Ask Dethroner: What To Do With Very Curly Hair?
11 Comments Published by Alex January 17th, 2007 in Ask Dethroner, Hair. Share ThisAs posted in response to yesterday’s “Ultimate Hair Risk: White Boy Afro”, a Dethroner reader wrote in with the following quandry. We suspect that there may be many among you facing the same dilemma, so it merits its own post.
ML asks:
So, is there any hope for those of us white guys with naturally curly hair that, left to its own devices, becomes one of these monstrosities? I’m not cool enough to rock the white boy ‘fro.I get a buzz cut every month down to 5/8ths or so and by the time I get it cut again it really only looks good after I wear a stocking cap for a bit to give it severe hat hair. And then it re-asserts itself after a few hours and becomes the baby ‘fro.
I tried a couple of things in college — keeping the sides really short while letting the front, top, and back grow out, in a misguided attempt to get an Eraserhead look going on. Didn’t work. I had a mullet for about a week, and I thought it looked pretty good, but my girlfriend threatened to send a picture into mulletwatch, so out that went.
Is there any hope for me if I don’t want to go on chemical straighteners (which iirc actually involve estrogen) ? Should I resign myself to a lifetime of buzz cuts? And I do mean lifetime — Male Pattern Baldness has not struck in my family for at least four generations.”
Dethroner responds after the jump.
Well, ML, much of what I could offer you depends greatly upon your age and what kind of fun styles you’re willing and able to try. It sounds like you’ve got Justin Timberlake hair, and he evidently has to do the same close-cropping that you do.
There are a few things I can think of right off the bat. The first of which is that you’re spot-on about not wanting to deal with chemical straighteners. I’m not sure of the estrogen content, but the real concern is that it’ll eat the protein right out of your hair and leave it lifeless and dull — not the kind of thing that your gf will want to run her fingers through. Besides, even with the best methods, like the very trendy but stupidly expensive Japanese hair straightening systems, it only deal with the hair you’ve already grown; within a few weeks your natural growth pattern will be back in full force at the roots, and it’ll look so weird you’ll either have to go and do it all over again or just buzz it all short again.
Our friend Eddie Mac also has extremely thick and curly hair; hair grease is his solution, and it does keep him looking very sharp indeed, if ridgedly locked within a classic rockabilly motif (which works very well for him indeed). For pompadours and the like, more grease (try wax first) is better than less; in nearly any other case, use product sparingly at first until you come to the right amount of the right stuff for the right job.
Another thing you could consider is to take the challenge of transcending the White Boy Fro by not combing your hair at all (washing it is fine), and letting it dread up. Curly hair tends to dread up a hell of a lot fast than straight hair, so you’ve got that going for you at least! Then again, as we’ve all seen this week, I’m a huge proponent of dreads on white folks, assuming they’re able to pull it off. I’m going out on a limb and guessing that you are wise enough not to try this at home without professional consultation first. You’ve also said that you’re not cool enough for the fro, and dreads are definitely in the same league. Man up, pal; we’re all “cool enough” for trying anything that resonates within us, and if this look sparks your interest, that’s a good indicator of something cool under your surface.
Using gel is fine, but if you put it on wet hair without blow drying it while brushing it smooth, it’s going to give you tight shiny ringlet curls, and I suspect that’s absolutely not the look you’re after. Try it on dry hair instead. Also, it’s a lot easier to straighten out curly hair when you’ve got some of it to work with, and that means a minimum of two or three inches. You mght not acheive stick straight hair, but controllable wavey hair is probably going to be satisfactory.
This brings me once again to the subject of flat irons. [Stop groaning, JoFlow] I’m telling you, give them a shot. Find a good ceramic flat iron, some nice, thick pomade, and take your time straightening your hair out. Go lock by lock if you have to, but you can get straight hair happening with them if you just add patience. Clearly, the time involved is such that you will probably not want to do every day, and it also demands that you have more than 5/8ths of an inch of hair to work with. Ever try or consider just growing it long? You might be surprised by what you can do with some length after six or seven months.
Meanwhile, try using different bristled brushes and combs; very often men tend to use the same type of brushes or combs that we grew up with and never realise that we can acheive rather different effects with brushes of different types. If you’re going to try using some grease or wax, the standard black plastic men’s pocket comb is perfect; without any product and those combs are only going to make your hair frizz out.
you can keep it short without having it all be one length. i would try keeping the sides a little shorter than the top/back, but only a little bit. just enough to be able to tell. try the sides at a half inch, and the top at three quarters.
I too am cursed with the white boy curly hair phenomena. I tried growing it out, but as was said, it’
I too am cursed with white boy curly hair. I tried growing it out to see what I could do with it, but that ended poorly. I’ve gradually migrated to cutting it shorter and shorter each time I visit the barber: I’m down to 1/2 in. on the sides and 1 in. on the top. It’s manageable for a few weeks, and the impending curls on top give me a good indication of when to get another haircut.
Thanks for the tips, Dethroner!
I haven’t given much thought to this since I got out of college seven years ago; I’ve just been getting buzz cuts since. They’re simple and no-nonsense, and hard for an individual hair-cutter to screw up. I was supposed to get it cut yesterday but didn’t, and now I think I’ll hold off for a while.
I haven’t tried hair gel since I was in high school. Even the strongest stuff I could find didn’t last more than two hours against what my horomones were doing to my hair at the time. I’ll have to revisit gel or grease. Any advise on that stuff?
I haven’t owned a hair dryer, ever. They just seem to make the curls worse. Then again, the last time I used one was during my eraserhead period. When short, my hair dries after five minutes anyway.
I also stopped brushing it a few years ago, because for the most part it was short enough not to. Brushing has never seemed to make much of a difference, but I’ll see what I can do with a standard comb and some grease.
I may try going for dreads after I finish doing a tradeshow for my business next month. I’ve got enough of a hippie vibe that I might be able to make that work.
Regardless, I’m going to keep a photo-log of what it looks like over time.
I have been asked many times if I’m black or mixed because of my hair. As far as I know I’m a whitey.
If you’re going to try a flat iron, take it from me. Get a good one, not a generic one or you’ll look like this. I bought the smallest Chi flat iron they make. It was over a hundred bucks but that’s what it takes for my hair.
I’ve tried the ‘fro, the buzz and going straight. Now I just keep it somewhere in between.
Kary, when I saw your video, the first thing I thought of was that you would’ve made a pretty good Harry Osbourne in the Spidey flicks. Not too totally geek out, but in the four-color funnies he had bitchin’ waves/short curls, which I missed when the comic went to the big screen.
ML
I’m in the same boat and with some effort Redken’s Hardwear gel can make your hair straight as a board. Put it dry hair and the spikes will penetrate your shirt as your put it on. I’ve also played with a product called spyker (may have to check the spelling on that one). it is essentially elmers’ glue with a leave in conditioner and can make your hair do what ever you would like it to. Good luck.
Terrasque
i have short curly hair and i need help trying to straightening it so i can style it into a mohawk.
i need help making it straight , but without the use of chemicals, and products.
I use HIS Mix shampoo and leave-in conditioner. I apply the leave-in to wet hair and air dry. That is it. It eliminates my frizz and deines my curls. Visit http://www.mixedchicks.net
Hello!
I’m a Finnish guy with severe naturally red “white boy afro”, which a VERY rare hair in Scandinavia. My hair is a lot like Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall’s hair, but curlier. Since early 2005 I’ve been growing (or trying to grow) my hair as long as possible only cutting the lower sides of it a couple of times (I believe that is the correct way to grow hair long, and it’s not the 80s anymore).
The hair on the sides and back is wonderful: curly, shiny and stays in nice soft locks after shower. It also grows fast and I believe I could grow it quite long. The problem is the hair on the top of my head. It’s basically afro and wont fall down or make nice locks. And most importanly: IT DOESN’T GROW as well as the hair on the sides and back of my head. To tell the truth, I’m starting to believe that it has reached its peak.
When I started growing my hair this was not a problem, because I had this cool afro hair ball. Then the sides and back of the hair started to be much longer (or at least longer looking) than the top. I created a solution: pony tail with brushed hair. It looked like the hair on top reached the pony tail (which wasn’t the case).
Early this year I realised that the pony tail “thing” isn’t natural. I also read on the internet that I shouldn’t brush my hair. Instead I should use a good conditioner and let hair be natural. After that I’ve basically tried everything from olive oil to fingering my hair (which is bad too, I know) just to make all of my hair easy to manage. Nothing has worked and I feel like my hair has a mind of its ow. Quite frankly I’m really fed up, but I still don’t wanna cut it!
Help, anyone? You have nice tips here (maybe I’ll try those HIS Mix products that Brad mentioned), but I need tips for growing the fro long. Thanks (:
To demonstrate: http://irc-galleria.net/archive.php?nick=Hornansarvi&album_id=1367563
(The site is in Finnish, but I belive you know how to browse pictures)
This blog is funny because I am a Caribbean girl and I have super curly but pretty long hair. Mostly I didn’t know what to do with it cause everyone else in my family has different hair. Then one day this one German blond blue eyed model guy with a major afro showed me how to do mine. Both of his parents had totally straight hair but his mom had come up with a lot of good ideas on how to do different things with it. So now instead of tons of gel plus brushing it straight into a tight ponytail or blow drying it for an hour to have a fluffy but straightish version I can run around like Foxy Cleopatra if I so choose. Basically what kind of brush used is very important. He showed me that brushes with nodules at the ends break off the ends of very curly hair so it won’t grow or at any rate not as fast as it should. Other then that if you want it to look straight gel plus a boar bristel brush will make any pony tail look totally straight. Only thing is the gel may dry out hair as it starts to get longer so I use half gel half some kind of body lotion (yeah uhuh) that won’t coagulate but don’t even try to think you can get away with not washing your hair every day. Plan B is to blow dry it for an hour with a brush and no products then flat iron (an expensive ceramic one from Italy), and then to finish adding silicone to the ends to keep it straight as long as possible. Good luck. Its a blessing but it could be a curse if you don’t learn how to treat it….