Curly Girl Update – I Quit

Here’s the update – I’m not doing the Curly Girl Method anymore for 3 reasons: 1) my family members don’t really care for curly hair on me, 2) I’m tired of my hair looking great in the morning and terrible in the afternoon, and 3) in a fit of frustration, I chopped my hair off to chin length – it had grown a few inches and was getting harder to manage.  I know I could do chin length curly hair, but I’m afraid I’d end up looking like this:

So for now, I’m going with a straight sleek look:

And since I chopped my hair off myself, I now have an appointment for next Saturday so my stylist can fix the damage I did. It’s not horrible, but there are some areas that need her magic touch. On a completely unrelated note, did you know that it’s super hard to cut the back of your hair yourself???? 🙂

I’m glad I did this curly experiment because I learned some good lessons from it – my hair loves to be deep conditioned once a month, my hair is so much healthier using sulfate-free shampoo, and using as little heat as possible has made my hair much stronger and thicker than before. Also I think taking a B Complex vitamin has helped my hair as well (which really has nothing to do with CGM, but I thought it was interesting to note).

I thought my fine, thin, dry, brittle hair was out of my control and I would just have to live with it forever, but just changing my shampoo and adding some deep conditioning has shown me that little changes can have a big impact.

I love it when an experiment yields unexpected results!

In case you are interested, here are the products I’m using right now that have helped my hair get healthier (all of these are sulfate and paraben free, I believe) :

 Love Beauty and Planet Shampoo. I use the White Coconut and Jasmine scent because I am all about jasmine right now – it smells so good!! And btw, you can get this at Target for around $8.

Suave Coconut Conditioner. Believe it or not, this is a really good lightweight conditioner, and it’s super cheap at Walmart or Target.

Kinky Curly Knot Today leave in detangler. This is a lightweight leave-in, but I still only use a tiny amount of this for when my  hair is feeling dry-ish. My fine thin hair just can’t handle a lot of conditioner. I think I paid $12 for this at Walmart, so this is a good price from Amazon.

 Shea Moisture Hydrate + Repair Protein Power Treatment. Did you know that your hair needs protein too? For curly girls, sometimes if your curls are just limp and lifeless, a shot of protein can make them springy again. I used this when I needed a little help with my curls and I’ll probably still use it when I need a little bounce in my hair.

Shea Moisture Deep Treatment Masque. This is my deep conditioner – I used this at first once a week, then only once a month once my hair started getting healthier.

I think this will wrap up my curly hair experiment for now. I realize that 3 months is probably not really long enough for my hair to transition from straight-ish to wavy/curly, and I might try again early next year, but for now I’m happy with this easy, straight style.