How to Take Care of Curly Hair

by Valerie Gladstone — January 16, 2008

With straight hair all the rage and women endangering their lives with Brazilian straightening to get the look, I thought it might not be a bad idea to write about curly hair, which is so beautiful and once was every girl's dream. Even hairstylists are getting tired of seeing women with perfectly lovely curls wreck their hair to get straight locks. In fact, they have dubbed them "straight jackets," because they are afraid of their own natural look, and go crazy when humidity curls their straightened hair. Eventually their hair looks fried. A couple of experts passed on these tips:

• Take care of your hair like an expensive wool sweater. Stop shampooing your hair. Shampoos contain sodium lauryl sulfate. Sodium lauryl sulfate is a chemical; this chemical is a detergent and is universally known as a skin irritant. It hurts your skin. It really dries out hair because it's an inorganic chemical and hair is organic. Shampoo strips hair of natural moisture. Instead use just a little conditioner on a daily basis, using products that contain natural ingredients.
• When you do shampoo, use one with conditioner. Just use a little bit and rinse it thoroughly. Gently wash the scalp with the conditioner and rinse well.
• Stop combing and brushing hair. If you cleanse hair with conditioner, tangles will fall out naturally while you are rinsing hair. Combing and brushing hair merely adds potential for damage and frizz. Curls will stay contained within themselves and the hair's surface will remain smooth
• Really get to know your own hair. Understand what your hair is like healthy, what it feels like, so you can maintain it.
• Don't use gels, silicone products, and frizz-free products. Hair product manufacturers use the cheapest ingredients. Gels and silicone products are band-aids. They don't heal hair; they just lie on top and take away moisture. For a minute, hair looks less frizzy, but inside moisture is sucked out.
• Go softer on the products, and for a few days, your hair may look beaten up. But eventually the conditioner-regimen will take hold and you'll see and feel a difference. If you keep enough moisture within strands of hair by only using conditioning products (and not using shampoos), your hair will not leave itself to look for moisture, each beautiful curl stays clear and crystallized.
• Find a hairstylist who understands how to cut curly hair. Curly hair has to be cut dry. That's the only way to know if hair is cut evenly. The problem right now is that most hairdressers are not trained on curly hair. They're only taught to blow-fry curly hair to straightjacket kingdom. So do a search through friends with curly hair.

Love your curly hair.