A curly girl's tale of redemption
By Jessica Cruel, Self
[post_ads]Just whisper the words heat damage
in a room full of curly girls, and the universal response will be
“Damn.” Most women with textured hair know from personal experience that
heat is a curl killer. And if you don’t know, I truly hope you live in
ignorant bliss forever. Because when heat-damaged hair happened to me,
my boyfriend was the only thing keeping me from going Les Misérables on my head (but we both agreed that I don’t have the cheekbones to go bald).I went natural
10 years ago, meaning I stopped chemically straightening my hair with a
relaxer. Over the next few years, I spent hours at a time in the
bathroom learning how to manipulate and care for my Afro hair at home.
Like my loud laugh, dimples, and oversize glasses, my big, kinky hair became a key part of my personality and signature style. My curls were always poppin’, shiny, and springy.
For maintenance purposes, about four times a year, or whenever my hair
would get tangly, I’d head to the salon to get my hair blown out,
straightened with a flatiron, and trimmed—split ends can cause single-strand knots on Afro hair that make it SO hard to comb and style.
Then
in November, I made a mistake: I cheated on my regular stylist. The new
person used a blowdryer, then a hot comb, and finally a flatiron to get
my kinky hair straight. As usual, I enjoyed about two weeks of wearing
my hair straight before washing it. And when I did I discovered several
spots where the hairs were pin-straight from root to ends. (I should
have known something was up when my silk press lasted that long.) I
panicked. No matter how many times I shampooed my hair, the ringlets
wouldn’t reappear. I had heat-damaged hair.
Cue the chorus: Damn.
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I fell into the five stages of heat-damage denial.
- Stage 1: Wash your hair again, because this can’t be happening right now.
- Stage 2: Threaten to cut off all your hair in a rage.
- Stage 3: Back away from that DIY haircut cliff and pin up the straight pieces until you can see a professional.
- Stage 4: Get a professional haircut to make it look less obvious, yet subsequently learn there isn’t really anything they can do—even though you paid another hundred dollars.
- Stage 5: Buy a wig.
Here's how heat damage happens.
Any woman knows that too much heat styling can leave hair brittle and unruly. But us curly girls have it especially bad.
When
you get a blowout, the bonds that make hair curly are relaxed. Once you
get your hair wet, it goes back to its naturally curly state (which is
why I run from rain for the two weeks after I get mine straightened).
That is, unless there's heat damage. “When you add too much heat to your
hair, you are completely breaking those bonds the same way you would as
if you were [chemically] relaxing your hair," Rolanda Johnson
Wilkerson, Ph.D., a senior beauty scientist for Procter & Gamble,
tells SELF. "The bonds can’t be reformed again.”
But unlike chemical
relaxing, heat damage is spotty and unpredictable. While most of my hair
returned to ringlets, I had certain sections and random strands that
stuck straight out of my head. It was like 15 percent of my hair decided
to just take a nap.
[post_ads]Clearly I was being
punished for two-timing my stylist. Generally speaking, there’s nothing
wrong with the hot comb, flatiron, or blowdryer that delivered me to my
permanently straightened fate. But Wilkerson warns that when you can’t
regulate the temperature you're more likely to go too heavy on the heat,
and hot combs and blowdryers don’t come with a heat gauge. “Your heat
tools shouldn’t go higher than 450 degrees,” she says. “I would not go
higher than 400, just to be safe.”
I
guess the stylist went too hot and held the tools to my hair for too
long in some places. There was no denying it: I had entered the dreaded
grow-out phase.
Here's how to prevent heat damage—and what to do when it's too late.
There's
a golden rule to heat styling, Phyto national educator Christyn Nawrot
tells SELF: “Every time you pick up a heat tool, there should be either a
heat or thermal protector applied to the hair to the reduce the risk of
damage.” Wilkerson agrees that a heat protectant is essential.
But
watch out for products that have natural oils as the first ingredient.
They can act like gasoline on a fire. “Natural oils are good for the
hair to add shine and moisture. But some of the oils just sit on top and
don’t penetrate because the molecules are too big to go into the hair
shaft,” explains Wilkerson. “And if the hair is still damp, you are
frying your hair with natural oils.” Instead, use a moisturizing product
like the Pantene Gold Series Leave-on Detangling Milk ($8).
And
it’s important to limit the amount of times you use heat after getting
your hair straightened. Resist that urge to just flatiron around the
hairline to keep the style longer. “Many curly hair clients restyle
their hair with a blowdryer or irons to reshape their hair in between
shampooing,” Nawrot says, but that's a problem because repeated heat can
cause curls to go limp.
If heat has
wreaked havoc on your head, Wilkerson says it's important to treat
injured hair with care. “[The straight pieces] are a little bit more
susceptible to damage because those bonds have been broken and
chemically altered,” she says. You have to treat the newly straightened
hair as if it’s got a relaxer. That means more conditioning and
moisturizing treatments. Nawrot recommends a pre-shampoo treatment like
the Phyto Boabab Oil ($40).
It also means it might be time to opt for a protective style while your hair grows out. My coping strategy was to wear a wig:
My
logic: It would take about a year to grow enough hair to finally cut
away the damaged ends. So, I’d just rock a wig until then. Plus, wearing
cornrows underneath would help me protect my hair and avoid causing
even more problems.
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No one really
noticed the difference when I started wearing a wig. For the first
month, I felt like a fiercer version of myself. Big hair, don’t care!
And the cornrows allowed me freedom to work out without worrying about my Afro shrinking down from sweat and constant showering.
But
around month two, my boyfriend started dropping hints that he missed
the natural hair he was dying to touch the first night we met. I wasn't
going to fight it. Honestly, wigs are super hot and itchy, even the ones
that are made of human hair (Grandma, I don’t know how you do it!), and
I was tired of worrying if mine would fall off. One night on the way
home from a yoga class where I spent every Downward Dog in distress, I
literally snatched off my wig on the subway platform and shoved it in my
bag. I haven't worn it since.
Now, I’m just faking the curls by
using tiny rollers on the ends of my hair. If I don’t use them, my hair
looks super frizzy, and by the end of the day, the damaged pieces are
obvious (to me at least). Every week, I twist my hair with a product
like Cantu Moisturizing Twist & Lock Gel
($5), and add the rollers to the pieces that are damaged. I'm biding my
time until I can put heat damage behind me, aka on the salon floor.
Suffice it to say, I'll be going back to my original stylist.
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