Why Pineappling Isn’t Ideal for Tight Curl Naturals
Pineappling is a well known phrase within the natural hair community where you arrange your hair into a loose, high ponytail on the top of your head (i.e. a loose bun) before going to bed.
Unfortunately, pineappling your natural hair isn’t ideal for all surface textures and this blog post will explain the reasons why.
Let’s Discuss Surface Textures
Whether your hair is fine, medium, or coarse, it is the surface texture, which is one of our Essential Elements, that displays the natural appearance of the hair. Surface texture can range from rough and crinkly to silky and glassy, to smooth and cottony. The surface appearance of all three textures can range from cotton candy to glassy sleek.
An individual’s surface texture also determines if the hair will have a sheen or a shine. Light has the ability to reflect off of smoother surfaces, but when there are lot of twists and turns, like in textured hair, light is absorbed instead of reflected. We constantly have to remind our members and clients how the game changes when you go from relaxed to natural and we have to change our expectations of our hair.
The surface textures that are most impacted by not being able to pineapple their hair at night are coarser surface textures. If you choose to pineapple your natural hair as a coarse girlie—your hair will be “up and stuck” like Marge Simpson and Don King.
The reason for this is because coarse surface textured hair often takes the form of where its been, so if you’re pulling it up into a loose bun at night, it will take on that form and not move, hence being “up and stuck”. Pineappling can also cause a loss of definition, creates frizz due to added manipulation and will not lead to longevity of the style.
So, How Do I Preserve My Curls at Night?
Now over here at Black Girl Curls, we don’t subscribe to daily “refreshing” of your curls. A style that is properly set from the beginning will provide longevity and you won’t need to put any additional product on it in an attempt to revive your curls. As we like to say, “just fluff and go.”
What you choose to wear at night is your personal preference. Many of our SeeSomeCurls subscribers are loving the Buff—a long tube made from breathable and moisture-wicking fiber, a scarf, bonnet, satin/silk pillowcase or even nothing at all. Typically, the nighttime accessory you choose should meet your specific needs. There’s no one size fits all.
Tips for Removing Your Nighttime Accessory
Oftentimes, we get asked how tight curlies + naturals should revive their wash and go’s in the morning. Depending on your length, these tips may vary, however we typically recommend:
Use the steam from your morning showers to help revive your curls
Use a hair dryer for a few minutes to move the hair around to help revive your curls
Use your fingers to help revive your curls
For the short hair girlies—you can also use a hair pick to help fluff and revive your curls as well.
Keya, one of our SeeSomeCurls Peer Mentors, is a short hair natural who is low density with fine hair strands. Keya prepares her hair at night depending on her intended activity for the next day—so this means she doesn’t always use the same nighttime accessory for bed. In this particular example, she chose to sleep with a bonnet.
In the first photo, Keya is pictured wearing her bonnet right before bed. In the middle photo is how her hair looked immediately after removing her bonnet. In the last photo, she fluffed her hair using her fingers and 3 prong pick purchased from Target.
As this visual example displays, her wash and go set is still popping with tons of definition since it was set properly from the beginning. Sleeping, showering and getting ready for the day did not ruin her set and she was able to just “fluff and go.”
Want more tips on how to preserve your natural hair at night? We cover all the natural hair fundamentals and more in our digital consumer education platform, The SeeSomeCurls Visual Library.
Our 1.1K+ course 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.
