If you dealt with my hair, you'd understand that it's extremely difficult to 1) style, 2) keep still. Yeah, you can gel it but that means I'd have to gel it every day, which means I'd have to shampoo it every day, which means I'd be making my hair unhealthier. My hair is beyond stubborn. You can apply heat all day long and it will not go in any different direction. My instructor styled it one day and by lunch it was back to normal. She used so much hairspray and gel you could smell it from across the room. My former roommate used to say I had "Japanese hair". He managed to put curls in it by putting a glob of gel AND breaking the hydrogen bonds, but 6 hours later it was relaxing... Not only that, but he learned that you have to roll it the OPPOSITE way in which you want to curl it. It's a bitch, straight up lol. Thank God my hair is bone straight. I'd need a relaxer to keep straight hair otherwise.
To give you an idea of how the cuticle is, it literally feels like glass.
