A Manly Twist-Out

I did my boyfriend's hair last night. I'm not sure what number-letter hair type he has (though I dare say 4b), but his hair is dense and thick. After starting school, and a couple of days of being lazy, I finally sat him down and decided to give his afro a little TLC.

The Backstory

His routine was...nil. Every morning he woke up with his hair totally matted in the back and a little bit on the sides. And then, it basic problem-solution type man-thinking, would begin to pick it out completely dry! Needless to say I found this out and was completely horrified. I know it had to hurt my baby's head. Throughout the day I loved to play with his fro and do random things but my fingers let me know that it was majorly dry, and the Savannah heat was not helping. If his hair didn't do that lovely thing of growing nearly completely vertical, I would say it would probably be frizzy as well. The first day I arrived I promised him I would try a little of my natural hair care routine on it. I've been practicing :)

The Process

The process was probably your basic Sunday all day thing. To start off, I conditioned and clarified his hair by adding a bit of baking soda to Suave Humectant Conditioner. Great stuff! I bought the $3.00 big bottle to last me a while but his hair drank about 1/3 of it that day. Next I sat him down in front of Star Wars: Empires At War to detangle, heh. I parted his hair in four sections and used a wide pick, going row-by-row. This was the hardest part of the whole process, as his hair was, despite his constant picking, very tangled. After rinsing (very carefully I might add, it was as though his hair wanted to be knotted) I applied Le Kair Cholesterol Conditioner and a squeeze of honey as a deep conditioner. This conditioner was a total bargain. It has really great ingredients in a large tub for about two dollars. I let this sit in for about 30 minutes with no heat, and after I rinsed it out I found that his hair, despite being naturally vertical, had very little curl to it until you got to the ends, which were about as kinky as my whole head. I was fascinated. After a light towel pat, I parted his hair in half. By this time the pick was sliding through like a dream. For a leave-in, I used Africa's Best Ultimate Herbal Oil (which is also awesome for two dollars) and a nickel sized amount of shea butter. I then began to twist. Since I was planning to do a twist out, I parted each row with a comb, but then used finger-parting for each twist section. To seal the ends, I had to use beeswax as shea butter would not hold. This part of the process took the longest, as his hair was not long enough for large sections to be twisted at once. I would say there are about 150 twists on his head. The entire process somehow took about 4 hours to do. I didn't take any photos of the twists themselves but they were rather nice.

Before Mon.08.10.09

Note:I wish I had taken before photos that day (Monday), but I hadn't planned to post about it. In these before pictures, it actually looks pretty not-dry, but this is just to show the style it was in, I guess.

 

  

  

 

After Tues.08.11.09

 

Though it took forever, it was a lot of fun, a definitely worth it. His strong willed hair held onto the curls quite well. I don't have any photos for today, but it is currently the second day and though it's a tad flat (he refused to sleep on his face, ha.) it is still very cute. This was great practice for me and I was glad to help him and his hair.

Peace. Love,

Jadeite