Home › Lifestyle › Lifestyle
Seventeen names local girl among 'best tressed'
Maheswaran
STORY TOOLS 
More from LifestyleWestlake High School junior Shamira Maheswaran has her mom to thank for getting her into the pages of Seventeen magazine.
Shamira, 17, is featured in "Best-Tressed Girls in America," a June-issue story in which girls from around the country share their hair-care tips and tricks. In Shamira's case, the tip "Put a tiny bit of olive oil on your hair when it's wet, and leave it in for shine" came directly from her mom, Kamathy.
Just a dab really does do the trick, said Shamira, speaking by phone from the Westlake Village home she also shares with sister Karishma, 14, and brother Tahj, 5.
She puts a little oil in her hands, rubs them together and then runs her fingers through her hair, she said. "Drugstores have olive oil hair lotions and things, but the olive oil you use in cooking works, too," she added.
In the magazine, a picture of Shamira is accompanied by text in which she describes "thick waves" as her hair's best quality and "towel-drying" as her biggest mistake because it made her hair "huge." The picture was taken a couple of months ago by a Seventeen photographer who posed her in the Westlake High School parking lot.
"I think they wanted some scenery, with the hills in the background," said Shamira, who after graduation would like to attend art school and perhaps go into graphic design as a career. (By the time the photo showed up on page 56 of the issue with singer Fergie on the cover, however, most of the greenery had been cropped out of the shot.)
The magazine's editors discovered Shamira when she sent in a picture in response to a nonhair-related contest announced on the publication's Web site, http:// www.seventeen.com.
She and another California girl Taylr Kreutziger, 15, of Villa Park were two of 17 readers selected from a field of more than 5,000 for the best-tressed story.
"I forgot all about it until they called," Shamira said with a laugh. "It seemed kind of random but very, very cool."
Lisa McKinnon
(Requires free registration.)
Article discussions on this site are to support community debates of issues related to our stories and editorials.
Discussions should not stray from the subject of the story or editorial.
We do not allow the following:
We reserve the right to delete threads and/or ban users for these or other reasons we deem necessary.
Opinions are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.