The Latest Updo Trend Doubles As A Hack For Healthier Hair

If you were frequently seized by the daredevil gene as a child, you can probably look back on an array of activities that you would rethink as an adult. Today, you might wear a helmet, knee pads, and elbow pads as you tear through the neighborhood on your bicycle or skates. And you might insist that your teammates wear glow-in-the-dark safety vests for a late-night session of flashlight tag.

As it turns out, one of the most daring things you could have done was pull back your hair in a tight ponytail, braids, or bun. The thought may not have even crossed your conscious thoughts as a kid, but the practice can lead to hair loss, which is technically known as alopecia. Traction alopecia ramps up the stakes; it's caused by pulling on hair repeatedly. It sounds like it hurts because it does, potentially triggering redness, bumps, and the itchiest regions of the scalp you can imagine.

Now, the latest updo making its presence known on TikTok solves all problems and might even appease the daredevil in you, too.

Whether you're releasing your inner child with a tight ponytail, braids, or bun, this is one trend that pays a bonus of engendering healthy hair. No one would blame you for being skeptical if you're accustomed to seeing errant strands of hair circling your head after you loosen a ponytail or bun. But this is not your mother's updo. Shape calls it the "Olaplex bun," after the company's No. 3 Hair Repair Perfector and the No. 6 Bond Smoother, which are essentially bonding agents.

The slicked-back style is also being called "the treatment bun," a more generic reference to a spray-on, leave-in treatment designed to deep-condition the hair, as demonstrated by @kelseygriffinn on TikTok. Eventually, the treatment must be washed out to expose healthier, stronger, shinier hair. But in the meantime, it's worth keeping another huge benefit of this updo top of mind: it does a masterful job of keeping your shampoo schedule a secret. In other words, who will know if you started your day with somewhat oily hair? This is one updo that looks highly deliberate and very polished.

If you were known for leaving puddles of water on the bathroom counter after styling your hair as a child, your updo routine should come back to you in no time. Dampening your hair with a treatment mist will make gathering up your hair easier, Evoke says. It might also cause you to use less of the treatment mask (or Olaplex product).

It may help to remember that there's more than one way to form an updo. Your strategy might depend on how much hair you have or if it's layered. For example, if you have a lot of hair, it may be easier to divide it into two sections, probably top and bottom but possibly side by side if you have heavy layers. Securing your hair with two (rather than one) holders won't make much difference because this is a style that's front-facing (meaning, dominant from the front). However, feel free to use bobby pins to secure any loose or uneven hair on the sides, per Shape.

Remember that you can finesse the look (and infuse your hair with even more healthy conditioning) by applying more treatment directly to errant hair. The point is to produce a look that is decidedly sleek, chic, and grown-up, unlike those devil-may-care days of childhood.