I haven’t always had the best relationship with my hair. Coming from a long line of curly-haired women makes it even more surprising that I never learned how to properly take care of my curls; low-maintenance was always both my mom’s and grandmother’s priority, so I figured I wouldn’t have to ever do much to my hair to bring out the curls. But with the help of simply being a teenage girl on the internet, a few years ago I started truly figuring out more about my hair: my exact curl patterns, my porosity, the cuts that work for me, what products to use, and more. And figuring out what exactly is best for my hair all the time is still a huge ongoing process for me, and my personal journey of becoming best friends with my hair wasn’t an easy one.
ages 5-10
When I was in elementary school, my mom insisted on keeping my hair short. Her hair had always been short, usually sitting off her shoulders and just under her chin, and still to this day I have never seen her with a different hairstyle, so it makes sense that she would want my hair to be the same. Her hair held volume from the root in a loose 3A curl, but my hair, at the time, would not hold anything past a 2A. I still had a lot of hair, and it still definitely had wavy texture, which really just resulted in my hair laying flat against the top of my head and poofing out where it was cut near my chin or shoulders (depending on my exact age).
I didn’t use any sort of product on my hair, and I was never taught how to properly care for curls, so I basically treated my hair like it was straight. I brushed it until it was dry and frizzy–that is, whenever I could brush it on my own. I had so much hair and it was so dry and the texture was so suppressed that my mom would usually take a brush to it herself and spend sometimes hours working knots out caused by curls I didn’t know I had, frizzy hair, and overall not understanding how to care for hair with texture.
ages 11-13
Near my later elementary school years, I decided that I was tired of the short, poofy, frizzy hair, and I decided to start growing it out. I started understanding that my hair had some wave to it, and I think my hair did just get wavier as I got older too, and I wanted to try to bring it out more with longer hair. This really forced me to start trying harder to take care of my hair and the new waves that would form, since brushing longer hair that was still dry and frizzy was exponentially harder than brushing the dry and frizzy short hair. As I was learning how to control my hair and make it easier to brush, I started using water as more of a tool to combat the frizz, which ended up being a pretty handy tool for several years to come.
When I decided to grow my hair out, I started getting really attached to it. I don’t think I even had a trim for years, and in total it was close to seven years before I got anything more than a couple inches cut off my hair. As my hair got longer, I saw the waves starting to appear (a pretty consistent 2B, maybe 2C on a good day), but they were incredibly weighed down by the sheer amount and thickness of my hair. This created the illusion that all of my curls were at the bottom of my hair, so I was really afraid to cut a large amount of hair off in case I lost my curls.
ages 14-16
This was when my hair was at its absolute longest. It spilled all the way down my back; when I sat down in a chair and pulled my hair over my shoulders, the ends of my hair could rest on the top of my thighs. I was progressively getting more wave into my hair, and some curlier textures started breaking through around this time. There was still a lot of frizz in the outer layers of hair, but close to my head, especially near the back of my neck, I started noticing consistent 3A patterns.
I loved my long hair, and even looking back on it now, I still do love it. It represents a very specific time in my life (early high school and Covid years), and I would frequently get comments on my hair, whether it was about its length or the nice natural wave. My hair was something I was really proud of, and I loved how it looked.
This is when I finally started experimenting with products for real. I was using shampoo and conditioner that was actually for wavy and curly hair, and I had a styling cream and a gel that I sometimes used (although not correctly, since I would use them on around 85% dry hair). This helped bring even more texture into my hair and occasionally gave me a lot of volume in my hair, which I decided I really liked the look of. When I was 16, I finally realized how weighed down my hair was, and I started to feel confident that my waves/curls would look even better if I actually cut my hair for once. So I chopped it.
Ages 17-18
Okay, maybe “chopped” is a strong word, but I cut more length off my hair than I ever had before: around eight inches of hair were cut off at once. Admittedly, my hair was so long that there wasn’t a huge difference visually since my hair still reached halfway down my back. But this cut was exactly what I needed to take the excess weight off my hair and finally bring out the curls that my head has been hinting at me having for several years. I had a few layers put into my hair, and pretty much overnight a consistent 2B pattern turned into a solid 3A-3B daily.
I was getting way better at using products during this time too. I started truly paying attention to the ways in which my hair behaved and reacted to certain products of things I did to it. For example, I started realizing that drying my hair with a regular towel was making my hair frizzy so I got a microfiber towel and started scrunching to dry, and I realized that putting products in nearly dry hair was making it stringy and crunchy, so I added more water and used lighter weight products.
I would still let my hair get long from time to time, but I tried to be a lot better about getting layers put in, and once I had identified that having longer hair makes my curls stretch out, I could acknowledge it and get my hair cut again whenever I felt like I needed it.
ages 19-20 (present)
A few months after I turned 19, I did another significant chop on my hair and cut it to the shortest it had ever been since my elementary school days. The curls rested just below my shoulders, but because I had finally learned what types of styles and cuts bring out my curls the most, I had a lot of layers that rounded out the general look of my hair and brought out the texture. At this point, and even still now, I could achieve 3C curls without hardly even trying. I definitely do think learning the right haircuts and products for me helped with this, but my hair curls drastically even without any products of curl routine at all, so I genuinely do also think my curl development just had a lot to do with me getting older.
Don’t get me wrong, on any given day my hair probably contains every pattern form 2A to 3C because it does have a lot of mixed texture (I’ve heard it referred to as Irish curls). But I have learned so much about my hair, especially in terms of maintenance, that keeps the curls relatively consistent.
Having curly hair is absolutely still frustrating a lot of the time. I find myself often wishing that I could have straight hair that’s easy to curl with an iron and always looks the same every day. Despite the jealousy, though, I love having hair that feels like a friend. My hair and I have been through so much together, and I feel lucky to have a trait that is so ingrained in my identity and that has genuinely helped me grow as a person.
