I have big hair. It’s thick and bushy, like the tail of a healthy woodland animal. It’s also frizz-prone and impervious to most of the shine-boosting, hair-smoothing products out there, including hair oils, straightening irons, and a rotating contraption sold via infomercial. (Don’t ask.)
But recently I was introduced to the styling tool of my dreams. “This is the most amazing hair dryer I have ever used!” a fellow member of a local moms’ group announced on Facebook. “I have thick, wavy, frizzy, mid-back length hair and I dried my hair in 15 minutes. It looks like I got a blowout.” I was skeptical. Still, the subject of her rave, the Revlon Salon One-Step Hair Dryer and Volumizer, cost less than two blowouts plus tip at my local salon.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, it had also developed something of a wild following on the Internet: winning beauty awards, racking up thousands of rave reviews online, and becoming a beauty sensation that’s regularly evangelized among Reddit threads and Facebook groups just like mine. I figured it was worth a shot.
With its thick wand and wraparound bristles, the 13-inch-long One-Step resembles an oversized hairbrush. You use it like a regular hair dryer, except you’re brushing your hair while applying heat. And after just 20 minutes with the One-Step, I had to agree with my fellow frizzy-haired mom: I looked like I’d gotten a blowout. My coarse, puffy, shoulder-length hair was now smooth, shiny, and totally dry.
