African American Hairstyles: Dealing with Natural Hair

African Americans have many options for styling hair. We can relax our hair making it permanently straight. We can weave our hair to make it longer. We can add extensions in twists or braids. We can wear realistic wigs to give our hair a break. In addition, natural styles have re-emerged into the forefront. We now wear afros, dreadlocks, and have learned to be happy with the way it grows from our scalps.

While wearing natural hair is more desirable and beautiful for African Americans, styling it on a daily basis can be quite difficult. Difficulty with finding attractive styles or with painful combing can cause you to get frustrated and to put chemicals in your hair. Of course satisfaction with processed hair does not last long and you have to start the journey all over again.

My hair has been natural for four hears and is medium length. If it were straightened, it would be considered long. This can be a difficult length because it is still hard to pull it back because it is very thick, but it is too long for an Afro as it fails to stand up. Here are some ideas I use to deal with natural African American hair.

Use conditioning treatments regularly. Conditioning treatments like cholesterol and hot oil treatments give African American hair the extra flexibility it needs so stay strong in harsh weather. It also makes combing it easier. A new conditioner I recently discovered is coconut oil, which softens hair considerably. I have learned to use it as a pre-shampoo treatment and to massage my scalp. I use other hair oils on my ends to make my hair shine.

Don’t style hair daily. Find hairstyles that will hold for a couple of days. Wear a head covering at night to protect your hairstyle. I find that twisting the hair down each side with a barrette in the back is attractive and can hold for several days.

Twist after shampooing: After shampooing and conditioning my hair, I twist it in about 40 or so sections, which makes an attractive hairdo worn free or pulled back. After a few days, I pull the twists out with my fingers and end up with a curly afro that I wear with a headband. Using this method allows me to only comb my hair once a week and still keeps it attractive.

Keep bobby pins handy. African American hair has a way of doing whatever it wants. This means one morning you may wake up with a twist standing straight up or an afro that has gone flat. You can use bobby pins to train your twists back into the right direction, or you can use hair pins to pull your hair back into an afro puff.

Buy a few hairpieces: For days when my hair just won’t behave, I have an afro puff piece that can be pinned over my own afro puff for a bigger effect. I also have a wig that I can wear when I want to give my hair a rest. I just corn roll my hair down the sides and pop it on and my “hair” looks great!