Curly Girl Hair

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UPDATE: I am seriously re-thinking how this post should be done, and have changed the middle part of it, adding a paragraph and some photos. I really see an entire project in this topic coming about, and so … you will see future changes to this post, and maybe who knows what! It’s own section on my site, or re-tooling some things here so that WP shows this category on it’s own, not intertwining it with everything else en-total. Hard to explain, but I see it as a photo enhanced story of my life with my hair (how vain that sounds!) I mean it to be documentation of the evolution of my hair, and a journal of future happenings. I like hair. And it’s something most people have. I know it’s an important topic to address for so many women have struggles growing hair out, and dealing with curly hair. Combine the two … 🙂 For curly haired people, life is different, everything is so connected to one’s hair. That’s true, whether or not one is a follower of Christ. Our bodies affect life directly 😉

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I have curly hair. I am a curly girl. I have long hair. I want longer hair. I want longer curlier hair. Tough job.

I didn’t always have curly hair. When I was small it wasn’t curly. But when you know the difference between straight hair and curly hair, you can use hindsight to see the truth. I didn’t have straight hair as a child.

I had some waves in my hair. By the time I was in my early teens I had curly hair. I fought it, like so many other women before me and after me have. (meaning older: generations and younger generations).

A couple of years ago my sister recommended I get the book Curly Girl. I did. It changed the way I look at my hair, and treat my hair. It wasn’t all new news, but a good driver to do something different and so it was nice to see that my experients and findings were right, with new news of HOW to do part of it, how to put it all together right. I haven’t been exactly faithful to that though. I am re-dedicated to the practice of good hair, no bad hair days. I started in this rededication earlier this year, but was sidelined when I lost babyfour on March 30th. Shari, on an email list I’m on, asked me about conditioner, and if I was still washing my hair like I had talked about on the list about 2 years ago. Thanks to her, I dug out my book and today my hair is nicer than it was yesterday. Ever since I started, I have not used shampoo though, it’s been over 2 years. I have put my hair in too many ponytails this last year though. Not ENOUGH conditioner treatments either.

Yummy recipe:

4 Tablespoons olive or almond oil [I use the good stuff: Cold Pressed Virgin, the dark green stuff]
4 Tablespoons of your favorite conditioner (I used Pantene)
2-3 drops Essential oil like musk or another (I use Lavender)

Mix that up in a bowl and it’s a wonderful treat for dry curls, curls always need something every once in awhile.

I put this on my hair, all of it, and wound my hair up and tied it with a bandana. Overnight it worked, and in the morning a warm shower and conditioner wash had my hair happy.

Not enough for my hair though. I put more conditioner on it, then later when it was half=dry, I put more on my hair. And later when it was all dry I put more on my hair. Yes, my hair is drinking it all up.

I had been in a bad way, too many ponytails. My hair is long, but part of it is short than that other part, so I have a war of curls. The shorter stuff puffs up and makes the longer stuff go blah … ah, but last nights treatment has improved that! I see grandiose hair again, and feel fine with leaving it down.

I had left it down the last week at home. We’d been sick so homebound with summer-like colds. My hair took a liking to that, and I to it, and I gave it drink most days. It was really wishing for me to give it a great oil treatment, so let me just say, the smell of that concoction is out of this world. Pantene and Olive Oil and 3 drops of Lavender essential oil. whoooo hoooo yummy. beats any junk I have every spent too much money on at Sally’s Beauty Supply, let me tell you!

The book Curly Girl has more recipes than that. Actually the directions for that recipe say to put it on your hair when your hair is wet. I didn’t. Also then, to rinse it out with conditioner/lemon juice/vinegar mixture. I just used warm water and conditioner. I like to be flexible in many things, this is one of them, now to use a concoction. My hair could use that stuff permanently placed, well for the short time.

I have very thirsty curls, and they have much life to give back to me. I’m coaxing them out and seeing them already is a nice thing. What are mine called? What Curly Girl calls Botticelli Curls. Different sizes of curls that fall down softly, like Botticelli angels … 🙂

I did all kinds of things to my hair in my youth. I had weird hair and couldn’t do with it what I wanted, what everyone else was doing to their hair. I have many hundreds of bad hair days. Many bad hair years. I have straitened my hair chemically twice. I have used high heat blow driers and big round brushes to make my hair shiny, straight, and my bangs turn under nicely (my bangs were the only thing that wanted to work most of the time, though I had to hair spray them to death, and that wasn’t a for sure death, let me tell you.)

I was in my mid teens when I came to grips with that fact that I had curly hair and wanted it to be curly. I went to school with wet hair so that it’d look curly part of the day. The other part of the day it was poofed out and horrid. But that was better than the blow dried hair that crimped up in horizontal lines by afternoon.

In the early-mid 80’s I discovered hair gel. Live had promise! I liked my hair. I got it cut short with longer stuff on top to curl up, and basically, if you saw the movie Against All Odds, back then, that was the hair style. I could blow dry it or let it go natural, with gel of course.

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Me and Russell in 1997

The photo above shows my hair as it was growing out from my last short butched cut. I was frustrated with how ‘not getting pregnant’ was going, so I got it cut, andwould’t you know, I got pregnant the next month. So I started growing it out right away. (It’s funny to consider it, I’ve had such compliments on my hair at different lengths, especially the cuts above my shoulders, but inside my ID has always had long hair, I mean, that’s the REAL ME.) See how it was less than two years later? It was cut in July 1995, the photo above is Feb 1997.

You can almost see the halo around my head in another picture, two more to follow. That was a travel deal, we were in the Smokies (Nat. Park) and my hair was alright, but I didn’t have defined curls of a botticelli nature, just big. I wasn’t seeking to have those long curls at this point, though I had when I was younger. February in the Smokies is heaven, low humidity cool. A curly girl’s dream place. I do have lots of pictures from 1994 that I could show my FAVORITE hair pictures. (Alas, but not online to snag right now) Hair with the right gel, back then, was dependant on the rigth weather, entirely.

I’ve always liked the first two photos, and have liked the third photo minus my hair. I tell yoo, once you start analyzing feelings through the “hair filter” you do realize, if you have curly hair, how much it affects all of life. I knew that before, but doing a show and tell of it is another thing entirley! 🙂

another view of me and Russell

Here it is, see the flyaway light curls, they need moisture to pump up nicely.

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But I have a love affair with long hair. Up and down I’ve been with short and growing out and longish. I never got it much below my shoulders though, just most of it below to some degree. Not until this last year. It’s getting longer and longer finally. This is why, I am sure: it’s because I want it to, and I don’t use shampoo at all, and I don’t blow it dry. I haven’t used gel in over a year either. Just me and my Pantene (it’s just what I have, best choice at Costco). I also trim my hair myself. No more chopping it off at ANY length. It’s piece by piece, curl by curl. I got rid of about an inch and a half to two inches earlier this year, just the very back is the longest, now right above my waist. All my hair is below my shoulders, I mean the bulk of it, not every individual strand.

I can’t recall when I did, but at some point ago I grew out my bangs, and I had a fringe of bangs to keep then, for it was new growth after my last baby was born (Asa). It was weird, but looked nice. I developed that into nice bangs, then one day made a huge decision, I wasn’t going to trim them anymore, I was going to grow them out and say good-bye to bangs forever. Big deal for me, a bangs girl all my life!

So for over a year I have had no bangs and they grew fairly fast so that I could put them back into a high ponytail, then low and lower, and now it doesn’t affect anything, they are long, I mean, not bangs at all. Just part of my whole head of hair.

That whole head of thick hair. Thick, yup, an optical illusion 🙂 To put it mildly, “Welcome to the Grand Illusion …”

Curly hair looks thick, but it’s just pumped full of volume. Depending on the weather it’s bigger or smaller, more or less frizzy. Treating curly hair right makes it so much nicer to have a natural barometer. Bad hair? Not when you condition it nice and well!

Do you have curly hair? Do you wash it with shampoo? How often? If you have curly hair which you let stay curly it doesn’t usually look it’s best right after shampoo and all the gook added back onto it, does it? I remember how it was, day two or three it improved. I learned through experience long ago that once a week, or further apart, shampooing was good enough for me. I’ve learned since then that never shampooing is BEST for me! I haven’t shampooed my hair in over two years.

I wash it, with conditioner. That’s it. No big anything.

Think of wool. Curly hair is weird like that, needs gentle treatment and oils and good stuff to stay nice. I used wool diaper covers on my last baby. I know what they can take and what they can’t take.

Wool covers didn’t need washed except for if poop got on them. Then they were washed in the sink in cool/warm water and a wool wash — NOT WOOL-LITE!! That’s stuff is bad! The stuff is Euclid or something like that, with Eucalyptus oil in it. Then the covers were pressed in a towel to get excess water out of them, and waited around to dry. The wash stuff wasn’t taken out of the wool, left in.

How like hair on a curly head that is, for good treatment. Similar, not totally. But here is the kicker. A wool soaker (diaper cover) is meant to absorb water and not leak, doesn’t smell when dry no matter how much baby pee it’s got, and has a wooly smell if wet.

Curly hair that is pumped up rightly with conditioner-only kind of washing and care doesn’t absorb smells. Doesn’t stink, doesn’t go POOF to clown proportions in high humidity. If you have the right things in your hair, it’ll be naturally curly, and retaining good moisture, it’ll be reactive to weather, but not at such high levels. A bad day with hair is less likely, and most often a good attitude will prevail, and hair won’t sideline you.

Does hair really affect people that much, badly on bad hair days? I’ve felt it often enough in my life. I’ve read multitudes of curly head women who have similar stories. Everyone has had about “I’m having a bad hair day”. Straight hair people don’t have those kinds of days. Only curly girls. Often it’s a wavy haired version that has bad hair days too, for they don’t know they really have curly hair. If you hair every poofed up from weather, you’re a curly head. Let it out. Treat it right.

If you have corkscrew curls, the tighter curls, you need to do this stuff too. I’m midway, with Botticelli curls. I like my curls. I really, really do. How about you?! 🙂