APL, BSL and WL (Armpit Length, Bra Strap Length and Waist Length, respectively) are acronyms for popular hair growth goals in the self hair care community. With so many methods that women discuss and try with each other in-person and online, hair growth to a certain length is often one of many reasons that many women go natural or become interested in learning more about maintaining healthy hair. Growing black hair has seemed elusive in the past, but not anymore. There are lots of tips, tricks and old wives’ tales on the Internet about how to grow your hair to whip-worthy lengths, including the use of supplements. But is there anything wrong with using vitamins to induce hair growth?
In my opinion, it’s definitely not cheating to ingest supplements like vitamins to help boost the inches of hair growth you desire to gain. There are plenty of people who take vitamins daily, so it shouldn’t be an issue if a woman takes them to aid in her hair growth journey (just don’t go crazy on them as there are recommended daily dosages). It doesn’t make her growth any less organic or valid—it’s still her hair growing out of her scalp. Vitamins are a great addition to a healthy lifestyle and often they can help absorb more of the nutrients from various foods. No one would run up on a ripped body builder and slap the protein shake out of his or her hand, so why should they slap the prenatal pill from yours?
I love how it’s totally fine to plop a wig on your head and claim every centimeter of the bundle of Remy from a single donor swishing down the center of your back, but when it’s time to toss back a few hair growth vitamins with your breakfast to help strengthen your hair, it becomes faking the funk. It’s not that serious. It’s not as if individual sprouts of hair budding from your scalp are monitored by the powers that be of proper and civil hair growth. Some self hair care folks act like anyone who swallows an MSM capsule is out here ‘roiding it up like a major league baseball player. Not the same thing at all. Even if we were all buying miracle pills from the black and white back pages of hair magazines—provided that they’re safe to ingest—I don’t see the problem of trying something new on the growth journey.
Perhaps it’s because a journey should be the signal of a lifestyle change or a new beginning, as most hair folks use it to signal a big chop for going natural, but the journey shouldn’t have tough rules to follow, lest women be chastised for veering off the path of “no this” and “definitely no that” during the time they try to reach their goals. Taking a few hair vitamins is fine, and it’s a lot better than slathering a tube of Monistat 7 on your scalp…
