You may be wondering why that funny little piece of hair is called a cowlick. The name cowlick comes from the swirled effect left in the hair of baby cattle after being licked by their mothers. In humans, a cowlick is a small section of hair that grows at a different angle than the rest of the hair on your head.
Heavy Fringe
Ask your hairdresser to cut the thickest portion of the bangs directly behind the cowlick—think of the classic triangle bangs, where the triangle point is at the top of the head. Even if it's slightly asymmetric, you'll win the battle," she explains.
Sometimes, a handful of hair follicles don't get the message and grow in the opposite direction from the rest of your hair. When this happens, the hair may grow at a different angle than the follicles around it, causing a cowlick (Sechi, 2020). Anyone can have cowlicks; you're either born with or without them.
If you have a front cowlick, you can hide it by getting a spiky, pompadour, side-swept, cropped top, fringe, or quiff hairstyle.
Some people say it's a bad idea to get bangs if your hair is fine or curly or if you have a cowlick. The pros at Matrix say nonsense! As long as your stylist takes your particular hair type and texture into consideration, you can incorporate bangs into your hairstyle no matter what.
If you want to fix a cowlick, then just get yourself to a barber or salon. Novel idea, we know, but if you let a professional handle it, then he or she can snip, texturize, or train the hair in a way that minimizes the cowlick—or perhaps removes it altogether.
They're normal and oftentimes genetic, and with no way to permanently get rid of cowlicks, they're also here to stay. But with the right products and styling techniques, you can blend hair that likes to do what it wants into the rest of your style or reshape it so it does whatever you want.
The answer is yes and no. While you can't permanently get rid of a cowlick as it's rooted in your hair growth (literally), you can temporarily hide it and learn how to style around it.
The Off-Center Part
"This is sometimes the best option if you have a cowlick in the front, and it is also less severe than dividing hair in the middle." Try sectioning your hair slightly away from the middle as Blake Lively, but not so far that it ends up veering into side part territory.
Anyone with a cowlick knows the next-level mischief it can cause when styling your strands, especially when bangs and/or face-framing layers are involved. Luckily, curtain bangs can still be 100% wearable if you have a cowlick.
Most of the time, cowlicks are simply down to genetics - they're hereditary. If one of your parents has a cowlick, you're likely to develop one too.
Virtually everybody has a cowlick or two, with the most visible one found at the crown of the head and a second less obvious one, perhaps at the neck or on the front hairline by the part. They form early in life -- in utero -- and once you have a cowlick, you're stuck with it unless you lose your hair.
The term "cowlick" originates from the domestic bovine's habit of licking its young, which results in a swirling pattern in the hair.
The main goal of bangs for women over 40 is to take years off the face. The right choice depends on the chosen cut, hair texture, and face shape. An experienced stylist will consider these factors before cutting your bangs and suggest the best ways to highlight and frame your best features.
Because a cowlick can disrupt your hair's flow and make it harder to style, it can often result in the appearance of hair loss — but it's not. We promise. In certain ways, dealing with a persistent cowlick can be like going through a never-ending bad hair day, as no style seems to “stick” or look quite like it should.
A cowlick is just part of our natural anatomy. We're all born with one. It's the genesis point of our hair. For this reason, you can't really get rid of it - and there is no need to!
According to the stylist, the “best way to deal with cowlicks is the blow dry the hair back and forth to neutralize crazy growth. Also, you can spray a super-strong hairspray on a toothbrush or tissue paper and apply it on the cowlick.”
Switch up your direction
Keep mixing up which direction you're blow drying and, if desired, switch to a round brush. This is key because you are trying to “confuse” the cowlick (battle strategy!). Move both the brush and dryer back and forth until hair is fully dry.
(Concentrators are those removable nozzles that clip onto the opening of your blowdryer and help manage the direction of the airflow). "Using a concentrator on your blowdryer and medium heat while pushing the hair in the opposite direction of the cowlick is the best way to neutralize it," says Rourk.
“Ultimately, you want the fringe to help frame the facial features, so a longer face might suit a fuller, longer fringe that sits just above the eyes, and a rounder face might suit a more open style so as not to squash the features.
Every person's hair patterns are unique, but there are two main ways to manage cowlicks. You can either cut them short to blend them into the hair or grow them long to give weight and manageability to the hair.
The only difference between Fringes and Bangs is where you live. If you live in America you have bangs, if you live anywhere else in the world you have a fringe....the term bangs originally referred to a haircut bang-off (straight across at the front), although the term is now applied to diverse forms of hair stylings.
“Some Asian hair has more texture and frizz, even without perming.” Cheung also notes that Asian hair grows perpendicular to the scalp, which creates a lot of lift at the roots. The shorter the hair is, the more noticeable this lift becomes. This makes Asian hair more prone to cowlicks than other hair types.