Tuesday, April 19, 2011

"My" Theory on Protective Styles

As you all know I'm not a fan of protective styles because I personally don't feel there's no such thing! There's no style that's protective! In this case, let's just call it protective styling for the people who want to call it that. The most popular protective style is twists or braids right?... I personally like to wear twist every now and then but by no means it's a protective style to me. The be honest twists and braids allow your ends to be more exposed that any other style. Remember your ends are still there, still rubbing up against clothing and other things. It's just as exposed as other styles. The idea of hiding your ends is not a good idea anyway because your ends need to get the extra moisture in the air also. Letting your roots and mid shaft be expose but not your ends...Don't they all need the same attention. Yes your end do seem to get dry but it's because we just seem neglect them all together. Yes we are taking better care of our ends now but don't forget about the other part of your hair because what's the point of have dry mid shaft and moisturized ends but all of hair need the same attention. Ok so people say protective styles make your hair grow faster...I don't find that to be true. I only seen protective styles work for a few people but I also notice they were doing something different than others. They were treating their twists as if it was a wash n go. I will explain what I mean by that later. If you are looking to grow your hair, twists aren't what's going to make your hair grow. The key to growing hair is WATER. As women of African decent, we have been taught to care for our hair incorrectly. We are still being taught in correctly. My problem with twists is that alot of us will put twists in our hair and not wash it for a week or even 3 weeks. That's NOT good! Your hair is begging for water. Look at women of other races we tend to think their hair grow so fast...their hair grow not faster than ours the difference between them and us is they wash their hair alot more often than us. We somehow have this mind set of I want my hair to last me a few weeks...at max you aren't suppose to go a whole week without washing or co washing putting some kind of water on your hair. Who told you that...Probably the same person who told me that...SOCIETY! BLACK SOCIETY to be exact! Hair is like a plant it need water to survive. You don't water your plant once every 2 weeks. We have to learn to give hair water more often. Back to treating twists like wash n go's...I see other naturals on youtube who do that which is how you can make twists work for you as far as growth. And how do you treat twists like wash and go's...they wash or cowash their twists every 3 days or so. That's what making their hair grow adding that water more often. Now with that said I still have a problem with twists...remember your hair can be trained and it starts to take the shape that your hair is wearing. I find that twists can braids are great for training the hair to curl but wearing them too long over a period of time can also cause the hair to be thinner. I noticed it from clients I had and from my hair when I use to wear twist faithfully. The problem I had with twists when I was wearing them is that my ends would get thinner and thinner, I would find myself cutting them alot. Don't get me wrong I"M NOT SAYING TWIST ARE BAD! we just need to switch them up sometimes by wearing a different style and if you are looking for growth they need water about every 3 days.
Wash n go's I opt for them. Wash n go's require that you wet your hair more often and I like that and so will your hair. I redo mines about every 3 to 4 days. My hair feels alot better since doing them and most importantly my hair growth really took off when I started doing them. I do retain length and I personally feel that the ends stay more moisturized when I do the wash n go's than with the twist outs. I don't get single strand knots nor do my customers when I do their hair. Most of the time when people don't like wash n go's it's because it wasn't done quite right. I have converted alot of people into wash n goer's and they have all given me a hard time about it at the beginning but now they are true believers of it. Let me tell you the benefits of wash n go's...
-You are forced to wash hair more which gives your hydration (notice I said Hydration not moisture hydration meaning hair moisturize inside out not just out)
-They don't mess with the shape of your hair( meaning they don't thin the hair)
-They promote more hair growth (that's constant water and stimulation from the shampoo or conditioner promotes growth)
-They force you to learn and take care of your hair.
-They are not as time consuming as a twist (especially once to get it down)
-Everyone can do them...I promise you can. Everyone's hair can be trained to have a stronger definition if there's no damage (Training natural curls is my specialty)
If you wear twists because you like to wear them then continue what you are doing but if you are someone who's wearing them because you want hair growth they don't help you anymore than any other style. The Key to hair growth is water. We have to change our mentality of not wanting to wet our hair. The fact is our hair need water often. The kinkier your hair is the more water you need. If you don't believe me look at my youtube videos where I was wearing twists and then look at my videos when I started wash and going it. Also think about this when most of us do the big chop we are mostly wash and going look how fast our hair grow. Then all the sudden when we get a little length we twist our hair and stop wetting it as often and our hair growth seem to slow down. It grows because hair grows regardless but it doesn't grow as fast.
In Conclusion
*Twists no water for a week or more (NOT GOOD)
*Twists with regular watering about every 3 days (Is Good but would suggest switching it up sometimes)
*Wash n go's (Is Good needs to be done every 3 to 4 days though)

Places you can check out my hair growth facebook wall pictures (CurlyNaturalBeauty)
Youtube Anaturalbeauty3

15 comments:

  1. Thanks for the post, was really helpful! I think i will give this ago and see what happens i guess x

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  2. Share your finding after doing this because I feel that's what worked for me and it make sense. Thanks for your posting!

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  3. I will pass on my twist for the summer and give the wash and go's a try. Can you please talk a little more about training your hair. Love this post it makes alot of since.

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  4. thanks for this info i love wash and goes but i cannot do them i love love love your hair and am aimng to have my hair looking like yours. so please give more info on the wash and goes.another thing am in jamaica and the produts are limited.what i have available is keracare natural ,desing essentials and mango and lime transitiong line ,to be honest i call up a few places everyone has only the beging of the lines meaning the sahmpoos and conditioners no styling stuff, but let me know what you think of these products.thanks in advance
    and congratulations in passing your casmo exams

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  5. @ Rosey I never used that stuff. Do you all have eco styler gel? If not you can probably order it online.

    @Linda I can't explain training curls in words that's something people have to come see me for. Think about the things that I told you about hair I can't explain it...it's about showing the person how it applies to their head.

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  6. Moisture has been an important component in my hair routine but I've been noticing a lot of breakage still. I did some research and figured out that I'm lacking protein in my hair.

    I just wanted to ask if you did any protein treatments or used products containing protein.

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  7. I totally agree. Thanks again. It would be great now that it is warmer if you could do a wash n go challenge. That is all that I ever do. When I first went natural, I definately co-washed my hair 2 - 3 times a week. Now that it has gotten longer, I have been lazy and wash it once a week. But before, my hair was really growing. Thanks for reminding me. I will squeeze in a co-wash once a week before I wash and detangle

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  8. @Catherine that could be the case but be careful with protein because too much can be really bad! Normally if you have a kinkier texture like myself one don't need alot of protein because our hair have alot of protein naturally. Straighter hair or Caucasian like hair tends to need more protein because of the lack of it. They have alot of moisture which is what we lack. The Idea is you want an equal amount of both but like I said kinky hair texture has alot of protein naturally hence we need lots of moisture to equal it out. Straighter/Caucasian like hair has alot of moisture hence they need more protein to even their hair out. With that said there are times when we need to put protein in our hair. You only want to use it when the hair feels really moisturized or is needed when feeling overly moisturized like feeling oily or looking stringy. IMPORTANT: Don't over do the protein because even though it can help it can also be your worst enemy if over done. I guess I should of asked what kind of hair you got first?

    @Sonya That's a good idea! I might do that starting in May. Thanks for that.

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  9. Hi, I have been natural for a little over 4 years and it looks more like it has only been maybe 2 years, my hair gets hella tangled and ratty at the ends when I do wng type styles no matter what I do, I have found my hair retains way more length when i do stretched or protective styles, unfortunately I don't have the patience to do them often. Any tips on executing a wng without all the tangle woes... and it looking a hot crazy mess by the end of the day?

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  10. @Joleen I don't get that with WNG's. I do get that with twistouts though. When you do a WNG you have to make sure you saturate the hair very well with the product. Also with WNG's you have to wet the hair more often they need to be redone about every 3 to 4 day at the most. It's hard for me to explain WNG's over the phone or internet. It's also about understanding your hair. I'm good at explaining them to my clients in person and they all fall in love with them. All I can say it keep trying them but remember to saturate the hair and don't go more than 3-4 day without redoing it. I hope this helps!

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  11. I LOVE this post, I am a wash n go girl and I cowash almost every day....LOL. I just couldn't get with protective styles but I was feeling guilty about it because I thought that I was hurting my hair growth!!!

    Thanks

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  12. No wash n go's are good for your growth. Don't you notice more growth with those? If you straighten your hair you will see it.

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  13. Can you please do a video on training natural curls on one of your clients? Pretty please? :) That will change all of our lives(those of us who love wash and gos but can't do them)! Thank you.

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  14. Water, water, water, yes we need it. What you're saying makes a lot of sense. I've heard a few other youtubers/bloggers and "hair guru" say the same thing. But here's my take on it. Do whats best for your hair. Because everyone is on this water kick( which is good for your body and hair), I started doing the same. Wash and go about three times a week and if I was wearing a protective style as in a two strand twist, I would spray my hair with water everyday or every other day. Well that did not work for me. I had more knots than a little bit. :-) It got me to thinking. When most of us were younger (as in little girls) before getting a perm, we had thick healthy pony tails. Our mothers did not wet our hair a couple times a week. She probably washed it every weekend or every other weekend. Not to mention the hair grease she use and I'm sure that shampoo she used had all sorts of detergent that today we wouldn't think about putting on our hair and again, as little girls we had thick healthy ponty tails. I say all of that to say yes water is good but not if it creates more knots which leads to breakage. I don't spray my two strand twist with water anymore. The only thing I do is use a moisturizer (that contains water) on the ends a couple of times during the week. When I take my twist down I may have 2 or 3 knots throught out my entire head where as before I would have a knot in just about every twist I took down.

    So again, I say do what works for your own hair.

    By-the-way, I love your hair and your blog.

    God Bless,
    Tonya

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