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Why I Only Let White Stylist Cut My Hair

Source: South_agency/Getty Images

As a Black woman with natural and curly hair, I’ve been through my share of products, hair stylists and YouTube videos. Though this may not be a popular choice, I’ve come to the conclusion that I just can’t trust a Black stylist with my hair anymore.

I, @Nicole_Hardesty, have naturally curly, thick, long hair. I do it myself and just don’t trust anyone else with it. Most importantly, I don’t want to burden anyone else with the chore of dealing with this mane. I even used to go to my Black stylists with my hair already straight to get a trim so she didn’t have to deal with washing, drying and flat-ironing my it.

Over the years, I’ve been very observant and eventually started trimming my own hair. We’re all afraid of those scissor-happy stylists right? Well, there are no fears when the scissors are in my own hand.

The only reason I go to the salon now is to get my hair cut and shaped which only happens once every six months. But when that time does come, I only trust White stylists who specialize in curly hair.

By no means do I think I am too good to go to a Black stylist, but I eventually had to start being realistic about my hair needs. While Black stylists understand natural hair, I’ve had a hard time finding one that understands a fine grain of curly hair.

I’ve done the leg work with products and different salons but most of the products for Black woman want to take your hair from its natural state and make it curly. But what do you do when you already have the desired look the products are trying to sell you?? You find someone who knows how to work with what you’ve already got.

Whenever I’ve gotten my hair cut in layers it would be beautiful when my hair was straight, but when it came time to bring out the curls, I’d look like a Christmas tree – you know the triangle hair that starts flat at the top and gets wider as it goes down?

Black stylists never wanted to tackle my hair with scissors when it was curly. I’ve heard excuse after excuse, “I don’t have the right scissors,” “It won’t come out even,” and “No one gets their hair cut like that.” But I knew that the one reason that it all came down to was they just didn’t know how.

The product I use in my hair is called Devachan. The line was developed by two white women who specialize in curly hair. I looked up their salon in New York City to see if they could help me out.

It was mandatory that I go to my appointment with my hair curly because they cut first then style. My first visit, the White stylist inspected my hair, ran her fingers through it, tugged, pulled, teased and then pulled out her scissors. I felt the need to give her my “make sure you keep my length!” speech, but she had already started cutting.

She took her time and literally cut my hair curl by curl, she shaped it around my face, layered the top and cleaned up my ends. I was thoroughly impressed when she was done but I knew the ultimate test would be when I straightened it. If the Black stylists were right and it came out uneven, I would have wasted $150 and would have had to go even shorter to spare myself the embarrassment.

Once my hair was washed, she used the Devachan leave-in conditioner to control fly-aways and sat me under the dryer for 15 minutes to dry up excess water. The products aren’t heavy so my hair didn’t take long to air dry as I went on about my day.

It was so refreshing finding someone who knew how to treat and understood the needs of MY hair. She knew to finger comb instead of yanking combs and brushes through it and there was no excessive heat or caked on products. She even gave me more tips for taking care of my curly hair.

This White stylist did more for me in one visit than any Black stylist has done for me in the past 10 years. And I’ve only gone to her ever since.

Once I straightened my hair a week later, it was still long, the layers were beautiful and it was even. The perfect cut for both of my hair alter-egos.

Check out the gallery below to see my hair in all its stages.

Ok, let me have it.

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