Here comes another girl with her take on curly hair. I feel like curly girl method videos are the only thing that are being reccommended to me on YouTube these days and I'm not gonna lie I watch each and everyone of them. I just find it so interesting to see how different women take care of and embrace their individual hair texture. Because the beautiful (but sometimes frustrating) thing with curls is that no curly head is like the other. Each person has different textured hair and individual techniques to achieve their best results, so there is no 'one fits all' approach. You just have to find out what works for you and what doesn't.
I didn't even really know about the curly girl method until maybe two years ago but I had used many of the tried and tested techniques anyway. Either because I had worked them out for myself or I had learned them from my Mum, who has curly hair as well. So the sight of a diffuser and someone scrunching their hair with their head upside down, wasn't really something new to me, as I grew up with it.
My curly hair journey
Even though my Mum always wore her hair curly when I was growing up and I loved how it looked on her, I didn't really have the same appreciation for my own curls. Being a straight haired child up until the age of 13 I didn't exactly love it when my hair started to get frizzy and textured seemingly over night. Especially since all my friends at the time had stick straight hair and 13 isn't really the age you want to stick out of your peer group. So I started straightening my hair from the age of 14 to the age of 20. Fortunately I didn't need to straighten my hair everyday for it to stay straight, which is probably why I did get away with a lot less heat damage than most people who do this. I would love to say that I just woke up one day and had an epiphany about embracing my natural hair but unfortunately that wasn't the case. I was more or less forced to wear my hair curly when my hair started massively falling out about four years ago. The first doctor I went to did some testing (incorrectly as it later would turn out) and told me that I had genetic alopecia and that I would most likely lose most of my hair. You can imagine that that was a devestating diagnosis to receive and that the following months were some of the darkest of my life. Of course I wanted to preserve my hair and didn't want to cause any more breakage or hair loss, so I stopped straightening it cold turkey. Six months later I searched a second opinion from another doctor who then did the testing correctly and finally gave me the relieving diagnosis that I simpy had a vitamin imbalance, which was causing my hair to fall out. At this point I unfortunately had lost a lot of hair irreversibly which is why I never quite got back the amount of volume in my hair that I once had. Anyhow, through this grueling process I started to accept and love my natural hair. Because if losing bushels of hair for months teaches you one thing it's that you are lucky to have hair at all. In whatever shape or form. But that doesn't mean that you can't help your hair looking its best with every curly girl trick in the box.
My hair type
As mentioned above I don't really have a lot, a lot of hair so volume doesn't come naturally to me and I have to work for it a bit. On top of that my hair is pretty fine, which means that it oftentimes has trouble holding my curls for long timeand needs a lot of additional hold. If your hair is fine or not is determined by the thickness of your individual hairs. So if you don't know if you have fine or thick hair just take a few hairs in your hand and see how it feels. Porosity is whole other thing that most people don't know about. Porosity is your hairs ability to soak and lock up moisture. If you have high porosity hair you most likely have very dry hair that soaks up every hair mask in no time. If you have low porosity hair like me, your hair needs more protein than moisture and hair masks will just sit on top of it. Moisture has a hard time getting into your hair but once its in, it will stay there. So people with low porosity hair are considered to be the ones with the healthiest and shiniest hair. But it also means that super hydrating hair products (which most curly hair products are) tend to weigh down your hair and as a result make you lose definition and volume. You can test your hair porosity by taking a few clean hairs out of your brush or comb and putting them in a glass of water. If they sink to the ground they are high porosity, if they float on top they are low porosity. As for my curl type I would say that my curls range from 2B waves to 3A curls. If you don't know what your curl type is, there are many graphics online that show you how each curl type looks like. Starting your curly hair journey always starts with finding out what type of hair you have and what it needs.
My personal curly girl method
As mentioned before everyone has different hair and techniques that work for them but if you have hair similar to mine, maybe you can benefit from some of my tips below.
Products
I'm now gonna make myself unpopular right at the beginning. The curly girl method states that you can only use sulfate and parabene free products on curly hair because these ingredients strip your hair of its natural oils and moisture. Well, I don't know what to tell you but I never had that effect. That's probably because I have fine/low porosity hair so I don't need extra hydration as it weighs my hair down anyway. But also try and find sulfate and parabene free shampoo and conditioner in Germany that don't cost exorbitant amounts of money and that you don't have to order from across the globe. It's really disheartening sometimes that brands in Europe don't cater to curly hair as they do in the US. There are basically no curly hair products in German drug and department stores let alone CGM approved ones. So I use the John Frieda curl shampoo, the John Frieda Volume conditioner and the Pantene Curl Mousse. Those have been working well for me so far but I would be totally open to trying other products if there ever will be some hitting the EU market.
Shower routine
In the shower I mostly stick to the reccommended routine. I wash my roots with shampoo, leaving out the ends and tips of my hair and then condition the lenghts and ends of my hair leaving out the roots. When I rinse out my conditoner I use a wide toothed comb to get rid of any knots under the running water. I then flip my hair over and rinse my hair again but this time with really cold water. This closes the pores in your hair and helps to lock moisture and shine in. I then wring out my hair with a squishy upwards motion only a little bit and get out of the shower. Out of the shower I grab a cotton t-shirt and proceed to dry my hair a bit more by scrunching it upwards, with my head upside down. Don't use towels! They are the end of definiton and the start of a frizzy mess.
Styling
I only dry my hair so far that I don't slip in a puddle on the bathroom floor but it still needs to be pretty wet when I apply my mousse. I use mousse firstly, because again, there aren't really any gels in Germany and secondly because I find it gives the best hold and that's what my curls need the most. So I proceed, with my head still upside down, to scrunch the mousse into my hair, concentrating most of the product into my lenghts and ends as this is where I tend to lose definition first. Then follows my most hated part: blow drying. Unfortunately I haven't found a technqiue that allows me to let my hair air dry and receive the same results as I do with diffusing because believe me I would love to save that time for other things. Anyway, with my head still upside down, I place indivdual curl strands on the diffuser und scrunch them up to my scalp, where I leave them for a bit to dry. Don't constanly move the diffuser up and down as this creates frizz. I use my blow dryer on the lowest heat setting, which is good for the hair but bad for time management. I can only imagine how long it takes girls with thick hair to dry their hair. It takes me up to 25 minutes to get it dry. I then flip my hair over and scrunch out the (gel)cast, which gets rid of the crunchiness. I only ever wash my hair in the evenings so the next step would be for me to go to sleep. Either with a loose pineapple and a scrunchie on my head or most of the time with my hair strategically placed on the pillow (this only works though because I hardly move while I sleep. If you're a very active sleeper I would reccommend the scrunchie method instead). In the morning I fluff up my hair from underneath and use an afro pick to create a little bit more volume. For additonal hold a finely misted hair spray is my best friend.
Restyling
I get away 3-5 days without washing my hair, so restyling is crucial. On days 1-3 fluffing my hair up in the mornings will suffice. If I loose definition in individual strands of hair I use a restyling mist like this one or the Ouai Rose Hair & Body Oil and diffuse it dry on the lowest heat setting. On day 4-5 I usually put my hair up in a ponytail, space buns, a low bun or a half up, half down hairstyles before washing it again.
Extra Tips
1. If you start losing definition permanently a trim will do wonders.
2. When heat styling you hair use heat protectant! The more you straighten and heat damage your hair, the more you will loose definition.
I hope these tips can help you find your perfect curl routine. Don't be afraid to make it your own and individualizing and improvising it. Not all CGM rules work for me and so won't all of my tips for another person and their hair but that you will have to find out for yourself. Good luck!
xx Laura
No comments:
Post a Comment