Tips for dealing with curly hair:
- Throw out your shampoo. Most shampoos contain sulfates, harsh detergents that are frequently found in dish-washing liquid and laundry detergent. Sulfates strip hair of its natural oils, which can be disastrous for curly hair because it leads to frizz and dryness.
- Moisturize! Moisturize! Moisturize! Each hair follicle is home to a sebaceous gland, which releases an oily substance that lubricates the hair. Since curly-haired people have fewer hairs on their heads than people with naturally straight hair, they have fewer sebaceous glands to produce oil. The tighter the curls are, the harder it is for the oil to reach their ends. This is why curly hair tends to be drier than naturally straight hair. Avoid conditioners with silicones. Many curly girls prefer to have conditioner remain in their hair rather than wash it out.
- Curly hair should only be cut when it's dry because dry curly hair falls so differently from wet curly hair — a wet curl can spring up in length as much as 6 to 10 inches when it dries.
- You can't control frizz with a flatiron. Frizz occurs because curly hair tends to be much drier than naturally straight hair. The natural inclination of dry hair is to literally lift up and outward to absorb moisture from the air. This is why humid or rainy days are the most frizz-inducing. Many people misunderstand their hair and try to control it by straightening it, but once humidity hits, the dreaded frizz returns. If curly hair is sufficiently hydrated, frizz goes away.
- Refrain from pulling your hair back tightly, ladies. Curly-haired men and women have fragile hairlines that recede easily from frequent blow-drying or from being pulled too tight into a ponytail. Chemical straightening, blow-drying, flat-ironing, extensions, weaves and wigs wreak havoc on the baby-fine roots.
- The basic steps for all types of curls: cleansing, conditioning, scrunching, styling. Never dry curls with a conventional towel. Use a paper towel, old cotton T-shirt or microfiber towel.
- Once set, keep your hands out of your hair, don't disturb your curls or twirl them too much.
- To revive hair, spritz with lavender spray or water.
WASHINGTON TWP. — You’re likely to find Lorraine Massey on her soapbox, talking passionately about her favorite subject: curly hair.
It’s a soapbox minus the soap. For the past 15 years, the New York stylist has been encouraging curly-headed women and men to throw out their traditional hair-styling products — including shampoo, combs and brushes, curling and flat-irons. Curly girls, she preaches, need none of them.
On her way to Books & Co. at The Greene for a book signing Feb. 21, Massey stopped at Affinity Salon and Day Spa in Washington Twp. to discuss and demonstrate her revolutionary approach to curly heads. Her new book, “Curly Girl: The Handbook,” (Workman Publishing, $13.95), comes with a step-by-step DVD and offers how-to advice on everything from homemade recipes and trimming your own hair to daily routines for various curl types.
According to Massey, who grew up in England and now owns the Devachan salons in New York, at least 65 percent of women have curly or wavy hair. Massey says most of them are busily trying to change it by blowing it straight, hiding it under hats, pulling it back with rubber bands, disguising it with weaves and braids, and flattening it with anything they can find. More than $9 billion she says, is spent in the African-American community on straightening implements.
“Behind every straightening implement is a curly girl,” says Massey. “It’s like taking a beautiful dress and washing and ironing it all the time. Drying and blow-frying takes its toll. Hair is like a delicate fabric — only we wear it every day and never take it off.”
Massey is still irate about the “Millionaire Matchmaker’s” controversial comments about men preferring women with straight hair.
“Clearly this not true!,” retorts Massey, who says if you’re not one with your curly locks you are probably not at one with yourself. If your love is falsely reliant on a hair straightener, she adds, it means you’ll need to stay indoors when it rains, avoid swimming and working out.
“And there will be no spontaneous showers with your new millionaire!”
Massey, who sells her own DevaCurl line of curl-friendly hair-care products in selected salons and at Ulta at the Dayton Mall, also recommends other products with natural ingredients. She believes the sulfates found in most shampoos strip hair of its natural oils and lead to frizz and dryness. Her hair cleanser is called “No-Poo.”
“Frizz is a curl waiting to happen,” she says. “Frizz is a curl begging for moisture.”
Massey’s simple but unusual approach to hair got its start when she came to the realization that her own curly hair looked a lot better when she skipped regular shampooing. Now she believes in “freeing” curls by cutting hair when it’s dry rather than wet, massaging and rinsing the scalp with a sulfate-free cleanser or botanical conditioner a couple of times a week, and styling with an alcohol-free gel and our own fingertips. Women across the nation are following her advice and doing what comes naturally.
Dana Hookassian of Oakwood is a curly girl who hated her hair when she was a child but has come to appreciate it.
“I had spiral ringlets and everyone else had straight hair including my younger sister,” remembers Hookassian, co-owner of Vintage Scout Interiors in Centerville.
After many years of blow-drying with a giant brush — not to mention ironing her hair and setting it on soup cans — she eventually began to love her curls.
“You get a lot of attention with curls because they are so different,” says the redhead who now uses Massey’s line of products and gets her hair cut locally by stylist Mindy Damstra who attended a Curly Girl seminar in Columbus two years ago. Damstra, says Hookassian, cuts each individual curl while her hair is dry.
Damstra, who owns Vanity Hair Studio in Oakwood, says she had been cutting curly hair both wet and dry for years and that Massey’s philosophy simply reaffirmed what she had come to realize.
“In beauty school you learn to cut everyone’s hair the same,” she says. “But if you cut curly hair wet, that isn’t where it will end up after it dries. And no curl patterns are the same, so you might take off more in one place than another based on the curl pattern.”
Damstra says it’s been enlightening for a lot of her clients to realize there is a difference between proper care for curly and straight hair.
“With curly hair, you need friction for cleansing, rather than products that pull moisture,” she explains.
Like so many other curly girls, Juliet Howard-Welch also grew up hating her curls.
“I was born in England and when I moved here, people called me Shirley Temple,” says the Sinclair student who works as a stage manager for Zoot Theatre’s touring company.
Though she sometimes wears her hair curly, Howard-Welch also straightens it. She says she’s been tempted to have it professionally straightened with chemicals, but her parents and stylist have discouraged her.
She arrived for her meeting with Massey with hair that had been straightened with an In-Styler, a brush attached to a spinning roller. But by the time Massey had finished “freeing” Howard-Welch’s long curls, the 22-year-old was delighted with the results. Massey dubs it the Ugly Duckling Syndrome, viewing her mission as helping women turn into beautiful, natural swans.
The transformation was simple and took only minutes: Massey began by massaging Howard-Welch’s scalp with very little water and a gentle cleanser, then applying a conditioner that she quickly decided to leave in to help dryness.
“See how her hair comes back to life?” Massey asked, squeezing the water out gently with her hands, then styling the hair with her fingers and adding a few hair clips to the top, removing them once the hair had dried.
“There’s no magic involved, this is a ridiculously simple approach to hair,” says Massey. “I’m just reminding people what they know already and don’t want to put up with anymore.”
She’s says she is especially concerned about little girls who are receiving negative messages about their curls, often from their mothers who are straightening their own hair and thereby sending mixed messages to their daughters.
So her next book will be about curly kids.
“I wish I’d had something like this when I was younger,” Massey says. “It’s just about making peace with what you have.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2440 or mmoss@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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