YouTube isn’t entirely to blame.
But yes. There’s enough misinformed people concerning hair care that institutions are banking off of their ignorance, and have been for a while, including hair salons.
The natural hair movement has done an absolute bang up job in informing women on how to take care of Afro textured hair, and it’s unique methods required to help it flourish, including leaving it alone.
There’s also a slew of misinformation concerning relaxed hair that mimic most of the misconceptions concerning natural hair as well.
To be honest, at least from my perspective, both relaxed and natural textured Afro hair, on a general scale, behave the same, and the same products and methods can be used to care for both. Of course there will be differences and different techniques suited to the individual, but on a general scale there’s way more similarities than differences. I’ve seen and met enough women who think otherwise, but aside from the loosened curl pattern, and rearranged disulfide bonds, relaxed hair still carries similar properties to natural hair. Granted the cysteine and arginine (I think it’s that one?) levels decrease, but they can be added back in through home treatments or salon treatments.
Aside from my usual relaxer treatments, I use similar products, styling, and methods to many other women who are natural. I can’t do a basic wash and go, but other styles like pineapples, Bantu knots, twists, etc. you really couldn’t tell if I was relaxed, espeacially when my new growth has been growing for half a year. I don’t mean to point out anything with negativity behind my motives, I’m just bringing observation in, in hopes that many women can come together and learn from one another, including ladies of our ethnicities.
I’ve also noticed that people are afraid of certain ingredients too. Four common ones found in a bunch of products (Centrimonium chloride, BTMS/BTMS 50, stearamidoproply betaine, and Polyquats), and tend to offer positively charged ions that help smooth the hair, strengthen it, and coat it evenly to give shine and also protection. These ingredients are used across the board for all different hair textures because they work well from straight to kinky hair, and many folks either aren’t comprehensive, or don’t wish to simply look it up and see what the ingredients do. These ingredients are also mild and are often included in skin care products too.
I’ve noticed people are also misinformed on brushing/combing methods. You can do all the strengthening treatments you want, but if you’ve got the power of a V8 engine behind your hand and your movements when detangling or parting your hair, you will get breakage regardless. A lot of people think strengthening treatments give them leeway to be overly rough with their hair tools, or they can abuse extra heat or tight styles. Your hair is delicate by its nature , because it’s hair.
This goes for women of other enthnicities as well as ours, but the overmanipulation is a BIG killer when it comes to retaining length. Salons are notorious for washing and conditioning your hair, and repeatedly combing and moving and pulling your hair before it’s even half way dry. There are salons who have taken a more gentle, and efficient approach to hair care across the board for all hair types, but I’m talking about the vast majority of salons. Same goes for people who do their hair themselves. It gets even more annoying because as mentioned earlier, people will try to bank on misleading others and sell them stuff that’s meant to “combat breakage”, “protect”, or “moisturize and strengthen”, when what really needs to happen is that they need to understand they are working with a delicate structure that will break or split or snap under a certain amount of tension REGARDLESS of what you put on it or treat it with.
And don’t even get me started on how mislead people are about hair growth. Makes me wanna jump face first into the concrete when I see and hear people on YouTube or out in the world spending hundreds of dollars on things that have little to no influence over hair growth. People will spend hard earned money on pills, topical ointments, and creams and see nothing concerning growth. Most of the population would be better off understanding exercise, and understanding how important structured weight training is to improve health, skin, AND the big banger HAIR. Protein and fat consumption delivers so many vital nutrients and minerals and compounds needed for hair growth that you need to physically eat and digest for your hair to flourish. If your body health is crap, no amount of pills or growth treatments will help. And more so than any other topic I mentioned, this topic in particular has so many people misinformed and even more people monetizing off of the misinformed.
I try my best offer genuine, kind hearted help, but it’s up to the masses to help themselves.
