Today let’s have an open thread for women with curly hair — what are your best tips, resources, techniques, and HG products? Where did you start your curly hair journey, and how long has it taken you to find the right blend of products, cuts, and techniques for your hair? In the past we’ve talked about how to care for curly hair in winter, answered a reader question on whether curly hair is professional enough for interviews, and had guest poster Afrobella opine on natural and kinky hair in the corporate environment — but it’s been a while since we had a general open thread for curly girls on what their routines and tips are.
For my $.02: You know how you may be drawn to an idea every few years and think, HEY, I haven’t tried that beauty thing in a while, let’s do that. Maybe it’s bangs — or going blonde* — or getting a pixie. For me it’s going down the rabbithole into the huge advice world that exists for women who have curly hair.
I’ve been here before, idly curious about trying to maximize my 2c/3A hair. (It was probably more like 2A in my law school days; it’s gotten curlier after the babies came and as I age.) This is the way my process usually works:
- I start going down the rabbithole and immediately get overwhelmed by all the science-y terms (no cones! no poo! maybe your hair needs protein! what’s your porosity level?)
- I buy far, far too many products from the drugstore on up — gels! mousses! curl activators! serums! dry shampoos! second-day activators! air dry cremes! — and put away half of the products I love because they’re not curly-girl approved. (For example, I just spent a ton of money on huge bottles of my beloved Alterna Caviar haircare and, according to Curlsbot, neither the shampoo nor the conditioner are curly friendly. Le sigh.)
- and then, after several months of yucky looking hair and a ton of back-of-my-head selfies, I give up and retreat to my usual routine of washing my hair with whatever I want to, not putting stuff in it, and generally either keeping it up or getting a blow out if I really care about it.
{related: easy office updos (I still like the inverted bun a lot, and the Gibson is a classic!)}
I’m at the overwhelm stage this time and pondering whether I really want to go down the rabbithole again. I have two big problems that make me feel like this is going to be of limited satisfaction to me in general:
1) I don’t want to get a curly cut, because I still like my blowouts.
2) I have a very, very straight underlayer — I’m not sure it even hits the 2s as far as degrees go.
The top 5 layers or so of my hair (maybe? I have a lot of hair) is very wavy, maybe even 3A, and that bottom layer… not so much. I’ve just heard of the “smasters” method (of applying a second round of products halfway through your hair’s drying process) which, hey, maybe. And maybe I should buy a few curl activators and check it out! And a different gel! And hmmn, some people like the mousses, so maybe I should buy those… or maybe my hair needs protein!
You see how this quickly becomes A Project with lots of time and money… but then again, maybe it’ll be worth it since so many curly girls have such beautiful hair at the end of it! (Ah yes, and problem #3: I really hate putting a ton of stuff in my hair. A handful of gel is really not appealing to me…)
SO — ladies — what are your thoughts on curly hair? If you wear your hair naturally curly, please share your routines and favorite products with us! Do you prefer Reddit, Facebook groups, or random Pinterest/Googling to figure out what you need? What are your best tips? For those of you who are fighting (or, at least, not indulging) your curly hair, what products do you use, and how do you do your hair on a regular basis? If you’ve been through a “transition” period where you need to cut/grow out hair that’s been through heat/chemical styling, what are your best tips for still looking polished at work through that transition?
Stock photo via Deposit Photos / Guzel.
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