my hair story: the kinks, the coils and relaxers!

my hair is kinky and curly.

it’s hair that has been called: bad, nappy, good, curly, kinky, and a variety of things in between.

i simply call it my hair.

my hair is also colored. i had it colored at an aveda concept salon in feb 09. the colors are copper, blonde and chocolate brown; the chocolate is in the back, while the front is more copper with blonde highlights.

my regimen is very simple {i’m a keep it simple (and fast!) kinda gal}:

1. co-wash once a week; sometimes twice a week, or even sometimes every other week – depending on workout schedule
2. use either carefree gold, glycerin, hawaiian 14-in-1 and or a combo to seal in moisture.
3. top off with olive oil or coconut oil
4. add a touch of gel for frizzies (optional)
5. twist and sleep or fluff and go
6. clarify once a month with acv (apple cider vinegar)

that’s it. sometimes it changes, but more often than not, it does not.

i like to try a lot of products though (so sometimes #2 and #4 change up), a different condish here and there, gels, etc., so i’ll be doing plenty of reviews.

my hair back story

like most little black girls, i was natural up until my teens. it was actually the year i was to turn 13 (so i was 12) that i got my first relaxer.

i remember the first time like yesterday. it’s so vivid; my kinky hair being plastered with relaxer and the almost immediate FIRE that came off of my head. when i was done, i had semi bouncy (because the grease was counteracting the swang), little past collar bone length hair, that by the next day, was glued to my scalp in some spots in the form of chemical burns. my hair would NEVER grow past that length while i was relaxed.

in the interim between being born natural and then being relaxed, i also wore my share of weaves. you can read my amusing weave story here.

i remained relaxed until my junior year of college and in my senior year, decided that i’d had enough of relaxers. i realized that i was only relaxing because it’d been this rite of passage at a point in my life – as we all know, most little black girls back in the 80’s had relaxers! it was not that i hated relaxer, it was just that i wanted to go back to my natural hair to understand why my parents felt the need to relax my hair, and why i had felt the need to continue that process.

so i stopped relaxing and began the grow out process. i wore a sew in weave from 2003-2004 and big chopped in late 2004. boy! what a shocker to see myself like that! i quickly weaved my hair back up, the same day as my big chop, and decided to grow it out a bit more because i didn’t think i could pull off the short cut (which stretched, was about chin length). looking back, i probably could have rocked the style, but having not seen myself in a natural state for most of my life was a really big step.

in 2005, my hair had gained tons of length and i wore my hair out constantly. it was a healthy and beautiful, a little past collar bone length, bob – again. i was back to where i’d started when i got my first relaxer. but this where my hair started to suffer. i was pressing my hair to keep my bob looking pristine. in addition, i had not chosen the best cleansing and conditioning products for my hair, therefore, by late 2005 it began to snap from being so dry and so fried.

my hair is very strong and resillient, so whenever i have damage, unless it’s super severe, it’s never immediately apparent. it took almost a year for me to see the damage.

by that time i knew i had to do something, i just didn’t know what. i had begun to start reading all that i could about healthy hair care and how to keep your natural hair thriving.

from late 2005 to the summer of 2006, i was still pressing (at that point i still felt like that was my only option – but just to cut down on it some) and just wearing my hair in a ponytail, sometimes with a phony pony in between twistouts. when summer of 2006 rolled around, i had begun to wear lace wigs as a protective style.

my healthy hair story

i started really growing my hair seriously in august of 2007. before then, i was “growing” it on the sole basis of being natural (aka, i’m natural so it’s just gonna grow! i mean, not having a perm is the answer to growth, right?!). boy, i had setbacks galore – breakage, heat damage, dryness, etc. did you read my back story?

so remember i mentioned how i used to press my hair so much? well, i didn’t tell you HOW i did it. i used to press my hair with an electric straightening comb and THEN go over it AGAIN with my sedu. *shudders* at this thought now, because even though it’s a lot of heat, and my hair is strong enough to bare it every few months (my hair is very resilliant!), i was sometimes pressing every other day during a heavy exercise week. on average they were light presses – but they were still 400 DEGREE heat!

why did i press so much, you ask? since i sweat in my scalp easily, sometimes i’d sweat out my press and have to press my roots in the mornings before work. i really can’t even believe i didn’t slap myself for such foolishness! but you live and you learn, eh?

and i did this off and on from late 2005 to 2006!!!! my goodness! it’s not wonder i was not bald!

to make matters worse, in 2005, my beautician who knew absolutely NOTHING about proper natural hair care, and who also kept the heat as high as possible, burned out a chunk of my hair in the back of my head that took about a year to finally break off. the heat had damaged my hair from the inside out, as it often does, so the heat damage, as in lots of cases where lack of reversion is absent, was not immediately apparent.

after all of that, i was tried of not enjoying my hair. i wanted to enjoy my hair and have a head full of curls when i wanted to and to wear it straight when i wanted to — all of this existing in a healthy hair routine.

to get a leg up on the damage and a just an overall new start, i hid and protective styled my hair and really kicked up my moisture and hair care routine with a lace wig from around august of 2007 to november 2008 – 15 months. every other day, i moisturized my cornrows and babied my ends. by this time, my hair care and growth plan was not a game. i was like a general commanding my soldiers! lets grow! lets grow! lets grow! be healthy! be strong! be moisturized!

my plan was to protective style until the end of 2008, however, i grew tired of the wig before 2008 was over. once i took the wig off and blowdried my hair – but didn’t straighten it fully and avoided my ends, these were my protective style results. i still had to baby my ends a bit more since they were a bit dry, but i’d made great progress.

my texture

as i mentioned before, my hair is kinky, curly. you can see this clearly from the pic. my hair is 100% natural and only has aveda hair color.

hair facts:

my hair frizzes and shrinks with ease. my hair shrinks up to 25% of it’s true length, which, as of october 2009, reached my armpits.

most people would assume i have “short” hair when they see my hair in it’s natural state.

my hair can have a very coarse look to it when not defined. however, my hair is very soft, like cotton, and i can have an afro or curls. if not moisturized properly, it will dry up and snap very easily. also it can become tangled and matted if not properly cared for.

my kitchen is mostly 4b. if not careful, i can have bbs or a knotty kitchen that looks hard, but is actually very soft clumps of hair. my kitchen is the shortest part of my hair and it reaches a little past my shoulders. my edges are also 4b.

i had my hair colored at an aveda concept salon and the color did not change my hair texture at all. i was very happy about that. i would def consider aveda a natural “friendly” brand of high end color. i try to avoid harsh chemicals at all costs and since their color is 98% natural, i was happy with the outcome.

here is a pic of my hair close up on a very humid day (my hair is not this bright – the flash lightened my hair). my hair becomes sooo soft that i kind of hate it. i’m limited to one hair style – an afro puff, because it’s just like cotton to the touch.

and this is what it looks like inside that cotton cloud…my curls become very frizzy with humidity and when you look at my hair on a humid day, it does not look curly at all, but more “afroish” (^o^ oops! please excuse the chipped polish the beach water ate it off the day before!).

below is an older pic of before i colored my hair, but it shows what my hair looks like wet with no products. so as you can see, my hair can present itself in many different ways!

my hair is also commonly called type 4 hair. even more exact: 4a/b. this hair description is based off of andre walker’s (a famous hairdresser – oprah’s hairdresser actually) hair typing system.

it breaks down like this for those interested:

Type 4 hair can range from fine/thin to wiry/coarse strand texture. Generally, this hair is densely packed to give the appearance of very thick but fragile hair. 4a hair has a clearly visible curl and wave pattern that ranges from pen size curls to pen spring size coils. 4b hair has a tighter wave pattern and kinks of various size. This texture does not exhibit the shine or silkiness of looser type curls, but instead has sheen, and a soft, almost cotton-like feel. As with other types of curly hair, showing the true length can be an extra challenge, as the hair may grow “up” or “out” before starting to hang down. In its unlocked/unbraided state, type 4 hair is known to shrink up to 75% of the actual hair length. With the proper care and technique, type 4 hair is indeed resilient, manageable, durable, growable and easy to control. (via naturallycurly.com)

(per andre)

There are two subtypes of Type 4 hair: Type 4A, tightly coiled hair that, when stretched, has an “S” pattern, much like curly hair; and Type 4B, which has a “Z” pattern, less of a defined curl pattern (instead of curling or coiling, the hair bends in sharp angles like the letter “Z”). Type 4A tends to have more moisture than Type 4B, which will have a wiry texture. But what if your hair has been chemically straightened? How can you tell which subtype you belong to if your hair is relaxed? You’ll need at least one inch of new growth to tell. Pull at the roots. If you can see a definite curl pattern, then it’s an A, if not, then it’s a B.

my length

i’m protective styling my hair again! i’ve been doing so since september 2009 and will continue to do so until september 2010 – at least that is the plan. i’m known to rip a wig off zee head in a minute! i want to try so many different styles that wigs will be able to let me do that with out the commitment or heat!

as of october 2009 (my “starting pics”). my hair has been “stuck” at arm pit length because of single strand knots, and because i chopped off about 3-4 inches of horrible ends in feb 09 right after i got my hair colored. i need to get over this hump! my ultimate goal is bra strap length. i took one of my cornrow braids down to take this measurement. this is not from the top of my head, more like an inch above my ear.

as of feb 11, 2010 (my hair color is almost a year old here and you can really tell. i plan to get my hair colored again when i stop protective styling later this year – this time i’m going blonde! highlights that is).

from the way it looks in this pic, it seems like i’m a solid 1.5-2 inches from bra strap length. but in reality, it’s about 3-4 because i know i will need to cut my ends when my protective styling is over.

oh, and in case you have not noticed, i’m also the hair shrinkage queen!

if you want to grow your hair long and need some help getting there, check out the forum where you get get tons of help from other women who have grown and are growing their hair to long lengths!

Tags: 4a hair, 4b hair, big chop, cornrows, flat iron, hair growth, hair length, hair shrinkage, healthy hair routine, heat damage, kurlybella, lace wig, my hair story, natural hair, protective style, sedu, set backs, straightening comb, transitioning, wigs

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 11:47 pm and is filed under my journey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.