blowout?” That’s when I realised that I didn’t know what my hair could look like beyond this. So I decided to rebel against my algorithm with a one-month experiment. Each week, I’d try a completely different blowout and track how it changed the way I looked and felt. If you need hair inspiration, here are the blowouts to try:

Week 1: Sleek glass finish

Stick-straight and mirror-shiny, this look felt like a power suit for my head. Paired best with a centre part and a sharp outfit, it’s chic, but it does demand some maintenance (hello, frizz serum). I used a smoothing serum, a paddle brush and a flat iron section by section until my arms felt like the Hulk’s. Entirely worth the two-hour effort and arm workout.

Week 2: The French girl tousle