How to Care for 3B Hair: A Complete Guide to Defined, Less Frizzy Curls
Every 3B guide says the same two words about your curls: frizzy and dehydrated. The fix, they promise, is more moisture, deeper conditioning, oils, and a weekly drenching. You have probably tried all of it and watched your curls frizz anyway. I believed the moisture-deficit story too, until I went through the actual science with […]
3A Hair Type: How to Tell If You Have It (and What It Actually Needs)
Your hair falls in loose waves one morning and springs into defined ringlets the next. That is the maddening, wonderful truth about 3A curls: they rarely behave the way the chart says they should. I have spent years writing about curls, but my fastest education happened at home. Two of my kids have 3A hair, […]
Are Alcohols Bad for Your Hair? The Drying-Alcohol Myth, Explained
Open almost any curly hair forum and the rule is absolute: alcohol is drying, so avoid it. Scan an ingredient list, spot the word alcohol, put the bottle back. It is one of the most repeated rules in hair care, and it is built on a misunderstanding of what the word alcohol even means. I […]
Deep Conditioners for Low Porosity Hair: Key Ingredients and Honest Picks
Walk into any low porosity thread and the deep conditioning advice is nearly identical: your cuticle is sealed shut, so steam it open, force the moisture in, then rinse with cold water to lock it. I went through the actual cosmetic chemistry on this with my friend, a hair scientist and cosmetic formulator with a […]
Pre-Poo for Low Porosity Hair: What It Actually Does (and When to Skip It)
My own hair is high porosity and bleached, so a pre-poo earns its place in my routine. But I watched the low porosity readers in my community get handed the exact same advice I follow, as if a pre-shampoo oil would help their hair drink in moisture it was supposedly starved for. That advice does […]
How to Grow Low Porosity Hair: Length Retention That Actually Works
If you have low porosity hair and feel like it is stuck at the same length, I want to start with some good news that goes against most of the advice online: low porosity hair is usually the healthier, less damaged end of the spectrum, and it grows at the same rate as anyone else’s. […]
How to Grow High Porosity Hair: Length Retention That Actually Works
If your high porosity hair feels like it grows and grows but never gets longer, you are not imagining it, and you are not doing everything wrong. High porosity hair is fragile, and it tends to break at the ends about as fast as it grows at the scalp. So the goal is not really […]
High Porosity Hair Explained: Best Products, Routine & Ingredients
For years, many of us in the curly hair community leaned on observation, trial, and shared experience to make sense of our hair. We learned to test our porosity by dropping a strand in a glass of water, sorted ourselves into low, medium, or high, and then chased the products that were supposed to match […]
Rinse-Out Conditioners for High Porosity Hair: Key Ingredients (and 8 I Use)
Conditioner was probably the first product you reached for when you started caring about your curls, and for good reason. If your hair is high porosity, meaning the cuticle is worn and damaged, the rinse-out conditioner you use every wash quietly does more for how your hair looks and behaves than almost anything else in […]
Curl Cream for High Porosity Hair: Key Ingredients to Look For
Leave-ins are the non-negotiable in my high porosity routine, but a curl cream is what I reach for when I want more: more conditioning, more definition, and a more polished, pulled-together result. It is my somewhere-special-to-be product. Leaving it out still works, but the cream is the step that takes my curls from good to […]