Is Your Straight Frizzy Hair Secretly Supposed To Be Wavy Or Curly? Find Out!
In August of last year I shared my Frizzy Damaged Hair Products blog post. I talked about how I had hair that appeared damaged and frizzy, with a frizz halo all the time. My hair has always been straight, yet when looking up content about frizzy hair, I kept finding information about curly hair or wavy hair.
Then I found out that to maintain their naturally curly hair, many people have to treat it in a certain way. For example, some people with naturally curly hair will just have frizzy, poofy hair if they use a brush after washing their hair because it breaks the curl patterns.
I started reading about the curly girl method and found out that many people with straight frizzy hair actually have curly hair if they treat it right! I was intrigued – but I didn’t want to purchase curly girl approved products yet because it sounded expensive. Someone told me to just use my normal hair products, but to squish to condish while in the shower, then to plop my hair, and then to NOT touch my hair until it is 100% dry, and to not use a comb or brush on it at all.
If you look up squish to condish and/or plopping, most tutorials will talk about certain hair products, or doing things like leaving conditioner in your hair. If you are just trying this the first time, you do not have to do that. Just wash with shampoo, rinse, then use conditioner, rinse, and then “squish” your hair up to your scalp to see if waves form.
I did this, and I saw more waves and more defined waves in my hair than before, but the difference was fairly subtle. From there, I added a gel and I saw a lot more shine, less frizz and better-defined waves. If you do this and see more waves and/or curls in your hair – then you likely have hair that wants to be curlier than it is able to be based on your current method. If you have truly straight hair, it will remain straight despite these methods, according to what I have read.
In the photo below, the top left is my hair after just doing ‘squish to condish’ and plopping. I was did not use any hair styling products, and I fully rinsed out my shampoo and conditioner (which had silicones and sulfates so they were not curly-girl approved products). The top right is my hair with my old shampoo and conditioner (again, not curly-girl approved) but I added in a hard-cast gel while plopping and then ‘scrunched out the crunch‘ when dry).
The bottom left photo was my hair on an average day when I was still washing my hair as usual and brushing. The picture on the bottom right is my hair after a deep conditioning treatment back before squish to condish or plopping.
Once I saw some improvement with just squishing and plopping, I decided to try curly girl method in its entirety. I’ve seen a bit more improvement but I have a lot of learning and experimenting to do before I can share more. I am still just in shock that my straight hair is naturally wavy and I never knew.
If you decide to give the curly girl method a try, I have a post about an affordable start to the curly girl method so you can get going without spending too much money.
The pictures in this post were just the beginning of my journey. My hair has changed a lot in the 2.5+ years since I made this discovery. Here are a few pics in chronological order to show you the changes over time.
I started an entirely new blog about my wavy hair if you want to learn more about the curly girl method or naturally wavy hair care check it out. www.WavyHairCare.com.
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Testing this out! I would love more volume:)
i love this method. its really nice and pretty decsriptive. thank you!
Wow! This makes so much sense. I’ve had horribly frizzy hair my whole life and when I was pregnant my hair got super wavy 2b. Outside of pregnancy its 2a. And after I’ve been to the salon and had app the good hydrating products and then the next day I take a shower BOOM my hair is wavy from root to tip. I can’t wait to explore this new knowledge and hydrate and gel cast my hair
That’s awesome, I hope it goes well for you! It’s been about 13 months since I started the curly girl method and I’m still so glad I found it. I feel so much better about my hair now vs a year or so ago. It had gotten so frizzy I was wearing it in a bun all the time even though I’ve never liked how I look with my hair pulled back. I have so much more confidence with letting my natural waves out…so much so that even when I get the occasional comment about my hair being ‘big’ or ‘wild’ or something like that, I can brush it off pretty easily because I am so happy with it myself that I really don’t care what others think. It has shown me that there really are some stigmas around curly hair though. Some think that anything less than perfectly straight, sleek hair is ‘unkept’ or something. Kind of frustrating. I have a natural side part and my hair is naturally wavy so it’s never going to look like doll hair or anything but I like it. 🙂
What brand of gel did you use?
If you have any gel on hand, I would use any one that you want for the first try. Even one with silicones should help with waves/curls definition. Then if it works well and you decide to try the curly girl method you can switch to one that is curly girl approved. If you need to buy one though, I’d recommend LA looks brand gel. They are about $2 and available at walmart, target, basically everywhere and it is curly girl approved. I’m about a year into CGM now but I still use the LA looks gel becuase it’s so cheap and works just fine, I see no real reason to try anything more expensive.
Thank you so much for this post 😍 I had baby curls and then frizzy slightly wavy hair but I always considered it was straight. I discovered the curly girl method for my hair and thought about how my hair has been over the years and decided to give it a go, it was great at first but my hair is currently looking awful 🙁 just a big tangled frizz ball. I have been trying to find out if it was worth me continuing but now I will continue!
Interesting concept, although I wouldn’t consider your hair straight. It definitely has some wave to it even before trying this curvy girl method. I doubt this would help someone whose hair actually dries straight without products.
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Huh. Funny coincidence, I was just noticing how evenly textured waves were showing up in my hair after a shower and I was very intrigued. Now I’m quite sure that is just how it wants to look naturally. Can’t believe it took me almost 35 years to figure this out, especially considering I spent many an hour in the seat of “professionals” over the years.
I didn’t even stumble upon this page because of the curiosity stemming from that; I was just looking up a bit of info about straight hair.
I felt the same way after discovering the curly girl method! IT was like – how did I never notice that my hair was wavy when wet while other peoples stays straight when wet? It was just my normal so I never thought twice about it. It’s interesting that you somehow got here while looking up something related to straight hair. This has been my most popular blog post the last few months but I can’t figure out where the traffic is actually coming from. Usually Google Analytics shows me whether the traffic is coming from google’s search engine or Pinterest or elsewhere but for some reason it’s just saying unknown. So i’ve been curious how people have been finding this one. 🙂
hi, I have always considered my hair as straight. however, I read a forum recently where on person stated that they had always considered their hair to be straight, but any time they would wash their hair they would unknowingly brush out any existing curl pattern. I believe that I have possibly done the same. when I was younger I had a slight wave pattern, but my mum would always brush my hair when it was wet so I suppose the pattern would have been destroyed. now I had considered my hair to be straight, however I always use straighteners because if I did’t it would go frizzy. Would you consider my hair type to be wavy? I am trying the curly girl method to see if I get any results.
I can’t really say without seeing your hair, but based on you saying that your hair is frizzy unless you straighten it that does make me think t’s at least a possibility. As this post talks about, i’d advise doing ‘squish to condish’ method while in the shower and then not brushing your hair after getting out of the shower and lettng it air-dry to see if that makes any difference in your hair texture. If it makes no difference then changing hair care products likely won’t help much but if it gets even a little bit more wavy/curly then I’d probably recommend buying curly girl hair care products at that point to start your journey. 🙂
Hi there Emily! I had always been told by my parents that I have a slight natural curl. As a child, I remember my hair is quite frizzy when put into a ponytail, like a scarecrow’s. It now has lost a lot of its frizz. I also remember that before I cut my hair, it might have a slight wave to it when it’s damp (but not when it’s dry). Now that I had cut my hair to a bob and permed the ends of it, I don’t see it any longer, probably because it’s too short. My hair also has a puffy hairline to it. Do you think my hair might somehow show more waves? (PS: This is my screen name.)
It’s really hard to say, I think. My hair was never curly as a little kid the way so many peoples are. Mine got “frizzy and poofy” starting around the time that I started puberty but I managed it by straightening it and that mostly worked…until I started birth control. Then the frizz was just out of control no matter what I did! So I think hormones changes have made my hair curl more, and perhaps the opposite happens for others who are curly as young children but seem to lose it as they enter adolescence? I find that my hair is curlier the shorter it is, though…I think that is true for most curly haired people? But I could be wrong. Even at bob length you could try to ‘squish to condish’ and use mousse or gel in your hair while it’s still wet to see if it is curly once it dries. 🙂
Hi Emily again! (The “Reply” button does not seem to work properly on my browser; that’s why I’m leaving a new comment as a reply.) Yeah, I tried the “squish and condish” with no results before I even wrote the above comment. I remembered that when I wrapped my hair in a towel before I had a bob and let it down later when it does not drip water (my hair never air dries except when all towels and hair ties are removed), it did curl somewhat. I’m sure if I had tried this “squish and condish” a week ago with my long hair it would have formed some waves (as it’s basically scrunching), though the curls never show up when dry. To give you an idea, if I had put my now-gone long hair in a towel, twisted it, let it sit for fifteen minutes to a half hour, and loosed it, the curl might had resembled—hum—your bottom right photo before it would have dried on itself or before I would have blown dry it (though I almost never use a blow dryer for anything other than drying my hair—that is, no blow straightening). Therefore, I might try this again with longer hair after I grow my permed-at-the-end bob grows out. In the meantime, do you think there would be a way for me to show up anything with a bob? Thanks!
Hi! Thanks for posting this, super helpful, I always was so frustrated because there only seemed to be curly haired people when I tried to google why my hair was so frizzy and how to make it less frizzy. NONE of the methods I tried to make my hair less frizzy worked, I tried everything I could think of, but this really does help a lot. I was always so insecure about my super frizzy hair, I would too just leave it in a bun 24/7.
Thank you – Jemimah Bean