I was supposed to write about Hair oil next but I'm not really feeling it. - The topic not the oil, the oil is fabulous.
I am now learning to embrace protective styles. And I have to get a bit deep and explain why it took me so long.
I relax my hair because I like variety, there are numerous hairstyles that suit my rather strong featured face that I can do with relaxed hair. I can and did canerow my own hair for several years but I found it tiresome and really uninspiring. Also my hair wasn't very long then so that also didn't give me much room for manoeuvre unless I added hair extensions.
I understood the need for protective styles after reading The Science of Black hereafter known as(TSoB). I introduced some styles where I could but I mostly struggled because I didn't feel like I looked pretty if I didn't wear my hair down be it straight or with the use of god given flexi-rods. There I've said it out loud. I felt like I looked like a child with big canerows going to church. It didn't feel effeminate to me whatsoever. Because I'm not a big makeup wearer I felt my whole face just looked plain and invisible if I didn't have my hair to add some razamataz to it.
But now several years on and oh so many expletives towards low self esteem later, that's how I've mostly been wearing my hair since the beginning of this year. I stretch for 9 weeks and during the winter when the weather is frightful, there's not really much point in attempting to wear your hear out. But as I have restarted my journey I thought it best to really look at what I was doing again, and see if I should be doing something differently or regiment it a bit more.
Towards the end of my stretch I became very good friends with the 2 large canerows. Alternated parting on the right and left every week just in case I was pulling to hard at the temple hair. I did feel like I pulled on the hair way too much but with a lot of new growth and that weird end texture your previously relaxed hair gets when it knows it's time to re do it; I just needed to make sure everything was in place. All in all I think I'll give myself an A for effort but not for out come, the style looked good but I needed to prepare my hair MUCH more before I handled it so much. And I canerowed it fresh every morning and lightly at night.
But now with my fairly fresh hair, it's all about the flat twists. I started off doing the single twists because the texture it gives me hair really works for me and makes a simple grip at the back style effortless whilst still looking like I put effort in. But as I am useless at pinning curls on a second or third day, I had to redo all of those single twists every night, which is rather more handling than I should probably do on my fine hair. I'm not sure if flat twists are actually less handling or not but their certainly quicker. Another bonus is that with the twists, I have the choice to do them tight or puffy, very weirdly for me I'm rather enjoying the puffy, they're about an inch up off my head (that's a lot for me) and that extra length / depth / direction works with my strong jaw line. Although I did realise I needed a new set of go to everyday earrings to work with my wearing my hair up nearly all the time. I have ordered them today and I'm a little in love.
I think after all this it's about finding what works for you. I felt so pressured to do what every one else was doing that I never really gave myself a chance to enjoy my hair and my hair type for that matter with my hair length on my head crowning my lovely face.
I'm going to start enjoying my hair again, and I do expect great things from it. Just changing my product line up like I did years ago had nearly an immediate effect. Now I'm not saying I expect to have waist length hair by Christmas; but I will be expecting length that's healthy because I darn well worked for it.😍
No comments:
Post a Comment