So I’ve never been about to figure out how to cut/style my hair. It’s somewhere between curly and wavy. Wavy on a good day, but humidity or failing to pick or brush it brings out the curls and it starts to get matted and tangled.
Usually I wear a hat to deal with it getting in my face, I try to tuck it up in there or pull it back so it looks like a mullet. But usually it defaults to coming out the side in real tangly curls like a mf circus clown. Thing is I don’t have a mullet, it’s about 8 inches long rn all around.
I really want to keep it longer, but I’m thinking of going down to 4 inches cuz I wear a hairnet for work, but rn I am literally pulling tangled clumps out of it everytime I shower or run my fingers through it.
I’ve recently been using a 100% cotton towel for drying it, trying to dab not rub, but I still wash and rinse with hot water which I hear isn’t good for curly hair. I use a plastic brush with the little plastic bristles with the rounded tips and a traditional hair pick to comb it. For hair product I use Aldi brand moisturizing shampoo with vitamin E, and Not Your Mother’s Curl Talk sprayable leave-in conditioner.
I’ve come to all these methods after years of advice from hair dressers and friends, but I can’t figure out how to make it more manageable and less tangled and matted. I’ve never posted about it tho, so maybe my fellow bears have some good advice?
Thank’s for reading this, love you all! 
The “curly girl/guy” method might be of interest for you. I’ve known a few people who have complained about having curly hair and said it all makes sense once they started following the method.
I will definitely look into it, thank you!
As much as I hate to point to reddit, the r/curly hair sub has a lot of great advice. Curly hair never stops being a pain in the ass, and it gets worse with length. I find somewhere around shoulder blades is where it ramps up even higher for some reason. On the flip-side, everyone will be jealous of your curls/waves, so it’s about finding a balance of what you care about. Unfortunately, much of this is related to buying the right things to treat it right, but this can still be done with relatively little money.
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Your comb is generally bad for curly hair. Ditch the little plastic knobs at the end of the bristles. A wide-tooth comb (usually ~5-10 teeth) is necessary, other combs aren’t, but can help. If you really need something like a traditional comb, get ones without the knobs and don’t get boar’s-hair bristles. I bought a Denman D3 for about $25 10 years ago and it’s held up well. Looks the same as the day I bought it.
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Don’t dry with a towel and don’t rub. A soft shirt works well and you can use this to scrunch your hair to help dry. Heat treatment is generally bad, but you can get away with drying to about damp on low/no heat, then let your hair dry naturally.
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Getting good curls is usually about moisture. Good shampoo and conditioner are important. Anything with silicone or paraben will weigh your hair down/straighten it and takes a long time to wash out without clarifying shampoo (green V05 is usually recommended to use once to remove everything). Clarifying is harsh on hair and strips it of moisturizing natural oils. Avoid products with dimethicone (fucking everywhere) or other ingredients ending with “-cone”. r/curlyhair used to have links to sites where you could screen products for curly-hostile ingredients in their sidebar.
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Don’t shampoo everyday if you can help it. I get bad dermatitis and find I can get away with every other day at most during flare-ups. Some people wash daily with conditioner, some skip their hair entirely on some days.
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If you are going to spend money on product, it’s better spent on good shampoo and moulding products. Good conditioner is cheap, even V05 works, just check ingredients. If I want to save money, I’ll condition with a cheap conditioner and then use a small amount of more expensive conditioner as a leave-in.
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Finishing products are something that will be more specific to your hair type and partially determine the messiness of the style at the end. Lots of people form a hard “cast” like using hair gel, then scrunch it in a soft shirt or towel to break up the crunchiness and leave the definition and shape without the nasty crunchiness. I think this works best for tightly curling hair, while a curling cream, mouse, or just conditioner works better for looser curling/wavy hair. Just experiment to find what works for you. It’s best to apply while your hair is wet. This is where you can comb it in, but finish with a wide-tooth and then turn your head upside down and "scrunch your hair up towards your scalp in clawing/cat kneading motions to help define curls.
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If you must add something for shine, use something like pure argan oil. Most shining products have dimethicone. Argan is closer to natural hair oil.
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When getting a haircut, it’s usually best to style it before you go and sometimes you’ll get a dry cut. I’ve had both dry and wet work well. If you cut on your own, the best videos I found were on the YT channel “Manes by Mel” I think.
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If you can get a silk pillowcase or hair net, that will help protect your hair at night. I’ve wrapped my hair in a shirt before with success. Pillowcases are around $30.
Hopefully that gives you a starting point. I could recommend specific products, but hair varies widely and yours might not respond the same as mine. I’ve been using similar methods on medium to long hair for ~8 years and they’ve worked well. I may be able to answer questions later. Good luck!
This is good advice OP!
Just want to throw in that silk can be substituted with satin as a vegan option for the curly vegans out there.
wanna add when it comes to the brushes/combs that a wet brush through the hair while it’s soaked + conditioned in the shower is going to do an amazing job of detangling and distributing the conditioner throughout the length of each strand. this is the thing that really changed things for me wrt clumps of tangles and matting.
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Pretty loose curls here (red hair), that I’ll wear at ~3-4” on top and then just w/e makes the sides look good. My biggest change was going to rarely washing. My curls used to be very dry and frizzy (esp in winter), I had scalp dryness, and it in general looked like Lucille ball (not what I was going for unfortunately.) I’ll maybe wash my hair 1/month if it’s getting gross or I get stuff in it. if I do wash it I’ll typically use a leave in conditioner (currently using “Function of Beauty” products), but it still feels like it takes a few days before my hair isn’t dried out. Somewhere in there is a theoretical sweet spot where I’m really happy with how my hair looks.
