My best friend’s name is Andrea.  I’ve known her since 1996.  We are old school ravers who naturally intertwined our social lives over the years.   The first 15 years of knowing each other was through night clubs and dancing our asses off. But when we hit the age of 30, we couldn’t go out as much because our corporate jobs had basically ruined the stay out till 3 am mantra from our early 20’s.   Despite this long history, we did not actually become close until around 2002; She said I was less shady the older I got and that she could trust me more with not getting us into trouble. 

I came to rely on this woman to my core.  She helped me through a messy divorce and to raise my daughter with her husband on the weekends so I could go to my photo shoots and pursue my dreams of being an editorial stylist. 

I became a Deva stylist right around the time she decided to stop wearing her hair in braids or protective styles and instead let her 4C hair out to be naturally free and curly. 

Of course, this was 2012, and I was certain that what Drea needed was the trending Brazilian Blowout.  I convinced her that I could make her life easier and her hair would be more manageable. 

I literally did not have any idea of what was about to happen.  My perception of her hair was limited to the one time she trusted me enough to do her hair.  That was on her wedding day.  We forgot to do a trial run and I figured I could throw her braided hair into an updo in 15 minutes. 

Needless to say, my ignorance to the density of her hair made her 55 minutes late to the alter.  She looked great!  But her family and friends were antsy by the time the wedding party finally entered. 

When trying the Brazilian blowout, I should have remembered the thickness and adjusted my time- management accordingly.  I ought to have allocated time and endurance to the application, blow drying and flat ironing steps.  It took us 6 hours to do what is normally a 2-hour treatment.

 When we were done, we were hungry.  Drea’s hair looked straight, sleek and semi shiny instead of dull and lackluster.  Kind-a like Michelle Obama’s hair!  I was satisfied that my brilliant plan of a chemical to fight frizz and not relax the hair was a success.  So, we went to eat dinner 6 blocks away from Blown.  We walked there in semi-humidity, it was May in the Washington, DC9also known as DMV) area at the time.

As we sat at dinner having a great conversation and relaxing, I started to get a taste of what happens to low porosity hair when a chemical has touched it.  I watched for the next 25 minutes as saw her hair strands reverted from perfectly straightened from flat-ironing 7-10 passes each, to curly coiled hair in its original 4c pattern.  Mind blown! 

She just laughed at me; she knew this would probably happen since that was also her experience with chemical relaxers, leading her to go natural in the first place.  She told me since I was so enthusiastic about doing this amazing service for her, she would sit in my chair.  Had it been a miracle and her hair benefited from the treatment I may have had her in my chair from that day forward every 16 weeks. Thankfully for the sake of this story and the hope of us collectively working on a product line the universe had different plans for us.

I continued to do Deva cuts and mention things about my career.  I had been doing curly cuts for about 8 months when I received my first guest who was transitioning from a relaxer/perm to her natural curl.  She sat in my chair frustrated, aggravated and desperate.  She also trusted I had an idea of what to do.  Her ends were completely straight and her roots were sprouting a garden of baby hairs young and coiled; the combination of the two looks looked very unflattering. 

The only suggestion I had was to trim the very dead ends off and leave some of the straight attached.  Her hair was about 2.5 inches of curls and another inch was straight.  I figured that the length being sacrificed just because it didn’t match would make my client feel naked.  She agreed.  So, we took the path of least resistance and let her curls fill in until they were long enough and then we cut a shape for the curls.  I mentioned her previously in this blog.  It is an honor that her 3 sons have also become regulars in my chair.  Everyone goes crazy for these kids’ hair!

 In the privacy of the conversations between Drea and I, I began to tell her the stories of curly transformations, my challenges and successes.  She was all ears and supportive.  Especially when it came to me interacting with clients who were of different textures than what I was used accustomed to. 

Around this time, Drea had been diving into what she called her “YouTube university” study of content by other African-American creators with type 4C hair on how to care for natural hair styles.  I’m not sure when she told me she was low-porosity.  I’m not even sure it clicked in my mind what she meant.  When I touched her hair, I always thought it was really dry, super unmanageable, dull and felt basically like steel wool.  I think I tuned out her self-assessment.  In my opinion her hair was porous, very porous even more porous than mine.  That was my final analysis.  I was the hairdresser; I assumed I was the expert.

I had forgotten about beauty school.  I forgot about porosity tests.  I never did a porosity test when I was at beauty school and that is a shame.  No shade to Mrs. Chamberlain though, she was awesome and taught me so much.  We just didn’t have the inspiration to do these tests back then.  It wasn’t a thing yet.

Simply fill a cup full of water and add a strand of freshly cleaned hair.  If your hair floats after 5 minutes, you are low porosity.  If your hair sinks to the bottom at lightning speed, you are high porosity.  If it lingers somewhere in the middle; you are medium porosity.

Sometimes when I do the test the hair floats for about a half hour then all the sudden it sinks to the bottom and then it starts to float again.  If your hair has product on it, it may affect the test this way.  It’s the product absorbing the water and then the hair returns to the top of the cup. 

Now for the shocker!  Mostly all my clients of color are low porosity.  25% of my white customers are also low porosity.  What is up with that?  I’m wondering about statistics.  The truth is out there somewhere, right Mulder? 

In the meantime, while shampoo companies are claiming their products are universal and one size fits all the rest of us are scurrying around buying stuff on a whim hoping for the best!  Let’s be real, right here, right now. 

I don’t work for a shampoo company.  I am an artist on commission.  I signed a contract with Deva Curl to not market other brands to customers that find me through their website.  That was all fine and dandy until there was that three-year debacle with the law suit which resulted in a 5.5 million dollar settlement. 

I work for myself.  No boss can tell me what to say or do.  It’s America, and I’m going to work my first amendment rights while I still have them.  Deva Curl dropped the ball then.  However,  the company changed ownership a few times.  Henkel is now the parent company. They own Schwarzkopf and that is the color I use.  I’ve had no challenges with Schwarzkopf.  If anything, the color line has only improved to be what I consider a leader in the industry.  I don’t use cheap products. 

I have been attending DevaCurl classes for many years.  The company is improving their education forum.  They give many complementary tutorials for all levels of students.  They also are planning on a class strictly about porosity.   A few classes can set you on a course to change the way you treat curly hair.  Years of experience and the multi-cultural melting pot of the DMV has also influenced my career.

Almost all clients ask me, if I know what was wrong with DevaCurl. The answer is, I’m not sure exactly.  It was causing build up for some of my customer base and I even had a few clients complain of skin irritation.  I have lost several clients because of the DevaCurl lawsuit.  Yet other client’s hair responded well to it.

When the lawsuit hit, it was the beginning of lockdown.  It was a scary time as a stylist worried about retention of my mostly curly client base in addition to in the fear of Covid.  I figured, great, now we all can dive deep into the YouTube rabbit hole following the drama of the lawsuit. In the end, I just decided to not join the party.  I went back to work after 10 weeks of isolation and tried to rebuild what was broken of my business. 

After a year of part time work and aspirations to be an owner I saw an ad on Craigslist to rent a chair.  I signed up right away and learned so much so fast.  However, I was not in control of my destiny in that situation, so I left after 2 years at Hayadi, I started to instead rent a chair at Glynn Jones LLC, Salon.

It is here, where my dreams are coming true.  I began to connect all the dots of my conversations with Drea and my efforts to crack the code of low porosity hair. 

I’ve been a part of a lot of big moments in my salon chair.  Women coming to me in that fight or flight desperation of reality vs. need.  Is it to be a big dramatic chop or just a few small snips for curl kind?

It was 7 months ago that I approached a curl puzzle with the best I had at the time.  I cut a woman’s hair to a shape that released the dead ends and gave some volume.  Guess what? She hated it! Her ends were like one inch of straight and anchoring down the hair at her scalp.  She didn’t want to lose the length but she didn’t want to keep the ends either.

That is a curl 22—also known as a no-win situation.  I was going with my intuition, but had forgotten my previous story above.  Long story short, I cut and color this woman’s hair and completely ruined her trust in me.

You know, I confided in my best friend.  I called Drea and bawled my eyes out.  I felt I was failing as a business owner and as a hairdresser and as a white service provider to black women specifically.  This is probably my biggest hang-up in my 28 years on the floor.

If I feel this way, I can only imagine what it feels like to be on the flip side of this kind of situation.  It breaks my heart that I could not get it right, and that I had a very unhappy guest leave my chair. 

Because I’m stubborn I didn’t give up.  I kept experimenting on mannequin heads and listening to Drea as she told me about her latest finds online to detox the hard water build up and the products, that she was using on her and her daughters Selene’s hair.

We met at the end of December 2022.  We were filming our conversation and doing Selene’s hair in the salon for the first time; she had just turned 7.  I was showing Drea my quick fix for hard water build up removal using vitamin C, Emergen-C packets.  I had been using the ones from Malibu but honestly, they are expensive and I found the Emergen-C packets work just as well.

I still use Malibu C wellness shampoo hard water remover.  It smells like flint stone vitamins and sunny D at the shampoo bowl.

We had a decent result.  Selene’s hair was half-way detoxed but she is tender headed and I basically tortured her for an hour learning to detangle Drea’s way, patiently from ends to mid to scalp—no exceptions.

We deep conditioned and styled.  By the time we were finished the shop was closing up and we had to leave.  Since then, my iPhone crashed from the four hours of content stored on there.  We talked for four hours straight about low porosity hair.  Although I have no visuals to share, what I learned was to not underestimate anyone’s ability to self-educate or be more knowledgeable than me when they are in my chair. 

Drea knows what she is talking about.  She brews her own tonics and finds inexpensive, aromatically pleasing concoctions that fill my car up w amazing uplifting scents every time I grab her to go to our favorite DC dance spots. 

We have discovered her DIY has basically the same main ingredients as the Malibu packets.  I had been dabbling with Malibu’s bentonite packets.  Again, it was really expensive and my guests sometimes have up to 4 to 6 years’ worth of growth. I’ve been playing with my formula to get dull lifeless curls back to life.  I ordered bentonite clay from Amazon.

It wasn’t until I added activated charcoal to my pixie dust concoction that I really started to get results.  Equal parts bentonite/apple cider vinegar/vitamin C/activated charcoal powders.  Stir in a plastic or ceramic bowl with non-metal spatula. 

First, shampoo the hair.  Get the bubbles going, lots of bubbles.  Next take a plastic spoon or plastic/rubber applicator of your choice and sprinkle this stuff into your hair roots to ends, section by section.  It will sound like pop rocks are bursting on your hair.  It will smell like eggs.  It will feel like an absolute mud pie.  Work your fingers down your hair shaft.  Roots to ends. Rinse after 20 minutes.  Shampoo a second time to get all that product out of there.  Reapply the treatment if you still feel the build-up or see that some has remained in your hair.  Follow up with a cleansing shampoo wash.

I like to do this treatment on my hair every 6 weeks.  I’m super porous but I still get hard water build up.  Drea does hers like every 4 to 6 depending on life and time management.  I think every 4 to 6 is good and to use decent resources in between to mitigate product build up and hard water build up and daily environmental buildup. 

Because there are different types of build-up there are different types of shampoo.  Vitamin C and charcoal are to remove hard water.  Deva’s Build Up Buster mostly targets product buildup.  Environmental build-up causes can range from well water to pollen. 

I like to deep condition after the bentonite treatment.  I put a mix of my secret sauces onto the hair and under the dryer you go for 10-20 minutes.  I get the hair as hot as you can take it.  Then I let you cool down.  Then I rinse and follow with a curl regimen.  If you like Deva and want to use it, I’m all about it.  If that’s not for you I have three other curly lines to choose from. 

At the end of the day, I want to know I did the best I could to help a curly individual out.  I show them that the curl still lives under all that build up and wants to be healthy and free.