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These days, everybody and their golden retriever has a Revlon blow dryer brush—the cult-classic drugstore hair dryer that makes it possible to give yourself a convincing blowout at home without attending a 1,600-hour cosmetology program. It’s an Amazon #1 beauty bestseller, it’s enjoyed both a Today Show segment and viral TikTok status, and its price rarely goes above $60. 

But long before the Revlon renaissance of the past two years, the One-Step Hair Dryer became a logical extension of my right arm. Like Sweeney Todd, but with Lana Del Rey hair (or so I whisper to myself over the sound of my blow-dry brush).

My hair is fine and curly. Whether air-dried or maintained through a 13-step process, it looks like a quintessential “before” makeover photo. In the ’80s, it would have been considered “good hair.” Instead, the last 20 years of my life have been mainly devoted to crushing my hair between two sizzling plates of ceramic and simply burning it into a straight line. Tragically, this is bad for your hair.

Prior to discovering Revlon’s blow dry brush, when I tried to give myself a blowout using a normal blow dryer, I looked like Miss Piggy falling out of a taxi. It is an activity for a professional athlete, not a regular person. It did not matter how many beautiful YouTubers patiently directed me to “separate your hair into small sections and use a boar bristle brush.” Anti-gravity hair chunks would simply climb into the sky around my head, as I maimed myself with a giant round brush and blasted burning air in my face.

My hair and I tried for a new start in college. The summer before my first year, I stalked my assigned roommate on Facebook before orientation week, gasping at her perfect, glossy, honey-blonde hair that fell around her shoulders like a master’s fingers falling onto a piano. I imagined sleeping four feet away from The Most Popular Girl In High School for the first year of my adult life, while playing with my hair, which on my wedding day will not look as good as hers.

But defying all logic and reason, my roommate was nice. And she introduced me to one of her hair secrets: the Revlon One-Step.

She showed me, patiently, how to wait until your hair is mostly dry—so it saves time and minimizes damage—to wrap sections around the brush and gently pull it through. Even though her hair air-dried like a model’s, she used the One-Step sometimes when she was in a rush. And she let me use it whenever I wanted to, which turned out to be every time I washed my hair.

My close partnership with the Revlon blow dryer brush has continued, uninterrupted, since that year. It does not require the free-flowing artistry and bicep strength of a regular hair dryer-round brush blowout combo, but it produces the closest thing I am ever going to get to an at-home blow-out. 

I twist the hair in the front of my head to add face-framing waves. Or I turn my hair upside down and brush it through the roots, to make it look giant. Sometimes I’m in a rush and I sort of violence the brush through my hair, slamming it against my scalp. When I have time, I blow it straight-ish and touch it up with a hair straightener. I spray dry shampoo at the roots and suddenly my hair is the size of a boombox, and I am in charge of the entire state of Texas.