Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Achieving that "perfect" curl & definition

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This seems to be a rather recurrent theme in the natural hair community. Or maybe the twitter natural hair community. This can be a rather sticky subject depending on who you talk to, and the hair forums you frequent. But this seems to come up more with newly natural ladies. A very unscientific observation, but many of the ladies that I know who have been natural for more than 4 years generally aren't looking for definition. The focus progresses onto just overall hair health.

I was once one of those ladies. I wanted frizz-free, perfectly curly hair. I wanted uniformity and the least amount of shrinkage. I wanted shine and wanted my coils and corkscrews to go BANG! And I also tried many MANY products early on trying to achieve what I thought was the perfect curl.

Later, I realized that there is no perfect curl. There's MY hair, and there's the image and perception of what that ideal curl looks like. My hair doesn't have uniformity anymore. While I did have two distinct curl patterns before that I managed to blend pretty well, my hair NOW has multiple curl personalities.

What is that you ask?

Well, it involves having tight, cottony sections near my ears that are coarse to the touch. There's the looser, s-loopy sections in the crown that grows long and hangs over the tighter sections. Then you have the corkscrewy sections just below the crown and above the section near the nap of my neck. And lastly, there's the silky-soft loose waves at the nap that straightens easily and gives me that lovely afro-mullet look I seem to have perfected. LOL!

Having that definition or perfect curl at this point is IMPOSSIBLE! LOL! But what I can do is make sure my hair is the healthiest it can be. That to ME is the perfect curl: achieving healthy, natural hair. Fighting the frizz and trying to perfect what is already perfect(for me) is way too time consuming and costly. I just work with what my hair naturally is inclined to do rather than spend a lot time working against it. :)

4 comments:

Ardourliene said...

Great post. I couldn't have agreed more... Instead I just try to find that one thing to give a more defined twist/braid out. Even if that means mixing what I already have.

KP said...

Thank you! It's interesting to see the transition from wanting the straightest hair possible when relaxed, to then seeing ladies wanting the most DEFINED kinks/curls possible as naturals.

Goes from one extreme to the other.

Ms-gg said...

Girl I feel you! The days of working against my hair are over!

KP said...

LOL! And don't you find it less frustrating and time consuming? ;)