True Life: I Abandoned Protective Styling So That I Could Have More Fun With My Hair

By Christabel of Chys Curlz

Personality types differ and this is reflected in the different choices we make in our hair care practices. But, there is this widespread attitude and opinion in the natural hair world that there is a “best” way to take care of our hair regardless of who we are individuals. Well, this is simply not true. At least, for me, it has proven not to be true and I know if I feel this way, many more do too.I went natural around August of 2008 but I kept my hair shaved until October that year when I started growing it out.

Of course, like many new naturals, I knew nothing about how to take care of my hair and so I wore it in braids and weaves while I researched and devoured videos on YouTube.

When I finally got comfortable with wearing my hair out, I faced another obsession…that of achieving/retaining hair length no matter what!

This naturally meant that I gravitated toward those natural hair “gurus” who had longer hair because obviously they knew what they were talking about and if I followed their advice to the T, I will have long hair in no time. Well, that didn’t work very well for me because the biggest common advice denominator was protective styling (PS). I commenced doing a bunch of PS as shown below:

Now, when I say it didn’t work too well for me, I’m not saying that you won’t retain length with PS. It’s actually quite the opposite because MAJOR length retention happens with PS. In fact, my hair retained the most length during the period I did mostly PS
I went from this …

to this in less 8 months

It was a failure for me because I HATED the way my hair looked like in twists. It was scalpy, I looked like a kid, and I just didn’t like it PERIOD.* Disclaimer: if this is not true for you, then don’t sweat it. It’s okay if you love PS (because again, that meshes with your personality.* Another reason it was a failure was because as with everything else in my life, I like to be spontaneous more often than not. So, this translated to hair as well naturally  lol. I loved playing in my hair, wearing different styles and when I stopped wearing stretched styles (twist outs etc.), I discovered that I LOVE my natural curl pattern as well.

Upon this discovery just a few months ago, I got a hair cut and proceeded to start wearing my hair in a wash and go (WNG) 99% of the time and I’ve never been happier with my hair.

And guess what, this fits with my personality style better. I used to think that I didn’t have the needed “discipline” to leave my hair protected for several days at a time. But now, I know it’s not a lack of discipline….it’s just who I am and that’s okay.

I might not retain length at the optimum rate or I might have more of those pesky Single Strand Knots (SSK) than is desirable but that’s okay because for me, right now, I’m in love with my hair and I have WAY MORE good hair days than bad ones so that means I’m #winning!

Of course, since there is still that part of me that is not all care-free and whatever goes, I had to perfect my WNG technique and I have and I will talk about this in another post. But for right now, the take away is that, whatever personality type you are, don’t expect it to be different in hair care just because we are dealing with #naturalhair which is often times a new and uncharted territory. Once you are done exploring, and watching all those videos and taking in all those wonderful advice from all those wonderful YouTube “gurus”, you will the happiest caring for your hair the way that feels the most natural to you! That.is.all.

So a couple of questions for y’all:

What have you learned about your self through your hair? I love spontaneity.

Are you a PS girl or a WNG girl? WNG all the way! lol

Till next time,
ChyChy here.