If curly hair has you in desperate straits, you have a few
options for taking control. The most user-friendly but least
effective mode of straightening or relaxing your hair is
probably the home-use flat iron, a ceramic heater that
flattens the hair and applies heat to temporarily smooth and
straighten it. Perfect for use when your style of the moment
requires sleekness, flat irons are quick, convenient and
relatively inexpensive. You may also want to buy hair products
that maximize the smoothness you can get from a flat iron:
deep conditioners or glosses for after care can help keep your
hair soft even after it’s been through the fire. Pay attention
to hair care tips after straightening: your hair will be more
fragile than before.
Chemical Relaxers for Really Curly Hair
For serious straightening of super curly hair, many African
American women turn to chemical relaxers, often done in the
safety of the beauty salon. Made with ingredients much like
permanent solutions, chemical relaxers work by breaking down,
reforming and then solidifying the protein bonds in the hair
shaft. If you have a friend with lots of experience and a
kitchen timer, you can probably do chemical relaxing at home
with a product from a beauty supply store, but if you’re
nervous at all about potential results, or if your hair has
damage from previous stylistic explorations, you may want to
work with a professional stylist to get the hairstyle you want.
Permanent Hair Straightening in a Professional Salon
The latest thing in hair straightening is called Japanese
Thermal Hair Straightening, a process that combines chemical
relaxers with hair irons, for a permanently straightened head
of hair. Of course, since hair does grow, the straightened
part will eventually grow out and need replacing, but since
most hair grows at a rate of about a half-inch per month,
many people don’t even need a touch-up until six months
later—or more. Long hair will show the curl less, since the
weight at the bottom will pull it down more than the ends of
short or medium hair. Whether you want o get rid of a little
wave or an all-out Afro, the process will work: for long,
curly hair, it will take longer.
But thermal straightening costs more than $500—and you can’t
get your best friend to do it over the kitchen sink, because
we’re talking high-tech processing here. There are at least
two applications of a perm-like fluid, the first to break the
bonds of the hair, and the second to harden it. In between, the
stylist smoothes and straightens small portions of hair with a
special iron until all the hair is perfectly straight.
Afterwards, there is rinsing and conditioning. Your stylist will
tell you not to get your hair wet for the next 24-48 hours, or
you could lose all that nice smoothness.
The people who tout thermal straightening are right in that the
hair, when done right, is smooth, shiny and straight as can be.
It is not impervious to humidity, and no matter how good it
looks, it’s not “healthy”. After subjecting your hair to
alkaline chemicals, heat extremes and a couple of blow-drying
episodes in a process that lasts four hours or more, it would
be silly to think that your hair won’t be drier, stressed and
more likely to break. Deep conditioning is the answer, and
avoidance of all things chemical. For perfect straightness,
you’ll still have to blow dry it, but it will still be quite
straight if you let it air dry.
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