This weekend’s attempt at my first Wash and Go…didn’t go… quite as I had planned. But all was not lost and I actually learned something about my hair and it’s texture. The first thing I learned is that my hair just won’t take to certain styles. I was a little disappointed because I had been researching style and methods that I have heard so much about but never tried. After a week of watching videos on YouTube studying the different techniques of women with similar hair length I thought that my attempt would at least yield me a slightly stretched and defined look. I recently did the big chopped (BC) in February after transitioning for a few months. Although I should have known that it might not work too well when I attempted the quick version of the Wash and Go as demonstrated by Backsyncfan on YouTube which left me with a frizzy mess. But I was convinced that if I did it the proper way that I would get the beautifully defined curls that I so admired on heads of my natural hair idols. Nope! Not my hair. The second thing I learned is that my hair has two different textures. In front and along the perimeter is the gate of very loose curls that guard my tightly curled crown. I tried using the shingling method which involves raking gel through small sections of hair at a time to define my curls but quickly realized that it wasn’t going to work. My hair seemed not to even have a curl so I improvised and began to finger coil my hair. My hair responded positively to the coils and I knew it would from experience. My first natural hair style were coils so I went with it. I still had problems with coiling parts of my hair which may be evident from the pictures posted, however as I worked my way to the crown and down coiling became effortless. So I ended up with finger coils instead of a Wash and Go and the coils came out beautifully. Also I learned that is much easier to coil when my hair is drenched in water versus dampened. And so lastly my attempt at a Wash and Go taught me that defining my curls likely won’t be possible with that particular technique because of my mixed texture. But I knew enough about my hair to know what it will do and was able to work it into a style. Therefore my message to my naturals is not to let yourself get frustrated if a style doesn’t work well for you. Just play with your hair and learn what works and what doesn’t when it comes to styling. Every hair style is not going to work for every Natural and we won’t know what will if we are not willing to try new things.
Below are pictures of my end result. The style took about an hour to complete. I thought that I could make it last for a week, but it turned out that it only really lasted a few days.
Fresh Finger coils – Day 1
Head bands helped me to stretch the style for an extra day or so. I wore this style for a total of 4 days.
Day 2 Finger Coils
For questions about what products I used, feel free to leave a reply to the post or send me an email to thenaturalyou13@gmail.com.
🙂
thenaturalyou 