Packaging, by all accounts, shouldn't matter—books by their covers, and all that—but there are exceptions to the rule (Tatcha's Gentle Rice Enzyme Polishing Powder, for example, comes in an elegant jar with a salt-box style dispenser, so that the product never gets wet inside the jar: brilliant). Plus, hairspray is hairspray, so the color and sheen and heft of the bottle shouldn't matter, right? But on the shelf and in the cart and in our hand, well, Bed Head/ TIGI's Superstar Queen For A Day just did not appeal. The bottle is large and unwieldy and sort of slopes in at the top like a linebacker’s neck with no shoulders, and it's a particular shade of pink-tinged violet likely popular among Demi Lovato's fan base. And fair enough, the bottle warns “YOU MUST HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR TO USE OUR PRODUCTS,” (we do, we swear we do!) so maybe it’s a sort of self-fulfilling branding prophecy thing… And yet?

Maybe we want to “Feel like a queen, look like a Superstar [Registered Trademark Sign]!!” too!

Rising hairstyling star James Pecis told us it was one of his hero products for getting body at the crown of the head, pre-killer braids. His word means a lot. We decided to try it out, and sprayed a good cloud of it into towel-dried roots (thankfully it smelled less tween-bait-y than it looked, though there is a definite fruity fragrance), before blow-drying and doing our usual styling thing. And? A significant, immediate increase in both body and fullness, with no sticky, product-heavy results—which, we suppose, is both quasi-regal (here's to looking at you, ‘Waity Katie’) and appealing to “superstars,” and we’ve got to say, it’s nice to get a lift some days. File this under: Use Often (and maybe store inside your bathroom cabinet).

Photos by Elizabeth Brockway.