Yesterday, over a yummy lunch at Crosby Street Hotel with my mama-friend Nancy, I did something very naughty and totally un-girl-power: I complimented her on her stick-straight blowout.

Now that the sparkling rosé is out of my system, I can see the error of my ways. As a woman who has spent a good deal of her life in “texture denial” of her naturally frizzy hair, I should have known better than to give a fellow curly-head the thumbs-up for spending a lot of time, money and effort on attempting to re-write the beauty script.

But it was too late; the horse was already out of the proverbial barn.

I’m obsessed with this topic, so much so that it’s the subject of my next installment of Mama Gurus. And in doing a lot of deep thinking on this pressing issue (kidding: I’m well aware there are real problems in the world…), I’ve decided that there might be a healthy-hair / beauty identity middle ground. Perhaps there’s a way to mostly accept your texture, but then, from time to time, bust out the heavy artillery.

I consider my InStyler, purchased after watching the infomercial for the tenth time, to be part of this heavy artillery equation. When I first got it, I was coming off a really bad spell of texture-denial, in which I was again getting multiple spendy blowouts. Although, with all that shipping and handling, I plunked down close to $200 for the girly gew-gaw, I figured that it would quickly pay for itself if it kept me out of Blow for a few weeks.

But I should have remembered how badly my bad hair reacts to constant doses of heat. It just gets all angry and straw-like. Or, as my beloved colorist Anthony Gianzero dubs it: “Tree bark.” Somehow, I know that “tree bark” isn’t the best look. For me, or any other texture-denying mama.