Hairstyles for African American Women

Hairstyles for African American women have come a long way since the days when they relied entirely on jelly for curling and hot irons for straightening. Today, African American women, just like their white counterparts, have had their photos plastered on covers of international magazines in sleek, sophisticated and trendy hairstyles. Such range from locks, braids, kinky curls, to straight relaxed styles that are complimented by the tough nature of the African-American hair. However, this is not to mean that it has been easy for hair stylists to come up with these trendy hairstyles for the black hair. The body and mass of the hair was initially a challenge to stylists. However, with innovations in hair products, these same characteristics of the black hair makes it easy to style and hold for long. This means that one can style her hair, leave for work, and still come back to the house with the style intact.

The increasing number of efficient shampoos, conditioners, treatments and other products makes getting trendy hairstyles for African-American women a reality to many. One of the natural challenges that have had to be overcome by hair designers includes the dry nature of the African-woman hair. For this, the hydrating conditioners and hydrating lotions serve to moisturize the hair as well as give it some radiant sheen. Due to the coarse nature of the Africa-American hair, most women find it hard to style it in its natural form. As such, chemical relaxing crmes and hair additions such as braids and weaves can be used to make the styling process easy. To most black women, this is usually an advantage because they can change hairstyles as often as they wish.

Today, hairstyles for African American women include styles that were previously seen as a preserve for the softer, longer white-woman hair. Such include up-do styles, ponytails, buns or simply letting ones hair fall loosely naturally. Although the mini-afro has always had a classic look to it, the style still has a touch of modernity that gives the wearer a classy, neat and timeless look.

Women who feel that they need more length to their natural hair can attain the same using weaves, which are either tracked to ones hair or glued. One of the common hairstyles for African-American women is tracking, which involves making some neat corn rows with ones natural hair and attaching the weave using weaving threads to the cornrows. Tracking also involves flattening the natural hair with gel, letting it dry, and then attaching weaves using adhesives. A more efficient, but not so popular, way of attaching weaves is known as fusion. Here, every single strand of ones natural hair is attached to the fake hair. As one would imagine, it is a tiring and time-consuming method of weaving. Usually however, the resulting hairstyle is worth the trouble. The weaves are made of natural hair extensions or synthetic material, which can easily pass for ones own hair.