I?d like to have a moment of silence for 7th-grade me who thought the crunchy, stiff waves I wore to school every day was “cute.” And you should probably have a moment, too, because I know that you also spent the better part of middle school scrunching obscene amounts of mousse through your damp hair, until your head resembled uncooked ramen. That look was the only, and I mean only, way I thought I could use mousse in my hair. But a decade (and a few celebrity hairstylist friends) later, I’m here to tell you that not only was I completely wrong, but I now know that mousse is truly one the best products that will ever happen to your hair…if you use it correctly.
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Understandably, mousse gets a bad rep, thanks to emotionally scarred individuals like me. “There’s always been a stigma surrounding mousse,” says hairstylist Kristin Ess, who is responsible for literally every excellent hairstyle Lucy Hale and Jenna Dewan Tatum have ever worn. “Most people just throw blobs of mousse in their hair and miss a bunch of spots, making it feel dry, sticky, fluffy, and dirty all at once.” But when used correctly, mousse can fix your most-annoying hair problems (like frizz, dullness, and flatness), while making your hair will look like the very definition of inspo-worthy. Seriously.
The trick, says Ess, is to apply the mousse evenly t...