Virginia-based cosmetologist, educator, and author Tishona Pritchett She says she has never relied on hair typing for that reason. She wasn’t taught this when she studied in cosmetology school more than 30 years ago, and even after learning about the different hair textures represented on charts, she didn’t adopt it. “It makes no sense for my clients to only focus on healthy hair,” she says.
Many of Pritchett’s clients come in convinced that their hair is 4C because of what they see on the chart, but when she examines the hair, what they often identify is just damaged hair or curls that haven’t been properly cared for, not true texture.
Dr. Asempa says that when considering how to care for your hair on a daily basis, it’s a good idea to start with the condition of your hair, including its damage level and porosity, or in other words, its absorbency. Porosity is determined by two factors. One is your natural lipids and cuticle structure, and the other is the external choices you make.
Dyes, relaxers, perms, and heat styling all contribute to breaking the chemical bonds in your hair, permanently altering its structure. Therefore, product marketing based solely on curl pattern can be misleading, Dr. Asempa explains. For example, a white person with bleached straight hair may actually benefit from the same products as a black person with highly porous coils. The most important thing is the structure and health of the hair.
The texture of your hair also plays a role in your overall health. Changes in your body, such as stress, hormonal changes, medications, or simply aging, can weaken or shrink your hair follicles. This can cause your curl pattern to loosen or lose density. Hairtyping systems are also not designed to handle this type of change.
Today’s hair type chart reinforces long-held prejudices
Many people in the natural hair community have long pointed out that modern curl pattern charts indirectly favor looser, Eurocentric textures, which can reinforce harmful and prejudicial ideas about beauty. By literally placing straight hair first as type 1 and coiled texture last as type 4, we subtly reinforce the idea that the tighter the texture, the further away it is from what has historically been labeled as “ideal” or “default.” That hierarchy didn’t start with Walker. Again, the very concept of creating hair classifications began with eugenics. But I believe his chart unintentionally advanced some of that idea.
Source: Allure – www.allure.com
