Spotlight on Teri LaFlesh!!!

Meet Teri LaFlesh of TightlyCurly.com a website designed to help women and girls with...well, tightly curly hair!!  Teri is bi-racial and has no problem sharing very personal and intimate stories about her hair and her hair journey.  I had the very fortunate opportunity to catch up with Teri - in between coming off her honeymoon and getting her book published!  An inspiration indeed...

What length is your hair?  My hair reaches down to my hips when it’s wet.

How long have you been growing your hair and what length did it start out?  I’ve been growing my hair about 12 years. I started after cutting off my relaxer, so I basically started from nothing. I grew it for about 18 months before I was ready to cut off the chemical hair, though.

Can you tell me a bit about your hair care routine?  What products do you use, how often do you wash, do you straighten your hair at all, etc?  I use many different shampoos and conditioners, but a few of my current favorites are Paula’s shampoo and conditioner (CosmeticsCop.com), Jasön Natural fragrance free shampoo, and Aussie Moist conditioner. I wash, condition and comb once a week. I shampoo just my scalp, smooth a light conditioner over my hair, rinse it, then put in a heavy, slippery conditioner (like Paula’s or Aussie Moist) and comb with it. I define my curls by taking each one and smoothing it between my fingers. Then I leave that it (I know, it sounds weird, but I research the ingredients in the conditioners). That’s all I do. I don’t use any other styling products. At night, I put my hair in a braid. In the morning I wet my hands, put a bit more conditioner on them, then smooth them over my hair to get rid of any fuzz. Rain and humidity don’t bother my hair at all.  I never ever straighten it, and rarely ever blow dry (the last time I did was once, about 3 years ago).

How often do your trim or cut your hair and do you do it yourself?  I don’t trim my hair anymore. Since I have no more breakage, there is no need to trim it.

What are your thoughts on hair typing systems?  I feel a bit weird using them, though I can’t put my finger on why. They are a shorthand way to convey how curly/wavy/straight your hair is, so they’re really convenient. However, I have so many types of curl on my head, ranging from very curly to wavy, so all I can do is express my hair type more as a range.

Do you believe there is a difference between caring for and growing Black hair and bi-racial hair?  I guess it depends more on how curly our hair is than our race, though there is a common hair type that many mixed kids have, and that’s super curly, super fragile, and very fine that tends to get huge and uncontrollable easily. However, there are many biracial (black/white) people out there (everyone in my family who is mixed but me) who have wavy and/or straight hair. And there are many black people with naturally wavy or even straight hair. And my dad’s wife has very curly hair, and she’s white. I guess I sometimes use “biracial hair” as a shortcut to say very thick curly hair that’s surprisingly fragile like mine is. I actually inherited a curl pattern much like my moms (who is black), so my hair is super curly like hers, but much more fragile than hers. Her hair still grew even using straighteners, but mine fell apart when I tried to do the same thing.

What do you think about the misconception that Black hair doesn't grow long?  I operated under that misconception for nearly all my life! And it sure seemed to be true. My mom had been able to grow her hair long with a straightener, so that reinforced to me that the only way curly hair like mine could grow long was only if it was straight. So I kept relaxing my hair, ending up with a terrible mess that was crunchy and broken and short, and I couldn’t figure out what was going wrong. All the literature I’d read at the time told me curly hair like mine was flawed by its very nature of being curly. So I got the impression that it was almost like something was wrong with my hair for being curly, and I had to “cure” it of its curls before it could grow. Turns out the opposite was true. As soon as I learned to love and care for my curls as they grew from my head, my hair has thrived.

What are your thoughts about this statement: "You're mixed so OF COURSE your hair is long!"  That used to be one of the things that drove me nuts, because I sort of did feel I should have long hair because I was mixed. But instead I had really short hair that I found impossible to understand (and so did all the people around me). I hate to say it, but I kept thinking I was supposed to have wavy long hair, but there I was with tight curls that turned into a fuzz ball when I combed it.

 I have a cousin who is half black, half Korean, and at the time she had this long, coal black hair that easily reached her butt, and I was so jealous of her. She could just run a comb through it, get it wet, sleep in it down, and it was no big deal. My brother, and my other mixed cousins all had wavy hair. But that wasn’t true for me. Again, it reinforced my mistaken belief that it was my curl that kept me from having long hair. So I totally understand people thinking that because I’m mixed it’s a given I have long hair. But when you see my “before” pictures, you can see that that wasn’t true, and it wasn’t so simple. It turns out that what mattered most was me learning to care for the curly hair I had in a way that makes it happy—more than simply feeling I was somehow entitled to long hair without me taking the time to figure it out and care for it properly first.

Based on the information on your site, it seems that you allude to the fact that it was chemicals that kept your hair from growing to its longest lengths.  Can you tell me more about that?  It was absolutely the chemicals that kept my hair from growing (that and having no idea what to do with it when it was curly). I thought that the only way to have long hair was for it to be straight. That was a huge mistake. It was actually those chemicals that kept my hair broken and crunchy. When I wore a white tee shirt, you could see all the broken hair all over it from the damage. Since my hair had been relaxed since I was very young, I didn’t know what my real hair looked like. I thought my hair was so unmanageable that I had to put in those chemicals to “tame” it. But after growing them out, it turns out it was the chemicals that made my hair so miserable and unmanageable. I know part of it was I didn’t know how to put the relaxers in correctly so I walked around with 2^nd degree burns on my head starting at about age 11. The irony is that I was so concerned about the ingredients in the products I used (well, I know I still am), but I didn’t think twice that I was putting a substance in my hair (and leaving it in) that was chemically the same, with the same brutal pH as oven cleaner or drain cleaner. Then I wondered why my hair was falling apart. I actually ended up dissolving nearly all my hair with a relaxer one time when I was 18. Some people may have much stronger hair than mine, and it may be able to take the chemicals. But mine couldn’t.

You're working on a book, can you tell me more about it?  When will it be available for me to purchase and how will it differ from other books about hair?  The tentative title is Curly Like Me: How to Make Tightly Curly Hair Joyfully Happy and How to Grow It Unbelievably Long. I’m thinking it should be out about a year from now, but I haven’t gotten the publication date yet from Wiley. The book is meant to be a do-it-yourself guide to caring for tightly curly hair on your own. I was never able to find (or probably afford one if I could have found one) a salon to take care of my hair. When I went to a salon, they always ended up doing more damage to my hair, and fixated on trying to pressure me into straightening my hair (including lying to me), or else were at a loss what to do with my hair.

As it turns out, our hair is easy to care for once we know what it needs, and doesn’t require expensive products or massive upkeep to grow it long. Many books focus on straightening, weaves, complicated and elaborate styles that require much skill, money, or upkeep. This book empowers the reader to take charge of their own natural hair, but also to love it for it’s beautiful curls. I talk about what we need to know to make good decisions about our hair and not fall prey to the misleading (and often damaging) hype that many manufactures use to sell products.

 I go through all the steps to care for our hair, and even give advice on basics that would be useful for, say, a mom who has never dealt with this type of hair before, so needs to know basic how-to without chemicals, flat irons, elaborate hair styles, or extensions. I show that combing our hair does not have to hurt. I go through how to choose good products while saving money; there is a gallery of styles showing how to easily do our hair without needing a hair styling degree or a team of stylists. Oh, and there are tons of pictures—about 150 photos and illustrations, as well as lots of stories about how I learned what not to do. Basically the book is everything I learned in about 30 years of research and experimentation to go from short, broken hair I absolutely hated with a fury to hair that’s down to my hips that I love and now wouldn’t trade for the world.

Keep up with all things Teri at www.TightlyCurly.com or on her blog Notes From A Former Mushroom-Haired Child

Comments

[roach]

Impressive!!I look forward for the new post.Thanks!

beauty

[Darling Cancerian]

I just realized what it is LHDC!!!!!

Long hair (that's yours) equals nobility!!! That's the vibe that surrounds the person = O
What y'all think??

BTH, is she going to feature on your radio show? You know I need something to listen to while I baby my hair.

LHDC: Yep, I will have her as a guest next year. Thanks for your support, hun!!

[BIA No Mo]

I love the interview, and her calling her hair crunchy is classic! lmao! I'm going to check her website out, may find some tips for my daughters natural hair. I believe we all have the same hair so I am sure I can learn a thing or two.

My daughter was a flower girl, one of three little girls. She was the only all black one (the others were African and White) AND the only one with hair on her head. SO yes, Teri is right, just because you are mixed doesn't = hair. it is all about care.

BIA No Mo

[Caribgirl]

Very informative interview! Thanks very much!

[MoM]

Very impressive!!!
Lookinf forward to the book!