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Have your curls seen better days? You might have stopped straightening your hair, but there’s more to curly hair management than minimizing heat styling.
A lot of people believe that curly hair is too high maintenance, when in actuality, it’s just a matter of knowing what works best for your hair.
Here’s how to care for your gorgeous curls:
First of all, get to know your curls
Are you a 2C or a 3A? If you have no idea what those classifications mean, it’s about time you got to know the texture and pattern of your curls. While knowing this piece of info is not totally vital in looking after your curls, it does give you insight on how to make your waves or curls look their best. It also gives you clues to styling, how much moisture your curls need, as well as other styling options.
Forget the chemical treatments
Growing up, you were probably made to believe that your natural waves and curls were ugly, and that this “flaw” would be corrected by permanently straightening your hair. One of the worst things you could do to your hair is chemically relaxing it. After all, the clue is in the name. While the first treatment might look stunning, the more often that you get the chemical straightening, the more damage you inflict on your tresses, leaving them dry, lifeless, and sometimes an even kinkier and frizzier texture than you had in the beginning. With such brittle, dry hair, breakage is very common, and the only way to get rid of it is regular trims and a new, healthier hair care routine.
Sleep on silk pillowcases
Even though on average curly hair tends to be thicker than straight hair, wavy, curly and kinky textures are more prone to breakage than straight hair. And something as common as a cotton pillowcase can be pretty destructive to your strands. Tossing and turning causes friction, which weakens the strands by roughening up the cuticle, which then leads to frizziness, split ends and breakage.
On the other hand, silk fabrics are gentle on the cuticle, thus much less likely to cause the damage that a cotton pillowcase would.
Another thing about cotton pillowcases is their tendency to absorb your hairs natural oils. Those oils are important for strengthening and moisturizing your hair, and sleeping on a silk pillow ensures that your hair doesn’t lose any of that natural goodness.
Find a hairdresser that knows how to cut curly hair
A hairdresser is meant to be able to work with all types of hair, and with Filipinas hair textures ranging from finely straight to thick and kinky, you’d think that it wouldn’t be hard to find a salon that could cater to your natural curls. Unfortunately, a stylist with knowledge on curly hair care is just as rare as curly hair friendly products in the department store. Often, it takes a bit of trial and error to find the right stylist for you, with many obstacles of hairdressers treating your tresses as if they were straight. But once you find that person, you’ll finally be able to see how beautiful your curls can be in the right hands.
Use the right products for curly hair care
The media never really caters to women with naturally non-straight hair. In fact, how many shampoo and conditioner commercials out there make it seem like strong, long and straight were the ultimate hair goals? Although Dove seems to have embraced a touch of diversity in their campaigns, including women with shorter cuts, we’ve still yet to see the inclusion of kulot sisters in any television adverts.
Despite the overwhelming number of brands catered to ladies with straight hair, there are quite a few companies out there that sell products that help maintain your beautiful curls.
The reason why you really should be sticking to those specific hair care products is because most traditional shampoos contain an ingredient called sodium lauryl sulfate. It’s both a salt and a detergent, and every effective in cleaning hair. The only problem is that it’s way too harsh for most curls.
Another common shampoo ingredient is parabens, which stops bacterial growth. This is also an ingredient for curly haired sisters to avoid, since it can dry and frizz out your curls.
If you can’t find the proper products in your local department stores, feel free to browse on Lazada so you can see all of your options without trekking from mall to mall, only to be disappointed in their hair care selection. One item you could consider is Nature’s Own Shampoo, an organic product which is not only free from sulphate but also parabens.
