Cut My Hair and Now I Can’t Manage It

I cut my hair a couple weeks ago from about halfway down my back to a couple inches below my shoulders. I am liking the increases curliness, however my calics/stubborn strong curls on each of my head are now EXTREMELY exaggerated. Before I could usually just let my hair dry and they weren’t terrible, the one on the side of my head with less hair would stick up a bit but not bad. But now they stick up a lot!!! I’d told my stylist about them before she cut my hair and she said she’d show me a way to style my hair to hide them, but her idea of this was putting a handful of gel in my hair and putting me under the dryer so it dried to my hair like a helmet, then fluffing and teasing my hair to twice it’s normal size and I didn’t really have any nice, bouncy curls left….It didn’t actually look terrible but I wanted my hair shorter for the purpose of accenting my curls. Anyway, any tips would be much appreciated! Right now I usually diffuse until my hair is half dry, then pin the super curly bits back and leave them like that for the rest of the day or I take them down if they decide to behave (and even this is usually temporary).
https://www.flickr.com/photos/51126269@N03/15814254241/
Why can’t I see a pic when I attach it?

My daughter has loose curly hair, but her hair is just on her shoulders. She found that her new hair dryer has done the trick for her. She invested in a Karmin Salon Series Ultralight Professional Ionic Hair Dryer. She believes that the ceramic heating unit provides the benefits of heating evenly and not getting too hot, the electronic ion generator when switched to green = negative ions = hair drying faster and when switched to blue = positive ions = increases shine and if you finish off using the cool shot button it will help eliminate frizz and flyaways, it has a cool shot button you need to hold and press, for a shot of cold air when you need it, this is used by many professionals when drying hair, and finally it has a diffuser for use with curly/wavy hair. She lives in Holland but I understand that they are available in Australia. HTH!

Hm, ok maybe I could try mousse…
I only blow dry because otherwise I”ll be leaving the house with wet hair and it’s been so cold lately! I haven’t noticed my hair behaved any differently when I didn’t blow dry though. It’s hard with my hair and oils, it doesn’t like a lot of oils like coconut oil and often times a touch of oil will make no difference then I’ll try to add a little more and all of a sudden my hair is oily.
And in the photo I think my hair was actually being pretty good, sometimes the curls stick up much more! I just dislike how it’s so noticeable how a section on either side of my face is much more curlier near the top than anywhere else, reminds me of ears sometimes…

Try going without the dryer for a bit. My curls go frizzy and awful with a dryer. Instead of gel, maybe an oil? Your hair looked so lovely in the photo and not like it needed much taming so an oil might just accentuate the curls without them misbehaving. Ive found Schwarzkopf 10 Carat Shine Gloss Wax is awesome too but might be a bit heavier than you’d like.

You could try “hand-scrunching” mousse into your hair while it’s drying. You retain the natural curliness while having a bit of control over the problem areas. My best friend still does this every time she cuts her hair short to keep it healthy and it’s worked for her so far. 🙂