Before I go any further, I want to say that hair has been a very hard topic for me to grasp. Ever since I was a kid, I just wanted to take my hair and put it in a ponytail ALL of the time. Easier said than done.
But as we get older, we learn more about ourselves and how hair is in general. It’s funny sometimes. I often see moms with their biracial children, hair frizzy and in bows, beads that are clearly weighing down their possibly thinning hair, and gelled down curls. If they catch me looking at their child’s locks, they give the look, one seeking confirmation that says, “Hey, this doesn’t look bad does it?” No matter what I really think, the truth is, I can’t tell others what to do with their hair or what looks right, because guess what? I don’t even know what to do with my own hair. But if you read the comments on stories about biracial hair or listen to people every day on the streets, folks would think I had it so easy. Many people believe that because a person is “mixed,” they don’t have issues with their hair or that there aren’t different types within that spectrum. WRONG.

I’m a happy biracial butterfly: African American and Puerto Rican. Although I have four older sisters, my younger brother and I are the only mixed kids in my family. Growing up, I was constantly frustrated with my hair. It would take my sisters about an hour or so to finish their hair, but it literally took forever for me, and whatever style I chose would only last for a minimal amount of time. However, they used to tell me that I had nothing to complain about, and they had these delusions of versatility about how it was easy for me because my hair could be worn wet or blown out. (Fortunately my grandmother never really let that happen-if they had cornrows or box braids so did I–a funny but weird sight.)  Easy wouldn’t have been my word of choice.

It wasn’t until I was in high school and college that I noticed the many types of hair textures that make up biracial strands. I met girls who were in the same ballpark as me. Either they couldn’t control their hair, or damaged it from experimenting too much. I knew that it wasn’t just me who had a problem with the politics of hair either. There’s the hair that never curls, curls that can’t be controlled, and hair that is either too dry or too oily. The combinations are endless and I can go on forever about it…but I won’t. In that time I learned from my friends and other women what I was doing wrong and how I could keep my hair nourished and healthy.

A lot of that nourishment and good heath starts with the products we use for our hair. Sometimes “mixed” products are too weak for the hair and you could just be harming it rather than helping it. Some of the best products are the ones you may be ignoring, like Aussie’s Deeeep Conditioner or Miss Jessie’s products (that is one investment I wouldn’t mind making because it really works!). It took a while after dabbling with different products, but with time comes growth.

I’m not ashamed, or feel bad about my hair anymore. I used a little gift that works for ALL types of hair in the end–patience! You’re going to run into a couple of dead ends, but those mistakes just show you how to improve. Yet and still, while I do appreciate my hair more these days, I don’t have this over-the-top sense of pride that my sisters thought I would have. You know, the mindset that because my hair is wavy it’s better than anyone else’s hair. In fact, I hate the term “good hair” with a passion, especially since no one’s hair is “bad.” In this day and age, if you still believe in good and bad hair, form your own opinions and don’t take definitions like “good hair” for face value because if it’s healthy and beautiful to you, then baby, it’s indeed good.

All in all, I share my story of struggling with my strands to say the following to those like me:

1.) Hair isn’t your identity: Many people who aren’t mixed are often targeted for saying things like my sisters did, but sometimes you are to blame too. Just because you’re mixed or you believe that your hair is “good” doesn’t mean it is. Step down from the high hair pedestal that society has given you and look around. You’ll see that everyone has awesome hair.

2.) Embrace your curls: If you’re a mom out there reading this, just know that you don’t have to kill the curls (flatten or press them to death) so your children don’t look different from other people. Different can be good, but just remember to mix it up!

3.) Don’t give up on your hair: At one point I did, and I realized I caused more damage (physically and emotionally) to myself and my locks by ignoring them. There are tons of tutorials online, and you can also request samples for products before you make a serious investment. While it’s a struggle, with patience and effort, your hair will surely be your crowning glory.

More on Madame Noire!

• Cute Kid Alert: Diddy Shows Love to Chance, Christian and Justin for Graduating, Charlize Takes Jackson Out & More
• The Woman Behind The Baller: Amar’e's Fiance Dishes On How They Met, Her Move To NYC, and The Grand Proposal
• Madame On The Street: Who Should You NOT Take Relationship Advice From?
• You Could’ve Kept That: 9 Movie Remakes and Sequels That Shouldn’t Have Seen the Light of Day
• Don’t Be His Fool, or His Doormat: Excuses Women Need to Stop Making For Men
• Jealous? Why You Should Be At Peace With Yourself Before Entering A Relationship
• Like A Fine Glass Of Wine: 8 Hollywood Leading Ladies Who Have Aged Gracefully

Healing Herbs By Renee

Andre Walker, an Emmy award winning stylist best known for his work with Oprah, created a hair chart that would be a base for how most women of color identify their hair texture. Walker’s hair chart had four variations of texture from straight to kinky, Type 1 through 4. Thirteen years ago, Naturally Curly, one of the preeminent natural hair sites, with the help of their beckoning forum users, revamped the hair chart to include more breakdowns under the types. This is the chart that has become most infamous within the black hair community today. Now past Type 1 (straight hair) there is Type 2A-C (wavy hair), Type 3A-C (curly hair), Type 4A-C (coily/kinky hair), which better defines the variations in textures. However, as the natural hair community grows and more women are in search of basic education, a debate has sprung up over the usefulness of hair typing and what purpose it really serves.

Let’s sidebar briefly, before you dismiss this solely as another article on natural hair. Hair typing is used to market products for both natural and relaxed hair. How you apply heat or process your hair is impacted by the natural texture of your hair, therefore, it’s useful for all to be better informed.

Back to the topic at hand. How useful is the hair type chart? We’ve tried to break it down for readers on the site before, and many weren’t sold on it being a positive thing. Some feel that hair typing and the chart that helps you do so is nothing but a divisive tool that provides little information and easily misguides women on hair care. As Imani Dawson, founder of TribeCalledCurl notes:

“Hair typing as it exists today is divisive and ultimately destructive because it emphasizes one “type” of curl texture over another. It also provides limited information; just because your hair looks like someone else’s doesn’t mean it’ll respond to products similarly.  Here are some important factors that the current hair system doesn’t take into account: porosity, strand size, and density.  Curl pattern is the LEAST helpful in terms of caring for your natural hair, and figuring out which products work best.”

Dawson brings up several key points on the debate against the usefulness of hair type charts. The hair chart as it exists today is a simply a chart of curl pattern. Many female consumers who are uninformed (whether relaxed or natural) may simply associate their curl pattern as how to take care of their hair, while remaining ignorant to the key factors that really affect healthy hair care. The porosity of your hair, whether 3A or 4C can greatly sway how products impact it and what maintenance one needs in order to achieve healthy hair. Ever wondered why you and your friend have the same exact hair texture, or dare I say, “hair type,” but you can’t achieve the same styles she does? There’s more to hair then just texture and pattern.

This is not to say that one should just dismiss the hair type chart. It definitely has its place in the grand scheme of educating yourself on your hair. Karen Tappin, founder of Karen’s Body Beautiful, best sums it up by pointing out that the hair type chart “helps naturals be realistic about their texture.” She adds, “If you’re a type 4 hair, your hair won’t behave like type 2 hair, no matter how you style it or which products you use.” Personally, having been natural off and on over the past eight years, the hair type chart has helped me to have realistic expectations of my hair and provide a base for how to treat it. For the longest time I thought I was doing something wrong with my hair, and that everyone was suppose to have 3C/4A hair. I thought there had to be some magic product that I could put in my hair and snap my fingers to get some magic, but my hair was and is 4C.

When Shea Moisture, the organic hair care company aimed at women of color, hosted an event offering consultations on hair type, more than 350 women showed up. Richelieu Dennis, founder of Shea Moisture, spoke to the outreach of their event as it “speaks strongly to the need for guidance, education and support for women with textured hair.” Shea Moisture in their consultations actually took into consideration “other aspects of the hair such as porosity, condition, chemical damage and scalp issues to create a customized hair care regimen.” That is the progressive thought that needs to apply to how to use the hair type chart.

Michelle Breyer, co-founder of Naturally Curly, concedes that the hair type chart is a base to understanding your hair texture. It’s been 13 years since Breyer and associates built upon Andre Walker’s basic hair type chart to create the textured hair type chart of today and they understand the need to further inform the growing world of textured hair. Just as Breyer used her readership to devise the current hair type chart, they are currently working and listening to their core audience to further expand it to help women better understand their hair.

So let’s meet in the middle on the hair type chart and understand that in the end, it is just a base to understanding how to better care for your hair. As you begin to learn more about it, using the hair type chart as a guide can be a great foundation. But remember that as you browse YouTube or stroll down the hair care aisle, there’s more to your hair than just the pattern, and just because you say you’re one type doesn’t mean your days of learning and toiling over your hair are over. Proceed accordingly. Happy healthy hair!

What do you think of the hair type chart and hair typing in general? Does it help you or is it divisive?

Jouelzy offers tutorials on all aspects of Black hair care via her YouTube channel, focusing on women with tight budgets. You can also find her daily hair tips and inspirations on Facebook.

Before transition

It has been a whole year since I stopped relaxing my hair.  It’s been an interesting journey of sorts.

My first relaxer was at the age of 10, and every time I received a touch up since then, my scalp would burn. No matter how mild the perm was, no matter how short the time was that people tried to keep it in, I would still get burned. I was just extremely sensitive and would dread the whole relaxing process.

A lot of people ask me why I decided to stop putting perm in my hair; it’s actually a pretty sad story. Last year, I was rocking a very short haircut. I’ve been chopping my hair off since I was a sophomore in high school. Before I cut all my hair off I had long straight hair that went a little past my shoulders. My mom, like many mothers, was really against me cutting my hair at first. Maybe she thought I’d look less feminine, maybe not. But after enough persuading, and me agreeing to pay for it myself, she allowed me to chop it all off…or at least enough for a drastic difference.

I went through every short phase imaginable. When Rihanna got the asymmetrical bob, I got it too. Then she got a cool, short pixie cut. So did I. Halle Berry and Toni Braxton were my hair inspirations too, and because of them, my hair was a wide variety of lengths over the last four to five years. Having a short haircut was hard to maintain because I constantly had to get my hair trimmed. On top of that, it needed to be relaxed consistently to look neat. This was not good for a poor college student on a tight budget.

By Cynthia Alvarez

If you’re wondering how you can keep an expensive weave up without having to struggle with it too much, it’s important to know how to do the following: to prep and care for your real hair before you put the weave on it, to find the right type of hair to use, the best way to style it without overdoing it each morning under the flat iron, and what you should do for your hair when it’s time to take that weave down. Got a few minutes? Check out these tips from celebrity stylist Cynthia Alvarez.

Photo courtesy of likethedew.com

In the quest to find the right products for our very fickle hair, women stock up on so many hair products, by year’s end they’ve spent more on their hair than they needed to, and only wind up using one or two tried and true oils, shampoos and conditioners. A gal doesn’t like to waste her hard earned money by throwing away any old thing, but if some of your favorite hair products contain these chemicals, aka toxins, it will benefit you to kick ‘em in the trash bucket. Not to make you a label-head, but keep your eyes out for these harmful and unhelpful ingredients.

Baby, it’s cold outside; and while this is the title of a popular song, it’s also the cause of some really ashy elbows, cracked lips, heels and parched hair that could been prevented. Everyone knows looking and feeling dry isn’t cute, but the harsher the winds whip, the more likely it seems that you’ll wind up this way this winter. You might wind up ashy by accident, but you sure don’t have to stay that way with products like these on the market that keep you moisturized from head to toe–literally.

By Charlotte Young

You thought you were being health-conscious when you bought that granola bar and drank that soy milk, didn’t you? Turns out, you may have been wrong. In a perfect example of how you can’t trust marketing claims that this product is good for you or that product has less fat, Forbes examines some of the top healthy alternatives we think we’re making every day.

Soy milk may brag that it’s the healthy alternative to regular fat-free and reduced fat milk, but its hiding some scary details. According to New York dietitian Robin Barrie Kaiden, “half the time it’s flavored and it has added sugar.” Soy milk is also genetically modified and no one yet knows what damage that may cause later in life. So for about $90 more a year, soy milk buyers are getting a product with higher calories and with more risk factors.

Another outrageously priced product is organic peanut butter. No matter how you spread it, peanut butter is still peanut butter and it’s high in fat. It’s best to stick with the cheaper version or if you’d like to be healthier, experiment with fat-free cream cheese. You might find that a cream cheese and jelly sandwich taste just as good.

Perhaps the highest price product on the list is skin cream. People believe that all the fancy ingredients on the bottle equal a well formulated product worth the $400-$1000 price tag. Dermatologist and cosmetic surgeon Tony Nakhla tells Forbes that “there is no ingredient so amazing that’s worth spending hundreds on a skin cream.” He reveals that often times a good product can be found right at your local drug store. A good product should range from $30-50. Try to look for a plant-based brand or one with retinol. It may be a good idea before embarking on a product search to start with a licensed dermatologist who will be able to guide you in the right direction for skin care.

The list wouldn’t be complete with the last two items: bottled water and diet soda. Americans have become obsessed with the convenience of what they believe is purified water in a bottle making it a $4 billion a year industry. But medical experts are growing increasingly concerned about the risks of bottled water, researching whether or not the plastic container holding the bottle is leaking toxins into it when the bottle is left in the heat. They recommend that if you’re still not convinced to go with tap water, try using a basic faucet filter instead. The change could save you an estimated $150 a year.

As for diet soda, turns out that neither diet soda nor regular soda is good for you. Diet sodas have been linked to increased waist sizes. It’s best just to take this craving out of your life. While it may be hard at first, the additional $300 a year it’ll save you is a good incentive.

Photo courtesy of Missnaturalista.com

You know how in those fancy magazines, they recommend hair products and clothing items that cost a grip and you find yourself looking confused? Well, this here ain’t Vogue, and we understand the idea of finding the things you NEED for the low low. Starting up top, a woman’s hair is a big hassle. While it’s a beautiful thing to look at a well-coiffed ‘do, there’s a lot that goes into getting it that way. And though your beautician can work wonders, you need products in-between appointments that can work wonders. We’ve got your back. Or better yet, your head. Here are our editors’ picks for their favorite products you should try.

(Read Write Web) — There were a ton of great products launched in 2009 by big companies and startups alike, but in this post we focus on the best products released by startups. The easiest way to become a leading product in your industry is to meet a need better than anyone else. The following 10 have proven themselves with great features, substantial marketplace momentum and, most importantly, a game-changing approach to solving a problem.

Read More…

(Read Write Web) — There were a ton of great products launched in 2009 by big companies and startups alike, but in this post we focus on the best products released by startups. The easiest way to become a leading product in your industry is to meet a need better than anyone else. The following 10 have proven themselves with great features, substantial marketplace momentum and, most importantly, a game-changing approach to solving a problem.

Read More…