How to Love Your Curly Hair More Every Day
As fun as beauty products may be, there is one giant downfall to the beauty industry.
It has to sell us an unattainable form of beauty in order to make a profit.
For curly haired gals, this means empty promises of perfect hair days, silky straight tresses, and image after image of unnatural women that look NOTHING like us.
Common beauty advertising standards used to sell us products are intended to be that way.
After growing up with image after image defining “beautiful” in a way that looks nothing like us, many curlies crave straight hair and can’t seem to find the love for the hair they are born with. That’s definitely how it was for me.
We have to retrain ourselves to love the look we’re born with and tune out everything else. Here’s how I did it.
- CUT THE CRAP
- FIND POSITIVE INSPIRATION
- LEARN WHAT WORKS
- HAVE FUN
- RINSE & REPEAT
Stop longing for what you don’t have if you can’t obtain it.
Honestly. This isn’t as hard as it sounds.
If you hate your curly hair, I can almost guarantee that you’re obsessing over styles and icons that are really just the grass on the other side of the hill.
Pixie cuts made up of super-short, whisper-thin hair might not ever work on you. No, it’s not sad. But yes, you need to stop saving and pinning those pictures of Kiera Knightly to pine over, because it’s not you, babe.
For me, this meant unfollowing silly hairstyle boards that were not achievable for me. Glossy rainbow colored hair is fantastic, and yes, you can still seek it out once in a while or appreciate it when you come across it. But you shouldn’t be feeding yourself these ideals through media any more than you need to.
Refusing to let go of something you can’t achieve is just a sure-fire way to feel bad about yourself. This brings us to step 2…
If you don’t have any positive examples to identify with, you’ll continue to long for beauty standards that you can simply never create. Even once you cut the crap in your own life, you’ll still be exposed to this BS elsewhere – on billboards, on TV, and on websites.
Make sure to feed your curly-love-bucket with images that are more attainable, more inspiring, and more positive for you.
For me, that meant digging around on Pinterest to find the curly ladies with locks I loved, and curly pinners I could follow to get and endless supply of curl-love.
Instagram is also CHOCK-FULL of amazing, naturally-curly haired babes.
Even if you might not get their model look or perfect selfies, these ladies should make up MUCH more of your self-curated bubble than others.
Even if their look is only slightly more attainable, this will begin to help you reprogram your own version of “beautiful” and – yes, it sounds crazy, but it’s totally true – reprogram your love and appreciation for your own hair.
You’ll start to naturally seek out these styles and form a preference for the more natural look when you’re no longer seeing Swedish models as your beauty example all day long.
While you’re pumping your psychological curly-muscles, it’s a perfect time to begin finding what works for you in terms of cuts, styles, colors, and most essentially PRODUCTS.
If you don’t know what already works best for your curl type, you’ll have these inspiring examples in front of you and can learn from them.
Begin experimenting and take note of your hair’s needs.
What’s your curl type? What products do others with the same curl type like?
Are you more porous? Do you need products with protein or does your hair hate it?
How much moisture do you need?
Should you be deep conditioning (or rather, HOW OFTEN should you)?
Should you be cutting out silicones?
These are all questions you’ll need to wade through and get help with on your curly love journey.
Start testing products, reading reviews, and finding curly bloggers with similar hair features to yours.
Once you know HOW to take care of your hair and can imitate your inspirations a bit easier, you’ll be well on your way to going curl-crazy!!
The road to embracing your curls can be bumpy, stressful, and expensive.
Try not to give up and remember to have fun.
This is supposed to be all about self-love and confidence, after all!
If you try a product that wrecks your hair for the day, just take note of what it was and try something different next time. There is always tomorrow!
This is the basic process and as you go along, you just need to curate your curl inspirations more and filter out your favorite looks and products as your curl-love matures.
Tell us: how did you learn to love your curls?
