It’s been a minute since your strands had a meeting with the “creamy crack.” You’ve embraced your natural hair — curly, kinky, a little bit of everything — and you love flaunting its fabulousness every day at school. But on the real, though, sometimes your hair doesn’t wanna act right and you just wish waking up like ‘dis (***Flawless) took a little less effort.
The struggle is real and every natural girl can relate.
1. You become a product junkie. When your hair was relaxed you had two, maybe three, product staples: shampoo, conditioner, and probably some wrap lotion. Once you went natural, you thought you needed to spend your allowance on every serum, oil, and curl cream out there, thinking at least one would magically pop your texture into perfection. (Prevents frizz? LIES! On to the next, on, on to the next one.) Now, you want ALL the products!
2. You have to schedule your social life around #WashDay. Date night? Girls’ night? Girl, bye. Y’all better let a sistah know about any future plans ahead of time. Wash day isn’t a 5- to 10-minute type deal: Shampooing + conditioning + detangling = 30 to 45 minutes. And if you’re trying to pull off a twist out, plan for one to two hours of twisting and overnight for drying time.
3. You are not here for all those hair type charts. 3C, 4B, 4A… What about a type with all the textures mixed into one? When they make that, then you’ll holla, ’cause, uh, that’s all you.
4. You battle shrinkage, but it wins. Every. Time. It’s all long hair, don’t care after a blowout, but come wash day, everybody in class starts asking why you cut off all your hair.
5. You love rockin’ box braids as a protective style. (Guaranteed good hair days for the next 2 to 3 months? Yasssss.) What you DON’T love is the 8 hours it takes to put them in and the 12 hours it takes to take them down.
6. You deal with randoms who help themselves to touching your hair (without asking, BTW) on the regular. If you’re a friend and you’re curious and ask to touch the ‘fro? Cool. If you’re not, don’t even think about it. It’s true, your locks are a work of art, but just like the signs in the museums say, “Do Not Touch.” (Your hair is not a national exhibit, anyway.) K, thanks, bye.
7. Your hair is way too thirsty. It feels like no matter how much you moisturize, your strands are always desperate for more. Water? Check. Shea butter cream? Check. Olive oil? Check. Moisturizing gel? Check. Ooooo, that’s gonna leave some build-up. Dang.
8. You found out the Pineapple Method isn’t always bae (the hard way). No matter how many YouTube tutorials you watched, this method just legit did not work for you. Tying a satin scarf loosely all over your head, tho? Win. It didn’t crush your curls like you thought it would, and you wake up, shake your head, fluff, and GO. #2ndDayCurls
9. You wish you had the skills of a thousand natural hair YouTube vloggers. Just how do they get their ‘fros so big, beautiful, bouncy, and soft? And why is it that when you try an “easy” twist-out, it just never ever works out as planned? Oh, and what about those flat twist styles? You still don’t even understand how to begin. Welp, guess it’s a wash n’ go/afro puff type day — again.
10. You take and share 10+ selfies of that one time you got your natural style perfect on the first try. ‘Cause who knows when that’ll happen again. A few weeks later, you tell your mom you’re having trouble fixing your hair and she says, “Why don’t you just do what you did last time?” You secretly give her the side-eye like, “If only I could…”
11. You’ve considered going back to the relaxer a few times. Sometimes it just seems easier, for real. But then, you remember just how versatile your natural strands are — you can wear them bone straight, in a fro’, braided up, and in so many other ways there’s no room to even begin naming them all right here.
And you wouldn’t trade your #TeamNatural status for anything.
Did you struggle during your transition (and after)? Tweet us!
