The Curly Girl Method (for Wavy Hair!)

No blow dryer. No curling iron. Pretty cool, right?

I used to have cute hair every day. This was after washing, conditioning, product-ing, blow-drying, and flat-ironing it into submission several times a week. These were times in which I also wore stilettos and slept in on the weekends and drank my coffee uninterrupted.

Then I had children. Cute hair became an impossible dream. (So did the stilettos and the luxurious coffee drinking.)

As it turns out, without all those appliances, my hair is a giant frizz ball that's neither straight, wavy OR curly...just messy. And big. And a giant pain in the ass.

After four years of mom-hood (and a lot of bad hair days) and three decades of fighting against my hair's natural state, I decided to take control. I stumbled onto the Curly Girl Method by admiring a fellow blogger's photo on Instagram and started obsessively Googling "curly girl hair." Created by Lorraine Massey, this technique for dealing with naturally curly and wavy hair has a serious cult following. I decided to give it a try. Because there was quite a learning curve and I knew from my research that an adjustment period was often necessary, I held off on writing about it until I had real results to report.

I've experimented, made giant steps forward, made even more giant steps back, taken a bazillion self-portraits of the back of my head, been complimented by strangers, and once or twice had to take an emergency shower before I could leave the house. I've tried dozens of products, annoyed my long-suffering husband, and trolled through countless internet chat rooms devoted just to curly hair.


I've been waiting six weeks to write this post and I'm very excited to finally share the results of my latest beauty experiment with you. The fact that I've stuck with a hair "method" this long is a miracle in and of itself...but the results have been pretty awesome, too! So awesome, in fact, that people have been commenting on how nice my hair looks. Which never, ever happens.

At long last, I present...my adapted Curly Girl Method for Wavy Hair!

The Basics

- No sulfates
- No silicones (basically any ingredient with "cone" at the end)
- Shampoo as infrequently as possible, using only non-sulfate shampoo
- Lots of conditioner
- No terry cloth towels (I switched to a microfiber hair towel, but J's T-shirts work just as well and he has a bazillion of them)

If you're tempted to try the Curly Girl method, I highly encourage you to:

a) Try a LOT of variations on the system until you find what works for you and your hair
and
b) Stick with it! You'll thank me at the end. I promise.

Below is what's working for me based on my specific hair type and the culmination of TONS of trial and error...