Ask Dethroner: What To Do With Very Curly Hair?

As 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.