AfroDoll, I found myself going from SL to a little under 3 inches of hair w/o my consent when I trusted my natural head to a SHS (Feb 2007). So I do know what it's like to find yourself w/ short hair when you were not prepared for it. But after I got over the shock, I made it work.
So this is the hair I had before the BC:
And this is the hair I was left with after the BC:
And just so you can get perspective of how much hair you're looking at, I've got a huge fore- (nay, five-) head. Measured it's about 3 inches long:
I don't know what products you use but if you start by getting yourself S Curl and make that your only leave-in, you'll be on the right track.
Trust me on that. (Or just read
this thread to learn more.)
Following are some pics of how I wore my hair. First you can see even w/ that itty bitty length, I still wore a puff. I might've looked like those bald babies with a hairband around their heads, but I didn't let that stop me:
This is the front view from my ID (No really, there's a puff; I know it's hard to see without straining but it's there
)
Now after discovering S Curl and plaiting my hair for the night then baggying, my hair was fluffy and not as shrunken. I got less shrunken with each subsequent night of braiding and baggying. I'd wait till it was partly dry after taking off the baggy, but not too dry to comb, and then style:
Then I got tired of having to braid my whole head so I cornrowed the front so I could leave it unbothered all week and just braid and undo the back. This was one style:
This was another style:
Now you have to understand that I'm lazy. I had spent most of my life not dealing with my hair on a daily basis so that^^ was work to me. Where I come from (Kenya) and back when I was growing up, folks didn't constantly style their differently every morning--unless school rules called for loose, combed hair, like mine did. The norm was to have your hair put away in some low mani style and save any loose/out styles for special occasions. So this
bidness of combing my hair every day to go to work was more than I was used to so by April (2 mths after the surprise BC), I was tired of it and decided to braid my hair. Lucky for me, I can do my own extension braids, and I implore you to learn because once you do, you can put your hair away for months on end and not have any damage. You know how you say that your braids got messy? Imagine if you knew how to redo them... You could just undo one and redo it and keep that up as time allows till all are redone and looking fresh. And you can do the perimeter first so that when you put them up the fresh ones hide the messy ones. Makes life so much easier. What's more, you doing your own hair would be safer since you wouldn't pull too much and you'd take care to use less fake hair per section of yours so you don't create too much tension
Otherwise, wigs and headwraps and hats are awesome... Just fall in love with baggying and S Curl and you will find your hair will not dry with these methods. Saran wrap works very well for baggying because it lies flat against your head so that wigs and wraps can fit and look right. This is an example of my Saran wrap baggy for the night:
so I ended up just rocking wash-n-gos. Overtime it got much better but at that point in time i was like... eh... i'm not feeling this length but I refused to get a wig so I had to rock it!
