A wavy hair blog sharing tips and tricks for embracing naturally wavy hair.
One of my sisters had expressed an interest in finding out if her hair was naturally wavy. In fact, that’s part of what inspired my other blog post How To Test If Your Hair Is Wavy (before starting the curly girl method).
However, instead of just showing her how to test if her hair was wavy, I decided to have her try my exact routine. I realized that if I taught her my exact routine, that we could make a blog post showing others how the routine does not make the curls.
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Earlier this year I was struggling with getting my waves to last very long. (Ps – my post how to make wavy hair last longer focuses on that topic). In the past, I would get 3 days out of a wash day. At first, day 3 just looked rough. Then day 2 wasn’t looking good, and day 3 was almost straight.
When I realized that my favorite mousse had been reformulated, at first I thought that must be to blame. So I bought a new mousse, and it didn’t’ give me any hold. So I bought another mousse – again, no hold. I started to worry that I’d have to go back to gel.
Why do all of these mousses not have any hold for me even though all these other people online say they get a hard hold from these same products?
This is what day 2 or day 3 usually looks like for me. For a while this is what it would look like immediately after scrunching out the crunch! Fewer waves, way less definition, and it would collapse to almost-straight quite quickly.
When I went back to my old mousse and got no cast at all, I started getting suspicious. While I didn’t get long-lasting waves the week or two prior, I did at least get a cast. Now I wasn’t getting a cast at all, and this was the same bottle of mousse. It couldn’t be the product – it had to be my hair. But how or why?
I was almost 2 years into the curly girl method. Why would my hair suddenly change now? I was confused.
So, you’ve seen the TikTok trend. Or maybe you’ve seen YouTube videos? Either way, you’ve caught on that some people think they have straight hair, but discover that their hair is actually wavy or curly after trying the curly girl method. You’ve started to suspect that your hair might be wavy or curly too.
Yet…the curly girl method seems too complicated, right? It certainly can be. I’m over 2 years in myself, and I still find myself shocked at how many products and how many steps some people put into their haircare routines. Curly girl approved products can be expensive, as well. I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t want to spend money if you aren’t sure this is even right for your hair type.
I have a blog post that discusses signs that your hair is naturally wavy which can help you decide if you want to test it. Once you’re ready and you want a quick and easy way to test if your hair is actually wavy? Here is what to do, step by step.
There are affiliate links in this post.
You can’t turn truly straight hair into wavy or curly hair using natural methods. You can use heat tools or perm it, though!
Okay, I confess, this header was a bit of a tease or trick. When doing research for my other post, how to make wavy hair curlier, I saw that variations of how to train straight hair to be naturally curly is searched a lot.
From the last few years hanging out in curly girl method and naturally wavy hair communities, I know there are misconceptions surrounding this. I thought it was worth addressing. Can you train straight hair to be naturally curly?
No. You can’t. The same is true of wavy hair. If your hair is truly just wavy, you can’t just make it curly naturally.
There’s nothing wrong with using a curling iron or perming your hair if you have straight hair and want wavy hair. Or if you have wavy hair and want curly hair. However, if you are interested in natural hair care, please don’t start a natural wavy hair journey with the expectation of your hair becoming wavier or curlier at any point down the line.
I regularly see people on wavy forums who are 2a, asking about getting into the 3-range and expecting it can just be made to happen without heat or chemicals. That isn’t how natural hair care usually works. Is it possible that someone out there had really damaged hair that was 2a and after years of gentle haircare and learning the best products for their hair type, they reached 3a? Sure.
It would be the exception though, not the rule – and that means they had curly hair naturally, and it was just damaged to make it subtly wavy, and then was repaired. My larger point is – you can’t just pick any curl pattern and make it happen with the curly girl method.
In my post about making wavy hair curlier, you’ll see that it’s almost exclusively about avoiding weighing down your pattern. A lot of people care for their hair in ways that weigh it down or damage their pattern.
For those people, if they stop doing the things that weigh their hair down, or begin to be gentler with their hair so that their new growth will be less damaged…their hair can appear to get curlier. It is their natural pattern, though.