4b's rejoice!! Now you TOO can get curl definition like the rest!! YAY!

[tHENATuRALhAiRpRoJEcT]

Andre is cool....but

I KINDA THINK IT'S TIME WE ALL JOIN FORCES & DEVELOP OUR OWN "COMPLIMENTARY" HAIR TYPING SYSTEM

IT SEEMS THAT THIS SYSTEM HAS CREATED A "HIERARCHY" IN OUR CULTURE!!!!


REMNANTS OF "LIGHT SKIN --DARK SKIN" BIAS

 

[Nonie]

Fair point. Still, like I said, if your hair doesn't fit his descriptions you do not fall into the system. Its according to him if we want to use his system. We can't say its his system then call our hair something he wasn't talking about. That way we understand roughly what each other talk about, as I accept, we don't all fit neatly- I'm one of them. But I don't care for typing much anymore, outside of where its really necessary (which for me it rarely is). If his typing system doesn't really fit your hair, make your own description, post pics should it matter that much in any circumstance or in general.

It also may not be fair to say if andre had 4b hair he'd be more credible. As we've seen, we for so many years had afro/curly hair, and had others without the same hairtype educate us on it. So long as you study/work with hair you could qualify to speak, at least to some degree. Hair's a diverse thing. I didn't say he was so right, I just said its his system...

When I have used the terms 4B and 3C and all the others, I haven't thought of Andre one bit. In fact, I think Andre's system didn't have a 3C so maybe this is Nonie's system. Yes it is based on Andre's and NaturallyCurly's systems, but it is different from theirs to an extent. It is especially so because their type 4B doesn't describe any hair I have ever seen.

@ the bold, I didn't say that meaning he'd only have authority to speak on the hair if he had it. I said that because if he had that sort of hair, like me, he'd discover a lot more about it that he didn't know--just like I did. And he'd see the "no pattern" look is the manipulated look.

Scientists and experts continually reevaluate their theories and update them as they learn more (I'm still mad that Pluto is not a planet) and I'm sure if Andre explored 4B hair more, he'd update his theory too.

 

[BeetleBug]

If she wants to be miserable for the rest of her life b/c of her hairtype, let her.

The fact of the matter is that black people have been taught to hate everything from the top of their heads to the bottom of their feet. Like racism, this type of thinking is not going anywhere anytime soon. It's sad that some black people hold these feelings but what can you do? We can't force anybody to embrace their hair. They have to learn on their own.

 

[tHENATuRALhAiRpRoJEcT]

If she wants to be miserable for the rest of her life b/c of her hairtype, let her.

The fact of the matter is that black people have been taught to hate everything from the top of their heads to the bottom of their feet. Like racism, this type of thinking is not going anywhere anytime soon. It's sad that some black people hold these feelings but what can you do? We can't force anybody to embrace their hair. They have to learn on their own.

i kinda understand it
we have to learn it from birth
we have to see skin shades that resemble us...we have to see hair types that resemble ours....we have to be told these things are BEAUTIFUL in it's natural state

If we grow up (including myself) only seeing relaxed heads, wigs, weaves as soon as we're old enough (kinda like a right of passage) then that's our norm....or standard of beauty
reversing that standard as an adult after being educated otherwise.....still difficult to embrace in your heart

especially since all the other childhood teachings are still instilled deeply in us

 

[dynamic1]

Personally, I think the soft cottony look of type 4 hair can be very pretty but I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish the hair that grew out of my head behaved differently. I wish that I could run my hands through my unaltered 4b hair and have all the strands fall in my face, or wash it on a weekday morning and just let it airdry on the way to work [FONT=&quot]([/FONT]ooh, how I envy those damp-haired ******s on the train, just chillin' w/o a care in the world!! [FONT=&quot])[/FONT][FONT=&quot] and the queen mother of them all, that I didn't have to spend 1/2 an hour pre and post wash detangling, conditioning and banding my hair just to make sure that I could get a comb through it when it dried. And I know these sentiments are not foreign...[/FONT]

I don't know. It seems like the biggest thing ''wrong'' with what that woman said is that she actually said it.

There are plenty of 4bers that wash and airdry....

 

[Nonie]

If she wants to be miserable for the rest of her life b/c of her hairtype, let her.

The fact of the matter is that black people have been taught to hate everything from the top of their heads to the bottom of their feet. Like racism, this type of thinking is not going anywhere anytime soon. It's sad that some black people hold these feelings but what can you do? We can't force anybody to embrace their hair. They have to learn on their own.

Wow! Very profound advice. Thank you for reminding us not to sweat the small stuff.

 

[BeetleBug]

i kinda understand it
we have to learn it from birth
we have to see skin shades that resemble us...we have to see hair types that resemble ours....we have to be told these things are BEAUTIFUL in it's natural state

If we grow up (including myself) only seeing relaxed heads, wigs, weaves as soon as we're old enough (kinda like a right of passage) then that's our norm....or standard of beauty
reversing that standard as an adult after being educated otherwise.....still difficult to embrace in your heart

especially since all the other childhood teachings are still instilled deeply in us

I definitely agree @ the bolded. I see too many children now that are being taught that their hair is bad to their faces. It's a sad sight to see. Children deserve to be told they're beautiful.

 

[ConstantlyDynamic]

Andre is cool....but

I KINDA THINK IT'S TIME WE ALL JOIN FORCES & DEVELOP OUR OWN "COMPLIMENTARY" HAIR TYPING SYSTEM

IT SEEMS THAT THIS SYSTEM HAS CREATED A "HIERARCHY" IN OUR CULTURE!!!!


REMNANTS OF "LIGHT SKIN --DARK SKIN" BIAS

i feel like the hierarchy would always exist regardless and that's unfortunate but it's life.

personally, the hair typing system to me is just a way to narrow down the types of products that work for my hair. since i'm a 4a/b mix, i can look at products geared towards those types-i wish that people would stop caring so much about finding ways to make their hair look like another texture when healthy hair is the main goal. don't get me wrong-it's ok to experiment and try to get different texture looks but people shouldn't be obsessed with doing that. it'll only make them unhappy in the end

 

[tHENATuRALhAiRpRoJEcT]

i feel like the hierarchy would always exist regardless and that's unfortunate but it's life.

personally, the hair typing system to me is just a way to narrow down the types of products that work for my hair. since i'm a 4a/b mix, i can look at products geared towards those types-i wish that people would stop caring so much about finding ways to make their hair look like another texture when healthy hair is the main goal. don't get me wrong-it's ok to experiment and try to get different texture looks but people shouldn't be obsessed with doing that. it'll only make them unhappy in the end

i really wish we would as well.....
unfortunately just like the class system, as long as any segregation of "hair types" exist....so will the current positions

there has to be a change....i don't want my unborn daughters arguing years from now about this same dull issue

 

[ConstantlyDynamic]

also, i'm confused. i dry my hair by shaking and my coils (she calls them curls but aren't they coils?) end up separating on their own. why does she need all of that gel? i saw another video of her and i think her hair looks so dry and the coils/curls/whatever look so forced. maybe that's just me

 

[***BlessedMom***]

My guess would be yes. They just have tinier coils than say I do and maybe their hair strands aren't as fine as mine. I think this is where the LOIS more precise definition comes in. When we talk of 4B, we are only referring to the curl size, not the diameter of the strands or texture.

Another thing to consider is, our hair behaves differently when it is dry. When we condition our hair, we don't just coat the outside, but many of us also deep condition so that the hair is moisturized from the inside out. I can personally say that when I started DCing my hair, I discovered a softness I never knew I had.

So my guess would be yes, they are 4B with coarser strands than mine.

Here's a photo of my hair braided when I used Shea Butter instead of S Curl on my hair. I was also using CON and many other products that my fellow naturals used (instead of keeping it simple). I don't know if you can see it in the pic but my hair was hard to part and comb, and was a lot like the girls at the end of my post:

Compare that with my hair after I stopped using too many products and gave up the dry products in favor of water-based moisturizers and focused more on DCing and baggying nightly to keep my hair moisturized rather than layered with dry products. In other words, once I figured out how to keep my hair moisturized, it became so soft and even looks soft and parted more easily:

[/QUO
Ahhh, I am beginning to understand now. I have parts of my hair that I classify as 4b but it looks nothing like those pictures so I was confused. Their hair looks so tight b/c it is coarse and not moisturized!! Thanks and I might have to try that Scurl cuz your hair is looking luscious!!

 

[Nonie]

also, i'm confused. i dry my hair by shaking and my coils (she calls them curls but aren't they coils?) end up separating on their own. why does she need all of that gel? i saw another video of her and i think her hair looks so dry and the coils/curls/whatever look so forced. maybe that's just me

Curls are coils so people do interchange the words when they speak. But we tend to think of curls as the bigger sort only coz the smaller curls are so hard to see that you wouldn't call the hair curly when you first look at it, especially 4B hair.

The reason your curls separate on their own is because you have 4A hair. Your curls are bigger and look more like the 4A puff shown below (combed out) than the 4B one:

Both have coils that are combed our but 4A are bigger. So when wet, 4A coils cup each other easily because their "mouths" are wider, while 4B just bounce off each other so don't clump and stand out.

If you wet and then shake 4A vs 4B hair, these are the results:

You can see the coils in the first pic look like yours while you can't really see the coils in the second pic. There are there though, only they do not clump but rather just look like this if you got real close and looked at a few at a time:

So you have to do something like shingling if you want to make it look like that, hence the reason the lady in the YT takes so long.

 

[Vashti]

Aww, I'm not mad at her. Self acceptance is taught from childhood and let's face it, many black women have been taught by their own families growing up that 4b hair is ugly, ie., that THEY are ugly because of it. We don't know what she's had to go through to get where she is now. Some people are fortunate enough not to have to carry that kind of baggage their whole life because they grew up in an environment that was positive about black beauty; not all of us are that lucky. When this attitude is reinforced at home it can take a very long time to break free and wear your type 4 natural hair proudly. The fact that she wears her hair natural tells me that there is at least something she does likes about her natural hair.

It may simply be that she has a preference for curls like some have a preference for a certain hair color and maybe it really isn't that serious and she just doesn't know how she comes off to others watching her videos. Or maybe she really hasn't fully embraced her hair texture, I don't know, but it looks to me that she's on the road to acceptance for natural hair. Some of us have already gotten to our destination, others are still on the journey and have some baggage to get rid of. I won't judge her harshly because even though it didn't take much for me to accept my natural hair the way it is I put up with a lot of insults and disrespect from others who didn't like it and denied me work because of it or told me my hair was ugly to my face. So yeah, I can understand the desire for curls, defined coils from some natural women, even though I don't stress about it myself.

 

[Solitude]

Ive been here since 2003 and this is what I've noticed. I do think that 4b+ hair is slowly getting props BUT Ive definitely seen the disparity.

People see what they want to see. 90% of the most popular posters on this board, both ladies with relaxed hair and ladies with natural hair have 4B hair. I don't want to start calling people's names out because it's not that serious and I'm sure they don't need to be dragged into this; hence, why most of those ladies stay out of these types of threads.

Then I wanted to let you know that many who didn't grow up in a country where natural 4B hair was shunned, eg me, have been A-OK with their natural hair all their lives. I grew up in Kenya and I have never had any issue with my hair texture, nor did I know anyone with an issue. In fact, I only ever learned that there's a texture known as "good hair" and another as "bad hair" when I joined LHCF in 2003 when I was already in my 30s! So that shows you how alien the way of thinking you assume is common to all is to me. All I ever wanted from when I was a kid was long hair, not a different kind of hair. And I do not spend hours on my hair either so I don't even get frustrated with it. So one doesn't have to go to Fairy Land to find people who didn't have to "learn to accept" their hair. There are many of us around, some even who were born or grew up in the USA but who somehow missed the memo that 4B wasn't OK to have. *shrug*[/B]

I never realized having a relaxer was a bad thing until I joined LHCF. In my family, hair was just hair. Plus, I've never had a hair hang-up because my hair has always been pretty to me.

This week I saw a 3a/b get complimented over her beautiful hair style. I spent a long time looking at this style, but no matter how long I looked, how much I squinted, it was still... A PONYTAIL!

...Yah I guess it was a nice ponytail? but.. uh?

Really though. On this journey you cannot look for external acceptance. If you are a 4-something, especially a 4b the compliments will be rare. You need to be your own cheerleader.

So, how do you feel about the 5-million posts with people complimenting people's puffs? Aren't those just ponytails/ pulled back hair? I'm confused. Why does it bother you for a type-3 to get a compliment?

 

[femmemuscle]

Whew, girl! it got deep up in here!!

 

[SND411]

Whew, girl! it got deep up in here!!

LOL. And people say hair just hair.....

 

[belldandy]

this thread has a lot of foolishness
I mean come on guys, if a person wants defined curls that bad why is it so self hating? Some ppl (natural 4b's included) weave it up...with type 1 hair!
who cares?
at the end of the day lets just appreciate healthy hair and stop acting like a particular hair type or length is some kind of sorority

 

[DigitalRain]

People see what they want to see. 90% of the most popular posters on this board, both ladies with relaxed hair and ladies with natural hair have 4B hair. I don't want to start calling people's names out because it's not that serious and I'm sure they don't need to be dragged into this; hence, why most of those ladies stay out of these types of threads.

90% of the popular posters is 4b?

I agree people see what they want to see, and that this can apply to the both of us. But we also tend to notice things that happen repeatedly.

But that's ok. We apparently have not had the same experience or noticed the same trends on LHCF.

 

[Spiffy]

That poor lady already got a new one ripped for her on Youtube.

 

[belldandy]

LOL. And people say hair just hair.....

it really is though. It's just hair.
we can't control how our hair grow out of our heads as far as texture. So I'm not praising any hair type.

not even sure of my own natural hair type and I don't care anymore. I thought I knew but now, I don't wanna know

 

[jennboo]

I kinda agree with Solitude in that 4b posters here get a lot of props. I have never noticed the said disparity among compliments between natural 4's and natural 3's. I actually think in general this board is more amazed by and will compliment a long-haired 4b a bit more than a long haired type 3.

 

[jennboo]

it really is though. It's just hair.
we can't control how our hair grow out of our heads as far as texture. So I'm not praising any hair type.

not even sure of my own natural hair type and I don't care anymore. I thought I knew but now, I don't wanna know

???...........

 

[Rei]

^truth. I'll even admit, while I will compliment a beautiful 3's hair, to me its a bit (don't stone me for this) expected. *kanyeshrug* a lot of 4bs with longer hair here get mad props, or as far as I've seen on this board.

 

[belldandy]

anyone have any scientific evidence or peer reviewed, published literature on hair typing? I'll do a search because this honestly seems like much ado about nothing at all.

cant even comment on what hairtype the majority of popular posters have because I never cared to take note of whether their fro "flopped" or was round or picked out or had product in it, etc. Etc.

 

[belldandy]

???...........

if you have a question, go ahead and ask. I'm not trying to insult anyone.
did I say something wrong? Or right which was it lol

 

[jennboo]

^truth. I'll even admit, while I will compliment a beautiful 3's hair, to me its a bit (don't stone me for this) expected. *kanyeshrug* a lot of 4bs with longer hair here get mad props, or as far as I've seen on this board.

Yup, me too.

When i see a long haired type 3 i'm usually not impressed, lol. I don't know how to explain it. It's more rare, irl, for me to see a bangin' head of 4b hair (because, you know, folks are always perming that ish down to hide it or not rocking it in it's true-to-form puffy texture).

 

[supermodelsonya]

this thread has a lot of foolishness
I mean come on guys, if a person wants defined curls that bad why is it so self hating? Some ppl (natural 4b's included) weave it up...with type 1 hair!
who cares?
at the end of the day lets just appreciate healthy hair and stop acting like a particular hair type or length is some kind of sorority

DIDN'T YOU GET THE MEMO?

If you wish you could change something about yourself that you don't have naturally, you must hate yourself. Isn't it obvious?

I rock my Indique extensions (2b/c) hair all the time and love it. I hate myself and my hair and wish I could be a 2 b/c. And if "god" didn't give me what I want, then I'm just going to rock someone else's.

**sarcasm**

 

[belldandy]

DIDN'T YOU GET THE MEMO?

If you wish you could change something about yourself that you don't have naturally, you must hate yourself. Isn't it obvious?

I rock my Indique extensions (2b/c) hair all the time and love it. I hate myself and my hair and wish I could be a 2 b/c. And if "god" didn't give me what I want, then I'm just going to rock someone else's.

**sarcasm**

yeah a lot of ppl feel that way
I don't. I have things about me that I want to change not hair related. If ppl wanna wear weaves fine. If they wanna wear wigs fine. I just don't know why the big fuss over curls?

 

[choctaw]

it really is though. It's just hair.
we can't control how our hair grow out of our heads as far as texture. So I'm not praising any hair type.

not even sure of my own natural hair type and I don't care anymore. I thought I knew but now, I don't wanna know

my mother says I have "homeless" hair type ... I just say, that's ok, if the rest of them follow me back to the "shelter" the trail ends at YOUR house :eyebrows2

 

[belldandy]

my mother says I have "homeless" hair type ... I just say, that's ok, if the rest of them follow me back to the "shelter" the trail ends at YOUR house :eyebrows2

lol