5 Things We’re Not Doing to Our Natural Hair in 2023 & Beyond
As licensed stylists + tight curl educators, in our corner of the Internet, we’re all about healthy hair and not compromising our hair strands for the latest trend, hair recipe, useless tip or any other foolishness. This blog post will explore 5 things we’re NOT doing to our natural hair in 2023 and beyond.
#1: We’re Not Using Any Kind of Oils/Butters
Quite often, we see naturals slattering oils and butters to their hair because their hair is dry or to seal moisture in on wash day. Oils and butters actually prevent water from getting into your hair strands and will leave your hair coated in heavy build up.
Hydra = water, moisture = water. Moisturized hair is hair with water in it. When hair gets dry and the style isn’t popping anymore it’s likely time to refresh with a cleansing/conditioning/styling session again.
In 2015, we challenged the natural hair community to go 30 days without the use of without raw shea butter, raw coconut oil, Eco Styler and products that include them in the top 5 ingredients. What sounded crazy at the time has led to thousands of naturals falling in love with their natural hair. Learn more about our 30DayHairDetox challenge here.
#2: We’re Not Listening to Unverified Sources
In 2023 and beyond, we have got to verify our sources. This means not listening to just anyone on the Internet with thousands of followers who only has direct experience caring for and styling their own hair.
Hair stylists are trained professionals that depending on their specific speciality area, are well versed and educated in how to teach you how to care for your tight curls + natural hair. They also roughly see thousands of different heads a year and have hands-on experience with different textures, densities, surface textures and more.
Would you trust just anyone to give you crucial medical or skincare advice? We have to get factual information directly from the source and not just the most trendy/popular individuals from the Internet.
#3: We’re Not Taking Soundbite Hair Care Advice
We think that we can crowdsource hair care information from people who only do their own hair or gain tips and take small pieces and put it somewhere it doesn’t fit from a professional or group of professionals. We’re taking soundbites from everybody and they mama and trying to trial and error our way to bomb hair. When you take one piece of information from a professional and tie another piece to a blogger who has amazing hair genetically, you’re not getting the full picture. You’re not getting A to Z, you’re getting A to B.
We’ve got to stop receiving soundbite information and actually take the time to learn the full picture. Hair care is comprehensive. That’s the reason why we created our consumer education platform, The SeeSomeCurls Visual Library, because we realized that consumers weren’t getting the full picture of hair care.
#4: We’re Putting an End to Cutting Our Own Hair
We’re not going to cut our own hair at home—just stop. To let you all in on a little secret, oftentimes, professional stylists don’t even cut their own hair. We often have to wait to sit in someone’s salon chair just like you all. Why you may ask? Because we all need someone to properly see the backs of our heads to cut. Even with all the mirrors and cameras in the world, it’s still not enough. Let’s not even get into level of proper shears you would need.
“Cutting your own hair at home can also lead to a corrective cut. A corrective cut is a series of cuts done in order to get you to your desired hair goal. The specific details of a corrective cut will vary from person to person, depending on the condition of your hair. The time it takes to correct a cut depends on what you allow your stylist to cut, the rate at which your hair grows, and you being timely with your cut maintenance.”
Our co-founder + licensed stylist, Aishia, actually big chopped her own hair at home in 2011. She rates it as “very ghetto, 0 stars, would not recommend” as she had to visit the salon shortly after in order to fix the then very lopsided cut she initiated. Please just visit a licensed stylist ya’ll. Your hair will thank you for it.
#5: We’re Not Learning Anyone’s Hair But Our OWN
Most of the struggles we see naturals experiencing with their hair all lead back to mindset.
“Mindset = the established set of attitudes held by someone.
What we think about our hair and the voices that we allow
to live rent free in our heads impact us so much more than a
product or styling technique.”
Dysphoria is defined as a profound state of unease or dissatisfaction. We see curl dysphoria in the salon way too often. A client comes in thinking she’s doing something wrong in her styling routine because her results look nothing like her internet hair crush. Or the client that frustratedly shows us the picture of a loose spirally wig and expects us to be able to recreate the look on her beautiful springy, tight kinks.
Expectations of our hair are set up to fail from the get go. For product companies, the bigger and bouncier the curl in the marketing, the more $$$ that product is going to rake in. Unfortunately, looser curls are an aspirational look for the natural hair target market and as long as the market responds more favorably to those images with dollars and views, images of loose, silky curls will be exploited for profit. It’s a symptom of us not wanting what is actually growing out of our scalps.
In 2023 and beyond, we must take the time to learn our OWN hair. There is no magic product, save for sodium hydroxide or ammonium thioglycolate relaxers, that can “elongate" the curl and give you a curl diameter that is not yours. It is up to us to truly see ourselves for the beauties we are, and accept 100% of us. Your best curl life is waiting for you there.
Want to get started on the right path towards healthy hair care? We cover all the natural hair care fundamentals and more in our consumer education platform, The SeeSomeCurls Visual Library.
Our 1.1K+ community of tight curl + naturals are shaving more than 50% of time off their wash day, being showered left and right with hair compliments, and are receiving direct support of a very encouraging community of tight curlies + naturals who have been exactly where you are.
