9:32 PM
I am the most neglectful blog owner in the land, but after having curly hair forever and wondering why sometimes it looks awesome and sometimes it looks terrible and just getting fed up with it in general I decided to actually give the Curl Girl/No-Poo method a try. I am always skeptical of anything that touts cutting strange chemicals out of your life. I love me some chemicals and processed food! Ha! It always seems like a bunch of talk, but I decided it wouldn't hurt to try and I have to say, I am actually impressed. So I think I'll stay on the bandwagon a bit longer. Anyways, I know lots of curly girls and boys and was recently trying to explain my experience with the method to my mom via e-mail and I thought to myself "Maybe someone else would like to read this crap!" I know when I was in the research phase I found it a bit hard to muddle through all the technical talk and the personal experiences, but everyone loves technical talk and personal experiences from someone they actually know right!?! Its not possible for someone you know to bullshit you, ha! So, just in case, my experience with the Curly Girl/No-Poo method thus far (a whole 2 days of it, I've practically got a PhD in this stuff!):
When I googled I first got this page:
I found that one to be the most simple explaination, then I was reading around and everyone said I had to read the "education" here:
It's a lot to read through, but it actually makes sense and didn't take as long to get through as I was thinking it would.
This website has EVERYTHING, but I found it a bit hard to navigate, you basically get lost on a link clicking frenzy going deeper into the rabbit hole thinking, "but wait, I wanted to know more about..."
The above website has those "curl classifications" that the Live Curly Live Free website cautions against though. And some of the articles seem a bit commercialized. The message boards are helpful, but again, easy to get lost in.
The whole thing seems straight forward at first, but then you realize that it's not and I guess that's good because everyone is different, but it's frustrating that you can just read "DO THIS", its the products that are the most confusing for me, from what I can tell, what it comes down to is label reading and trial and error. Though I am seeing that salon products aren't necessarily top dog, there are some cheapies, like certain types of Suave, VO5 and Tresemme that just have less ingredients. They do have a retail section of that site though, I ordered a bunch of things because my DevaCurl stuff is almost gone and it sounds like while many people start with DevaCurl, lots find that other things work better.
This is all based off of a book called The Curly Girl Handbook by Lorraine Massey. They don't have it for my Nook and I haven't decided if I want it enough to order it since there is so much info online. Though it might be nice to get streamlined info from one source instead of trying to make sense of several sources.
Personally what I did was this. First I washed with a clarifying shampoo, it's called Redken Cleansing Cream Shampoo, I've had this since like my second year in college, lol. Does it expire? Whatever, it seemed to have plenty of those harsh sulfates no one likes and that I needed for a clean slate. Then I used the regular DevaCurl One Condition conditioner, this is meant to be a daily conditioner I think, it's nothing special, and I "raked" it through my hair with my hands, turning my head upside down and raking out any tangles, then I took a bit more and scrunched it into the ends of my hair. Then I washed everything else, etc. Then I rinsed. Then I took a smaller amount of the same thing, raked it through and upside-down scrunched it into the ends again and didn't rinse. Then I used a random dirty t-shirt laying around to "scrunch" the excess moisture out of my hair, it was still completely wet, but not dripping at all. No towels and no rubbing! Did all the normal stuff getting out of the shower, then while the hair was still wet (they say to put your product in when its plenty wet) I raked in the DevaCare Arc AnGEL I have. And then did the upside down scrunch again. No hair serum or de-frizz crap like I normally use, just the DevaCare gel. From what I understand, when you're using curl friendly products without silicones and applying to pretty wet hair, you don't have to be stingy with the product, so I used 2-3 good sized globs, none of that dime sized amount ridiculousness. Then did my makeup, wrangled Ben, etc. Went downstairs and then "diffused" my hair upside down. I say "diffused" because I never use an actual diffuser, I kind of just have the air go through my hand in the form of a claw, to break up the airflow, on the lowest setting. I did hot first to get some moisture out, then warm and then when it was about 75-80% like 15 seconds of the "cool" button since that is supposed to "seal" the hair shaft and all. Now, I did use hairspray and from what I can see, that's a no-no, because almost all hairspray has silicones, but I'm a junkie, I don't feel like I can live without hairspray. I guess no silicones is the best, but there are some silicones on the websites that are water-soluble or can be washed away with a sulfate free shampoo, I'll have to compare my labels more closely to the lists. I know there is silicones in my hairsprays but I don't know if they are the really evil ones or the sort of okay ones. Or I'll have to find some kind of alternative to hairspray. Maybe the idea is that with good curly girl method hair, its SO obedient that you don't even NEED hairspray! Can you imagine!?
Then today I repeated the process, but just put the conditioner in and rinsed it out and then a little more left in. I am going to try "conditioner only cleansing" which means I'll do a "scalp wash" with conditioner once or twice a week. I guess some people will use a sulfate free/curl friendly shampoo once a week and that's still considered being loyal to the method? I'm not sure, that's where I get confused. Anyways, you're hair is supposed to get worse before it gets better as it figures out how to produce it's own nourishing oils again, but so far I see an improvement probably from the techniques alone! I think it will get faster and easier to do as time goes on too Takes a little extra time right now, but not a lot.
So yay! Try it! I was skeptical but am so far pleased!
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