Your hair, My hair

“Your hair is beautiful!” – A simple compliment that could put a smile on anyone’s face. The truth is no one person’s hair is the exact same. It is the minuet differences that make us all our own unique persons.

There are many different styles one can wear their hair in. Some styles work better for certain hair types, while others do not. However, when it comes to completely natural hair – hair with no chemical alteration – the process of understanding how to properly care for your hair type. So let us break it down as to how to classify hair types.

First your hair is divided up into your curl pattern by number: one is straight hair and four is hair that is coily.

Then categories 2-4 are divided up into subcategories by the letters ‘a’, ‘b’, and ‘c’, which describe the looseness or tightness of your curls. The letter ‘a’ would describe looser curls while ‘c’ would represent the much tighter curls.

Seems pretty straight forward, right? There is another important component to understanding your hair. One word – porosity. Porosity describes how well your hair absorbs and retains moisture. When it comes to hair porosity depends on how tight one’s hair cuticle layers are. Low porosity is hair that has tightly bound cuticle layers that does not allow moisture to penetrate it easily. Medium porosity means the cuticle layer is looser allowing moisture to be absorbed but also retains moisture very well. Low porosity hair has holes and gaps in the cuticle layer which does not allow it to hold onto moisture very well.

So, with this you can now hopefully start or continue to advance in your natural hair journey. They say your hair is your crown, so we must take care of it; in whatever style we feel fits us best.

I had to research my own hair type. For a while, I personally did not know what to do with my hair. I knew that I had 4c hair, but I had no idea of how to take care of it. That is when I happened to stumble upon an article about hair porosity. When washing my hair, I noticed it took a while for my hair to truly get wet. After reading that article, I realized I personally had low porosity hair and that it was best to wet my hair with hot water to help loosen up my tightly bound cuticle layers. I also realized that because hair cuticles were so tightly bound, I needed to avoid conditioners with protein in it and lean more towards conditioners that mainly had oils.

It still takes me a while to do my hair on ‘wash day’ but I have gotten the hang of it. I’m learning new things about my hair every day. I’ve embraced my hair identity and honestly, fell in love with it.

Embrace you!

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#cinnamonview

by ANON