i got sick of the curls

I straightened my hair this weekend, after years of natural curl. It was beginning to take up too much space, and it’s in that “inbetween” stage of growing out where it’s neither short enough to be cute nor long enough to be cute. It’s medium enough to be a giant frizzy mess. I go through phases where I’ll straighten it regularly, and then I won’t do it for years.

So, by “straighten” I mean I put a non-lye chemical relaxer on it. What I’ve done in the past is buy a home perm kit, and instead of putting my hair in rollers, I’d just brush it straight for the whole length of the processing time. And those tend to work okay, leaving my hair less tightly curled. But this time I wanted a more radical change, something that would really make it straight (or at least as straight as my hair can get), so I bought a relaxer meant for black peoples’ hair. I’ve used them before, and while they are kind of harsh on my hair texture, they really do the trick. So I went ahead with it, and although it does kind of feel like straw now, if I condition it heavily for a couple of weeks and use hot oil treatments, I think it will be fine.

In the photo below, it’s still damp. When it dries it will get bigger and fluffier.