Curly haired girls rejoice! Now is your time to shine. A big, full head of curls is totally in. Not so texturally blessed? Straight haired gals can get in on this look too. But first, the difference between a faux fro and a twist out.

Haven’t you always wanted to sport an Afro? To those of us with straight or mildly wavy hair, this look may have seemed an impossible dream. Well get ready to go big, because the faux fro is currently on trend and here to help those with limp, straight or otherwise uninspired locks.

Here’s the deal though. The ‘fro may not be new, but is news as a possibility for women with straight hair. An article in the August issue of Allure magazine features actress Marissa Neitling with a faux fro created by celebrity hair stylist, Chris McMillan. The look is cool, modern and … controversial?

After the issue ran, a backlash soon broke out over cultural appropriation. Many readers felt offended over the idea of teaching white women how to create this traditionally black hairstyle.

While there are many natural versions of this hairstyle roaming around out there on people of all races (looking at you, Seth Rogen), the same goes for straightened hair and many other style. So  maybe the style needs a different name when worn on white women. The coil? The twist? The big bounce? One reader on Twitter claims the look is actually called a “twist out” when done this way. Kinda love it!

We certainly are not intent on offending anyone, and admire and accept women and hairstyles of all kinds. Whether you are natural or do some styling to get your locks straight, curly or somewhere in between, do your thing.

How to Rock a Twist Out (aka, Faux Fro)

Heat Styling: If you want to get the look in less than a few hours time, go for the heat method. This method works best on wavy hair. Blow dry with a diffuser attachment until hair is completely dry. Now use a tiny barreled curling iron on tiny sections of hair. Didn’t say the process was fast, but quicker than the air dry method.

No Heat Styling: If you have the day off or are spending the night in, this is the method for you. Remember rag curls? Same idea only you’ll be using smaller sections of hair. Rip an old, soft Tshirt into skinny strips and roll from roots to scalp. The tinier the sections, the better your curls will look. Let air dry completely and remove the cloth strips.

Now gently loosen curls with your fingers and *voila* you are ready to go. For either method use an ample amount of sturdy mousse or styling product before drying or rolling. Try Rahua Hair Wax for long hair, Yarok Feed Your Curls Defining Crème for wavy hair, or Yarok Feed Your Roots Volume Enhancing Mousse.

*Disclaimer: Help support EcoSalon! Our site is dedicated to helping people live a conscious lifestyle. We’ve provided some affiliate links above in case you wish to purchase any of these products.

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Image of girl with curly hair via Shutterstock

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Thoughts from a boho, kooky, unserious, curly-haired woman.

If I’ve learned anything from the News of the World hacking scandal, it’s that if I’m ever called to testify in front of Congress, I really should stop and get a blowout first.

Because like former News International CEO Rebekah Brooks, I have very, very curly hair. The kind of hair where each strand twists and contorts itself until they all join up to form a labyrinthine web of kinky corkscrews. The kind of hair that is, by nature, untamed and wild.

The kind of hair that Robin Givhan, writing about Ms. Brooks in The Daily Beast, characterized as “boho,” “distracting,” “look-at-me hair.” “It was a ballsy rebuke of our expectations…There was no suggestion of humility, timidity, or caution…no attempt to disappear into doleful anonymity.”

Basically, Givhan argues that by virtue of its natural existence, Ms. Brooks’ hair sticks a finger in the eye of all things proper, righteous, and upstanding, and that if she cared about looking like a real CEO, she might have put it in a bun. I can’t speak for Ms. Brooks, but when you have the kind of hair that prompts entire columns about its perceived implications, trust me – doleful anonymity sounds pretty good.

I don’t mean for my curly hair to be a declaration of my identity. I didn’t ask for it to be this way. But whether I like it or not, my hair walks into the room before I do. It is and always has been the singular defining feature of my physical being, and it’s all people want to talk about. I have been forced to discuss it in job interviews and at funerals. When you have curls, no one cares about your big heart or your big thoughts; you are reduced to a person with big hair. My curls signify to the world that I am kooky, scatterbrained, free-spirited, unconventional, unruly, unkempt, unprofessional, un-corporate, rebellious, eccentric, quirky, and nonconformist. Or at least that’s how people like Givhan interpret them.

The idea of a curly-headed woman as distracting and unpolished is well-woven into our pop culture fabric. On any makeover show, the hair transformation will always involve a straightening iron. As they say, Messy Hair = Messy Life. In The Princess Diaries, Anne Hathaway isn’t princess material until she tames her frizz into a sleek blowout. On Friends, it’s no accident that ditzy Phoebe is the only female character with long waves. Even in the Harry Potter series, whip-smart Hermione is considered downright fugly until she emerges for the big dance with her usually wild hair fashioned into a demure straight style. I’ll stop here, but believe me – I could go on.

But curly hair isn’t just a semiotic concept; an idea to be parsed and analyzed in a what-does-it-all-mean kind of way. It’s personal. It’s personal every time I see a news segment showing how employers are less likely to hire curly-haired women, and men are less likely to want to date them. It’s personal when my husband asks, “If we have kids, what’s the chance they’d have hair like yours?” as if it were a disease. It’s personal when I assure him that genetically, it’s unlikely, and realize that I’m relieved, too. And it’s personal when fashion editors write columns decrying women who look like me as messy, defiant, and brazen.

Mostly, it gets personal every time some random stranger comments, “Oh, I’d love to have hair like yours!” Trust me – if people really wanted curly hair, fashion magazines wouldn’t be so full of blowout tips. Curls may be okay in theory, as long as they belong to adorable orphans or cartoon characters, but not on an adult woman. That is, assuming she wants to be taken seriously.

I was walking with my best friend once when a little old lady stopped me on the street to regale me with stories about how much she paid for perms, and how I was just the luckiest gosh-darned girl in the world. As we walked away, my friend said, “I have to tell you – your hair is great, but I would never want it in a million years.” I really loved her for that.

Image: lupzdut

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As is the case with most of my deeply held insecurities, I blame my hair obsession on Marcia Brady.

The oldest daughter and resident femme fatale of The Brady Bunch, Marcia was the personification of mid-1970s grooviness; she was also a constant reminder of my own physical shortcomings. Marcia was graceful and perky with big blue eyes and clear skin, but the most obvious difference between us was the stick-straight golden hair that fell past her shoulders in a mocking curtain of silky blonde perfection. My own hair, at the time, was an unpredictable cloud of chaos – an ethnic riot of mousey brown frizz and unruly curls, an unflattering, hard-to-groom mess.

Like other coiffure-challenged girls of my generation, I was at war with my hair and tried everything I could think of  to beat it into submission. I ironed it, oiled it and wrapped it around my head (a look my brother referred to as “nature’s turban.”) I slathered on a fruity pink gel called “Dippity Do” and set my hair with orange juice cans. At one point I experimented with a home straightening kit called Dark and Lovely, although I was neither of the two.

It took many years but I finally reached an uneasy truce with my hair – it may be charred and somewhat exhausted now, but it is also relatively straight and well-behaved, thanks to my slavish dependence on flatirons and silicone gels. I have also developed a mild case of hair-dependent agoraphobia, which means that I seldom go outside during periods of high humidity.

All of which has led me to consider the latest trend in hair straightening – the Brazillian Keratin process. This salon treatment relies on formaldehyde, a substance that up until now was best known for stopping  decay in human cadavers. While technically an organic compound, formaldehyde can hardly be called “green,” since it is a known pollutant and respiratory irritant. It is widely thought to be a carcinogen, and is commonly found in cigarette smoke, exhaust fumes, and smog.

I am at a point in my life where I am newly committed to keeping toxins out of my body and the world at large, yet I am seriously considering dousing myself in embalming fluid as a last-ditch effort to have pretty, shiny hair that won’t kink up in the rain or heat.

The foolishness of this is not lost on me, especially since I was not raised to be a shallow girl. My grandmother, who had a big influence on me, was a no-nonsense Russian immigrant, a natural beauty who taught me early on that the only cosmetic a girl really needed was a little Vaseline applied sparingly to the lips. Of course, that was easy for her to say – my grandmother grew up in late 19^th century Minsk. She may have had famines and Cossacks to deal with, but at least she didn’t have to live up to Marcia Brady.

Image: d3I

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