00 INTRO
Each head of hair has beautiful things that it naturally does. When we work with and encourage the hair to do its natural movements well, then we end up with easier hair that looks great and gets healthier and happier over time—equaling less stress for us and less stress on the hair.
HOW THINGS BEGAN
Throughout the ages and the world, we as people have grown hair (okay, not everyone,
but this is a very general, summed-up telling of history). As people’s hair had some length to it, they were faced with wanting to keep it orderly, so they would put it into a style (braids, updos, etc.); or they would cover it up (scarves, bonnets, hats, sometimes even with fake hair (wigs)). We as people are good at getting creative with things—especially our hair.
The hair industry started from the approach of “how do we manipulate the hair into the style you want”—for the styles you couldn’t do at home, you would go to a hairstylist, who was better at it, to get your hair set into the style, and then return to reset the style or set in a new one.
For a lot of people, this is still their exchange with their Hair Professional. Over the years we have developed and improved techniques, products, and tools to manipulate hair so that we could set hair into all kinds of styles.
Then hairstylists moved into focusing on cutting the hair into styles that make setting
the style easier for people to do themselves (or upkeep at home)—thank you, Vidal
Sassoon®. For training Hair Professionals, we came up with great steps to follow to do
the cuts—“You want this style, then you follow these steps to get that outcome.” This
made the knowledge easier to teach and quickly apply to the hair in the chair.
The reality though (that most Hair Professionals realize as soon as they leave school, if
not before) is that every head of hair is a different starting point, so those learned steps
don’t have the same outcome for every head of hair. We’ve solved that by forcing all
hair to the same starting point and then we manipulate it with products and tools to
give us the desired results. It works ... kinda ... at least for hair that doesn’t have any
strong desires (or movements) of its own. The challenge is that the more we have hair
that strongly wants to do something different, the better we have to be at forcing it
to do what we want. This might work fine for Hair Professionals, who love interacting
with hair and spend most of our time doing it; yet building the skills to force hair to
do what we want it to do doesn’t fit what everyone likes or wants to do with their
time—and it turns their hair into a frustration. This approach has really marginalized
and disregarded the needs of a lot of people for a long time.
The other solutions that have been implemented for hair that has a strong natural desire to move (and for some, even stand up from the head) can be just as harmful to the strands, Curl Pattern, and scalp over time as forcing it to be straight can. A lot of people have felt like their only option is to use styles that really contain or cover up the natural hair—hiding it and trying to “tame” it. This, again, sets people up to have a negative view of what their hair naturally wants to do. The truth is, that when hair is
healthy and given what it needs to do its thing well (this site and the book, Understanding Natural Movement in Hair: Curls, Coils, Kinks, Waves, (& Straight Hair) will get into the details of this), it does beautiful and amazing things naturally.
We’re now at a time where the needs of curly hair are being given some attention. A
lot of new discoveries have happened and a lot of new products created. There are
a lot of groups getting it right for curls with certain combinations of elements and
yet there isn’t a cohesive approach addressing the needs and understanding of all
curls (and really all hair). The information out there has become a tangled mess. It
continues to leave people frustrated with their hair as they attempt to figure it out on
their own—my desire is to detangle that information so that people can understand
and enjoy their hair, and Hair Professionals can be successful at working with the
natural movement in hair.
SIDE NOTE:
This isn’t even getting into the damage that
has been done by mainstream salons not
understanding or addressing the needs of
curly hair. The traumatic salon experiences that
people have suffered through; the segregation
of salons; the messages sent that your hair isn’t
“normal”—it needs a specialist; the destruction
of hair from repeatedly forcing it to do things;
feeling like you are on your own if you want
to understand your natural hair; and Hair
Professionals’ fear when a head of curls or coils
walk through the door. How have we made it
this far with this still being the reality for most
people with natural movement in their hair? It
needs to change! What we have been doing
isn’t working—curls don’t fit in, even if we are
trying to force them to. Let’s change it!
A NEW STARTING POINT & CHANGE OF APPROACH
We need a new starting point ... instead of trying to get hair to do what we want it to
do and applying the same steps to all heads ...
We need to learn to recognize the combination of Hair & Movement Elements
that make up each head of hair, and learn how to read and understand what the
hair naturally wants to do. Then we focus our attention on helping the hair do
its natural movement well and look good doing it.
I believe with this different starting point and a different approach we can address
the needs of all hair and work with it to set it on a path of health and ease while
looking great. That means, as Hair Professionals, ALL people, and ALL hair can
feel comfortable in our chair, and ALL Hair Professionals can feel comfortable and
confident working with ALL hair. We don’t necessarily have to be skilled at doing all
things to all hair, yet we should be able to understand how to give the hair what it
needs to be healthy; how to cut and color it; and how to set it up to do its natural
movement well. When the majority of the world has natural movement to
their hair, then working with the natural movement shouldn’t be looked at as
something to be left to specialists.
As we discuss the Natural Movement in Hair, I have to admit that I change some of
the industry’s common definitions (or scrapped certain terms). I look at it more as
RESTORING THE MEANING of certain words ... most of the time it is in the name of
clarity—when a word means something different in any other context, we use it that
way instead of the confusing way it has been used in the industry. “Textured Hair” is an
example. The definition of ‘texture’ from Oxford Languages is: the feel, appearance,
or consistency of a surface or substance. All hair has a surface texture to it (one of
the varying Hair Elements). So we discuss Surface Texture. The hair that is normally
referred to as ‘Textured’ has all the same variety of textures to it as any group of straight hair does. So I guess, I’m also attempting to correct the offensive attempts of the industry to not be offensive. Siblings can have very different hair and therefore have different hair needs; so we can’t approach things or categorize hair by ethnicity or skin color either. When we, as Hair Professionals, don’t make assumptions about anyone’s hair and instead learn to discover and analyze the combination of Hair & Movement Elements that make up each head of hair, then we can understand the needs of the hair
in front of us—and how to help it, and work with it, and guide the owner in being successful in their interactions with their hair. The words we use and the approach can be the same for ALL hair because the approach is about understanding each unique
head of hair.
I’ll let you in on a little secret that we will talk more about—curls, coils, kinks,
and waves have a natural order and “tamed” place that they go to when healthy and
given what they need. Unleashing the natural movement in your hair doesn’t always
have to mean wildness. All hair has the ability to live with its natural movement and
look nice and orderly, and look “professional”. Trust me and keep reading.
SIDE NOTE:
Not all curly information applies to all curls, or even to all curls that look the same. We need to stop trying to find a formula that we apply to all curly heads, or coily heads, or wavy heads. We need to value the uniqueness of each person’s hair (and each person) and learn how to address their unique needs.