When you handle your coiled hair, the most important rule is to keep it as smooth and calm as possible, at all times, always. Your curls are highstrung and need to be treated as gently as possible. This especially goes for washing, when your spirals are wet and vulnerable.
On television or in movies, actors are often shown in the shower gathering their hair onto the top of their heads and lathering it vigorously into a foamy mass. Straight hair by its nature lies flat. So, even after being scrunched into a soapy ball and rubbed into a lather fit for laundry, it takes only a bit of combing to make it flat and straight again. It might be tempting to wash your hair the way you see it being done on TV or in the movies. Although it does look glamorous on screen, the result for you would be the opposite of glamour. You would be left with a compressed hair-lump attached to your head where curls once lived.
Know that shampoo commercials and shower scenes in movies are almost exclusively meant for people with straighter hair, even when they happen to be showing a model of color and/or with curly hair. I have found that the media are very straight-hair blinded, as if tightly curly hair doesn't exist. The only time I've seen tightly curled hair talked about in the media is in commercials that push relaxers or flat irons - which doesn't make me feel better. At all. Maybe it's a matter of convenience. Maybe it's easier than writing into the script how the protagonist washes her hair in a way that's certain to tangle it, then must sit down to comb it for several hours, as a consequence of washing it that way, before the action can continue. The media's portrayal of hair affects how we view our own hair.
It's human nature to compare. Since childhood, we've been gauging ourselves against others, even if we don't want to. When we watch television and see that there are no representations of hair that behaves like ours, it's easy for us to feel as if we aren't normal. To inoculate ourselves against these stealthy influences, we need to be aware of this media bias toward straight hair. If you are, it will save you the energy you would otherwise waste by feeling bad about your hair. Especially since you have magnificent, unique hair - and that's a good thing. As soon as you know how to emphasize your spirals, people will be coming up to you to admire them. They'll tell you they haven't seen anything like your hair.
During the few times that curly hair is mentioned in the media, even when it's referred to as "extremely curly," they still mean mildly curly hair at best. We are repeatedly shown that the only way to handle all hair is by using the methods that work with straighter hair. When I was growing up, I felt as if there were only two options for all hair types: either you lucked out and the methods worked for you, or you were unlucky and they didn't.
I recently saw a television show featuring a beautiful actress of mixed ethnicity who has hair that's nearly as curly as mine. In the show, she swam with her hair down. Then she got out of the water, towel dried, and got dressed, swinging her hair around - and just like that, it looked perfectly combed, and she was out the door. Now, if I'd seen this when I was a kid while trying to figure out my own hair, I would have felt a pain in my heart. I would have strongly identified with this actress and her beautiful hair. Then to see her treat her hair exactly as people with straighter hair do, I would have felt even more aberrant. I would have been convinced that something really was wrong with me because my hair took an hourplus at that time to comb.
So I need to tell you this: First, your tightly curled hair is totally normal, and it's beautiful. Second, I've recently seen several crafting programs that showed how to make felt out of wool. The wool fibers are placed touching one another or knitted together, then they're dunked in soapy water. Once they're saturated, the fibers are rubbed until they lock together into felt. Once the fibers have been felted, they are permanently locked together. And this got me thinking that if you pile up your hair and rub shampoo into it, you're basically felting your hair. Felt is great for a hat but not so flattering as hair. This means that if you have curly hair, never, ever pile it on top of your head and rub it into a sudsy pile. At best, you will have a mess. Most likely, you'll end up with a matted mass, and it could take hours to even locate the ends of your hair to begin to comb it out. Curly hair must be treated differently from straight hair.
There are two different styling goals for straight hair and for very curly hair, and they are opposed to each other. Straight hair is flat and tends to become limp. It's easily weighed down. All products and hair-care techniques that are meant for this type of hair are designed to help give it a bit more life and volume. Curly hair is buoyant by its nature and has an abundance of volume. It naturally expands and fluffs up. The goal with curly hair is to calm it down, soothe it, and emphasize its lovely texture. Curly hair must be treated like curly hair. The goal when washing your curly hair is to keep it as smooth and calm as possible. Tangling is in the nature of our curls. Give them no additional reasons to tangle. Your hair will thank you.
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