Coily Kinky Nappy Happy: December 2010

Notice something all of these pictures have in common?

Summer 2009

Fall 2009

Winter 2009

My hair is about the same length (err...width/height) in every picture.

Last spring, I realized that my hair seemed to stay at certain length and my first thought was "my hair has stopped growing". I mean I came into college with a close cut and although I definitely had more hair as of my junior year, the growth was not what I expected after 3 years.

While I have never regretted my decision to cut it all off (I was frustrated with my hair and not terribly interested finding new styles), I became concerned that I had done something irreversible to my hair because it just seemed stuck. My aunt kept telling me that hair follicles can go through periods of rest but this hair limbo-state of felt abnormally long.

At the time, I didn't realize that many factors could be preventing/detracting from my hair length. Two that come to mind are:

1. STRESS--I was juggling a particularly time consuming major that I ended up hating and the management of floundering student organization (as well as an officer position with another org). Then I dropped my major halfway through the school year and ended my organization just before the end of the year...so basically I was in early 20's life crisis mode.

2. ROUGH HANDLING--For starters, my default hairstyle was a short fro that was picked out daily. Yet, I could never get my products quite right (dryness, itchiness), so sometimes I would just end up raking through and pulling out more than what was shed.

I also tended to tug on my ends and twist my hair around my fingers when I got frustrated.

Now, I am trying to grow my hair out (healthily), so sometimes I re-evaluate my past methods of care to see what can be learned from those experiences. When I considered my college hair care, I began to wonder if there was a way to prove that my problems with length were an issue of retention and not actual growth. So, I pulled up a series of pictures from my freshman year and checked out the difference a few relatively stress-free months made.