This week I decided to try a Wash n Go (WnG) for the first time ever.
YouTube is full of women with similar hair textures to me having great success in defining their coils and kinks. It appealed to me because my hair loves to shrink up and frizz out on me as soon as I step outside of the house, no matter what product I’ve got in it. A WnG will allow me to rock my hair ‘as is’, without stretching it, so It can’t possibly shrink any more than it already is.
Of course MY hair wouldn’t co-operate with me would it! My first attempt was a bit of a fail. In that one, I took a leaf out of the Maximum Hydration Method’s book and did a bentonite clay hair mask, which is supposed to help type 4 hair clump together to get better WnG definition. I shampooed my roots, detangled with conditioner then followed up with the mask. Then there was THIS VIDEO I watched where the lady put all her hair products upside down on soaking wet hair before turning right side up again. I thought it looked good so I gave that a try. In the first attempt, I used my leave-in conditioner followed by Eco Custard. But the clay was a pain to mix (I’d forgotten just how much work it takes to mix the clay in with water), and the eco custard wasn’t heavy enough to weigh my coils down. So I decided to go back in with Eco Gel (the Olive Oil one). It was better but the definition was non-existent. In the end I decided to use the Denman Brush and take small sections and brush through the sections to get my hair clump, which worked a lot better, but my hair was in product overload so the whole thing just turned out gunky.
The next day I rinsed it out with conditioner (ditched the clay) and just finger detangled. Then I applied my leave-in conditioner on soaking wet hair and then in small sections applied Eco Gel and clumped using the Denman. The back of my hair clumped a lot better then the front did. At the front no matter what I did (smoothing through my fingers, praying hands, whatever) It just wouldn’t clump properly. I had to speed up the drying time by using my blow-dryer without any attachments, which allowed my to stretch my roots a bit too, which I liked. Overall It turned out better then the previous one, but it was still a rather frizzy fro! Here’s the finished look.
Day 2 hair.
Day 3 & 4 – It was quite frizzy so I decided to do a roll and tuck style with it.
Day 5 – Had somewhere nice to go with Hubby so decided to rock a twist-out. I spritzed my hair with my conditioning milk and smoothed over some hair oil. I figured that there was more then enough gel in my hair to give it good hold. I followed the lines I had already created with the tuck n roll style and did three flat twists, pinning the twists around the my head to keep them stretched. When I took it out the curls were large and wavy-like, which I really liked, but the gel flaked a bit. No worries, It was still a great night out. Lol.
I’ve learnt that my hair just does what it wants. It wont be coerced, manipulated, bribed or forced into doing anything it doesn’t want to. I’m learning to work with it rather then trying to get it to do something it wont. I’m learning through these styling sessions what is realistic for my type of hair (4b/a frizzy) and to love it for what it is.
Nadia's Notes 