Curly or Straight?

Here's the deal. My hair is naturally curly. I know some of you may be surprised by that. Cuz you've only seen it straight. I love the straight look. But it's work to get it that way. A lot. My hair is very thick so to get it straight means using special products, blow drying out the curl, and then using a hot iron to flatten it. Very high maintenance and it's time consuming. Here's what it looks like straight. Not a flattering pic of us but it's a good hair shot to illustrate my point. (Yes, that's my homegirl, Melissa, that I so affectionately have my arm around. Even though she trashed me on her blog today. LOL! And there's Alison, too.)

Well, I've been doing this routine for the last four years. The last time I went to the hairdresser she held up a very short patch of hair near my part. She said "What happened here?" Of course, I had no idea. She informed me that I was frying my hair off with the hot iron. Uhhh.... that can't be good. Didn't mean to do that. So I'm trying out a new look. I decided maybe I need to work with what I have and stop fighting it. I'm giving the hair a break from the hot iron/blow dryer for awhile and trying to work with my natural curl. Check it out. I felt like I needed to be holding a number up in front of me when Connie took this pic. LOL!

Here's a close up. It doesn't photograph as well as it looks in real life. The weird thing is that it grows from the root straight. Then starts to get wavy. Then the longest part at the ends is curly.
A view from the back too. Look how curly the long part is. Just weird. The good news is that this is really easy to do. Just wash and let air dry. Scrunch it up a little, spray it and go. I think wearing it like this will give it some time to repair itself. But I may still pull out the hot iron on occasion. I wore it to work like this most of the week. It's a lot easier to deal with curly that's for sure. It can get windblown and still look great. The humidity no longer matters cuz it just makes it curlier.
I took a poll. Ninety percent voted for curly. The other ten percent said they like it both ways. No one voted for only straight all the time. WTF?! Funny though... ALL the men voted curly. Think that's some wild sexual fantasy or something? With straight hair I appear more conservative and reserved? But with the curly tousled look I'm so much more sexy and provocative? Hmmm......works for me! But seriously...what do you guys think? Give me your honest opinions. Even if it's bad. I can take it.
Curly or straight?