Kinky 101 (Basic Kinky hair knowledge)
Model: Celai West
Instagram – Celaiwest
How do you know that you lack the basic kinky hair knowledge? They say knowledge is power, meaning if you know something, you’re being empowered.
So, are you a kinky girl, and You’re tired of always having to parade yourself in a hair that you wish was yours, or that you can at least manage?
Have you been thinking of cutting off all those extra chemically processed hair on your head, and try hair care without excessive chemical processing, but you have no idea about what to do or where to begin?
Do you think that you’ve made a wrong choice, after deciding to go on this journey? Like this whole thing isn’t really for you?
Don’t worry Dear, because you’ve come to the right place.
In this post, I’ll write about the major steps to take when going into hair care as a kinky girl.
The first step is to figure out your hair type.
If you have no idea what your hair desires, you cannot please it.
First on this list is the porosity level of the hair. That is how large or how little the pores on your hair are, determining the level to which it absorbs and retain moisture.
The secret to healthy hair is not about how fast your hair can grow, but how it can effectively retain the hair that grows. One major problem kinky hair has is moisture retention, making us suffer from breakage and all manner of hair loss problems. Knowing the porosity of your hair, will help you maintain moisture.
There are also the different curl patterns; How tight or how loose the curls on your head are, the thickness; How thick or how large the strands of hair are. There’s also the volume; The thickness of the strands of your hair, should determine how full your hair in general will look like.
Just so you know, you can have different curl patterns on your head at the same time, and so many things like the weather condition of one’s place of residence can contribute to defining and redefining the strength and thickness of one’s hair. (Speaking from experience)
The next step is figuring out what products go perfectly well with your hair type.
For low porous hair, light products should be prioritized. Anything think would probably end up just sitting on the hair, and creating build – ups, causing more harm than good.
Products should be applied with heat, so anything that requires you to sit under some kind of heat would do just fine.
For Normal porous hair, you have wider choices, as you can go for products from all the different porosity types.
For high porous, you’ll need very thick products to actually close up pores. Since your hair absorbs moisture very easily, products will not easily build up on your hair.
The last step is creating a regimen.
This is deciding how you will choose to take care of your hair. I’ve created an example of a regimen below.
Wash days: Once in 2 weeks, or once in a month (Not very advisable, especially if you want healthy long hair)
It’s the day you choose to treat, shampoo and deep condition your hair.
If you wash once a month, you should do a co-wash between wash days.
Examples of hair treatments include:
Hot oil treatment – Usually for the scalp.
You can use oils like Castor, olive, tea tree, coconut, Avocado etc.
My favorite hot oil mixtures – Coconut and castor, (Growth) Shea butter and olive (Moisture)
Protein treatment – For the hair
Coconut oil, rice water, eggs, etc.
Moisturizing: Once in a week
This is adding moisture to the hair. This is where the LOC and LCO comes in.
LCO: Liquid, Cream, oil
Extra tip: Get the right tools.
A wide tooth comb, detangling brush, spray bottle, scissors, etc.
PS: Aloe Vera is very effective for moisturizing.
