Regardless of the slight uneasiness, I attempted to reassure myself as I sat down within the salon chair, seemed round, and noticed how totally different my texture was from the opposite purchasers. These stylists have been curly-hair specialists! I used to be in good palms! I’ve reported on curly cuts earlier than; I knew they may very well be transformative. After six years of carrying my hair pure, I used to be trying ahead to seeing these outcomes.
I bought a normal shampoo session, then was positioned below a hooded dryer to let the deep conditioner penetrate (and, in fact, to let my hair dry) earlier than any scissors got here close to my head. As soon as the stylist started slicing every curl—and I do imply every particular person curl, separately—my preliminary thought was, Wow, that is going to take perpetually. Thus started my first gripe with curly cuts: “A curly minimize can take about an hour and a half to 2 hours, which incorporates the wash-and-go styling after the minimize,” says New York Metropolis-based hairstylist Karen Miller, who focuses on styling and slicing textured hair, each curly and stretched, and works with stars together with Quinta Brunson and Solange. “A regular haircut on blown-out textured hair takes about an hour.”
Most curly-cut appointments will finish with a pure coiffure like a twist-out, a braid-out, or, mostly, a wash-and-go. (Now that you simply’ve enhanced your curls with the minimize, it’s time to indicate them off, proper?!) Regardless of my protest that wash-and-gos at all times go away me with a shrunken-up, stiff Afro, the stylists insisted it was the most effective styling methodology for my texture. So that they coated my hair in copious quantities of gel and mousse earlier than diffusing it. As I predicted, I used to be left with a shrunk-up Afro. Now, there’s nothing incorrect with a TWA, nevertheless it’s not what I used to be used to nor what I felt I signed up for. The form of my curls seemed spiky and as I went to shake my hair, anticipating some motion, like the ladies I noticed on TikTok, I bought nothing. My curls have been stiff.
Did I mismanage my expectations? Perhaps. However within the following days, I grew to become satisfied that my hair wasn’t meant for curly cuts. The following morning, my curls have been dry and coiled along with no bounce or motion. White flakes of gel residue floated down from my hair each time I moved my head ever so barely.
