Curly Girl Routine for Wavies: My Secretly Wavy Hair

My hair has been straight for my entire life. Puffy-straight. "Needs time to calm down" after blow drying it, straight. Works great with extra heavy conditioner, straight. 

Sure, occasionally I'd wake up with a few curls here and there, but after brushing my hair-- because brushing is a must!-- they would disappear into a puff of frizz, so I'd add some serum and calm it down.

It literally never dawned on me that my straight hair struggles were happening because my hair wasn't straight. Sure, it had some wave, sometimes, but I just assumed straight hair was the default. Mine was puffy and needed help all the time, but it was straight.

It turns out, I'm not alone. In fact, this blogger had the same realization, and the descriptions of her hair rang true for me as well. I've always had "damaged ends" or "a texture issue", even right after a major haircut. So what gives?

About two years ago I decided it was time to do a big chop, and cut my hair a bit shorter. I thought maybe I could play up that "sometimes" wave, and desperately wanted to avoid any "poof" that required a constant flat iron, so I did what everyone does in this decade and went straight to Google.

I stumbled upon the r/curlyhair subreddit, and a bunch of unfamiliar terms and routines popped out at me. Squish to condish? Cowash? NOT brushing my hair? There was no way this would work for me, but I decided to give it a shot anyway.

If you're not familiar with the curly girl (CG) method, it basically breaks down to avoiding harsh sulfates (detergents common in shampoo), silicones, and other harsh ingredients. It isn't a set of products or a system, and many CG communities take a hard stance against MLM or other pricey products that promise miraculous results.

One of the popular recommended options is Tresemme Coconut Conditioner. You use it as a shampoo, AND a conditioner and it was the first purchase I made in my CG journey. However, I didn't wait to try the techniques, I just used whatever decidedly non-CG products I had on hand, and tried the "squish to condish" method, which is essentially combing your hair in the shower, and squishing the conditioner + lots of water in a scrunching motion to encourage curls and keep your strands hydrated.

Was this a great result? No. But at the time I was shocked because I actually had some twists and swirls in there!

For a while, I got caught up in trying to force my hair to be as curly as possible. Some of the themes that I ran into frequently in the curly hair community were:

- more conditioner

- more gel

- even more gel

That really works for many people, but my hair type certainly isn't the curliest. It's very dense but semi-fine, and it gets weighed down very easily. The more I scrunch, and the more I try to do to it, the less definition I seem to get.

I also can't stand crunchy hair. I would try the "palm full of gel" approach and would feel like I couldn't move for the hours it took my hair to dry, only to end up with producty-feeling strands that only held curl on the very ends, and looked terrible on day 2. I prefer for my hair to not put me in a terrible mood, and so a low maintenance approach was needed.

The routine that works best for me is the following:

1. I wash with a gentle shampoo. I do avoid sulfates, but I don't rely on co-washing, because it doesn't work for me. I've been using Prose recently, but I also like the Love, Beauty, Planet line, because it seems to get my hair clean, and the conditioner doesn't weigh my hair down.
2. With silicone-free conditioner in my hair, I brush with a flexible Wet brush. I've used the paddle brush style Wet brushes, but I find they smooth my hair a little too much, so I definitely prefer the more open design of the flexible version.
3.  Rinse!
4. I skip the leave-in, and I use only one product. I've tried a lot of products, but my favorite by far is Kinky Curly Curling Custard. It's usually about $14 or so for a little tub of it. A little goes a LONG way, without making my hair crunchy in any way, which is really important to me. It helps reduce frizz, create definition, and honestly I use it even if I'm planning to brush my hair out straight. I brush a dime to a quarter size amount through my hair in the shower, again with the wet brush.
5. Scrunch, and squish with a t-shirt. I also use the same t-shirt to plop my hair on my head while I get dressed.

That's it! 

If you've stumbled upon this blog because you're also looking for ways to fight frizz and keep your hair routine low maintenance, I definitely encourage you to give the CG method a try. My hair is not always "curly" but I notice a major difference when I let it do its thing, instead of fighting it to be straight.