B003YL4KS0 EBOK (17 page)
Authors: Lorraine Massey,Michele Bender
2
Turn on the shower and stand under the water stream to wet your hair thoroughly.
3
Cup one hand, apply a sulfate-free cleanser or botanical conditioner along your fingertips and distribute to the fingertips of your other hand. Starting at the temples, place your fingertips on your scalp and use a firm, circular massaging motion to rub gently down the sides of your head. Move to the top of your head, massaging gently toward the crown; then move to the back of the head, ending at the nape of the neck.
4
Rinse your hair thoroughly.
5
Take a generous palmful of botanical conditioner and apply it throughout the landscape of the hair, so no curl is left behind. Again, err on the side of more rather than less for this hair type. Your hair should have as much viscosity as a jellyfish in water. Cleanse or shave another body part while you let the conditioner soak into your curls.
6
Gently comb your fingertips through your hair from underneath, removing knots and loose hairs that have naturally gathered. Don’t worry if hairs come out; it’s normal to lose about a hundred hairs a day. Continue to comb conditioner through the hairs’ terrain.
7
Do not rinse out the conditioner, or at the most, splash a handful or two of water on the surface of the hair to help disperse the conditioner through the landscape of the hair. Turn off the water, but stay in the shower. Tilt your head to one side and use your hands to squeeze-quench your hair up toward the scalp so a milky residue seeps through your fingers. (Because of the density and dryness of this curl type, the hair may not drip at all.)
HAIR EX-TENSIONSI’m not a big fan of braiding multicultural hair because often it is pulled and tugged so tightly at the scalp that the hairline begins to recede. Unfortunately, once the hair recedes it doesn’t grow back. I’m also not big on hair extensions. I’ve seen women who have had them in for years and years, and underneath the artificial strands, their own hair has receded so much that the extension is hanging barely by a thread of real hair.
1
After you step out of the shower, let the conditioner seep in for two to three minutes as you dry the rest of your body.
2
If you are not looking for more height or width, do not tilt your head forward. Instead, look up to the ceiling and sway your hair back and forth to allow it to fall into its natural place. Take a generous palmful of gel and rub it onto both hands. Tilt your head to the right, and evenly distribute gel into the hair as you scrunch-squeeze hair gently up toward the scalp. Tilt head to the left and do the same scrunch-squeeze motion.
3
Rub another shallow palmful of gel between your hands and lightly graze it downward over the entire canopy of the hair. Fractal and zigzag curls can soak in all the moisturizing product you give them.
4
If you
do
want hair to have more height or width, at Step 2 tilt your head over and apply gel with both hands as you scrunch-squeeze hair gently up toward the scalp. Then scrunch gel throughout the canopy of the hair.
5
With your head still tilted over, place your hands lightly on your scalp and use your fingertips to gently shuffle your hair at the roots, which will give it some lift. With your hands still on your scalp, stand upright and lift your hands off your head without raking your fingers through your hair. If you want more lift, place clips at the roots (see
page 41
).
6
It’s best to let your hair air dry, because your curls are fragile and heat can sometimes evaporate the gel. But if you don’t have time, dry it with a diffuser (see
page 55
), hooded dryer (they’re surprisingly inexpensive and portable), or if you’re on the go, put your heater on in the car.
CURL CONFESSIONChristine Carter Lynch
administrator for a financial firmThough I had what’s considered “good hair” in African American culture, it was still hard to manage as a child. All my girlfriends had cute little bobs, but if my hair was down it just looked wild. To tame it, my mom would brush it every morning (the pain from that was excruciating) and braid it. A few times I had my hair chemically straightened, and other times I used rollers and sat under a dryer to smooth it. When I started working on Wall Street, I would get my hair professionally blow-dried every week and wouldn’t wash it until the next week. (My hairdresser used to say that he developed his muscles from blowing out my hair because it was so much work.)
Then I ran into two friends who had let their hair go curly and they looked gorgeous, so I decided to do the same. My hair wasn’t in good condition at first, but I was patient and let it grow. It’s so easy for your hair, especially African American hair, to enslave you, but obsessing over it isn’t a good use of energy. If you just let it do what it wants to do and keep it healthy, you’re going to look good. I am at a really good place in my life right now and I know embracing my hair has helped.
“It has been ten years since I last combed my hair! Family and friends are sometimes scandalized! I am amused by their reactions. During those ten years, they have poured gallons of possibly carcinogenic relaxer chemicals on themselves, and their once proud crinkled or kinky hair has been forced to lie flat as a slab over a grave. I understand this, I did this same thing to myself.”
—A
LICE
W
ALKER
