I went for a good long time thinking I was a 4C.
Brio Photography
I did my own research after my second (augh”> big chop in high school, and I figured “Okay, these have to be the tightest things ever, so my hair type is 4C.” I don’t have many pictures of me with my actual hair out from that time, because I hadn’t learned to love it yet, but now I’m kind of wondering…was it EVER a 4C?
Now that it’s coming up on 10 years of me being out of high school, and my hair’s grown out, I can’t help but ask myself if something changed my pattern or if I was just completely wrong about what it was in the first place.
I’d always been skeptical of curl types changing, but I know that it can happen.
Reading our comments sections, it looks like your hair types have changed with age, pregnancies, and even haircuts! I’ve also had a few friends on hormone replacement therapy tell me that their curls got tighter after beginning testosterone supplements. So it IS possible for something that isn’t styling damage to switch up your curl pattern, seemingly spontaneously in some cases!
So what happened to mine?
Well, there are a few possibilities. It’s fully possible that my hair type was never 4C at all, but that it just took me longer to realize it was a 4A with continuing natural hair education over the years. And that makes sense—after all, I’d never even thought of my porosity levels before I started working here. Seeing my hair next to Gerilyn’s hair made it a lot more obvious though, I must say.
It’s also possible that as my hair grew the curl pattern just became more evident, or that it’s falling and stretching under its own weight, enough to pull the pattern out more permanently, even though it’s still growing out and not down. Grace just cut about six inches of her hair off at a Deva salon, and she’s reporting tighter waves as a result. Naturally, we got footage of it all, so make sure you’re subscribed on YouTube to catch the big reveal. Maybe now all of our less-than-polite commenters will get off her back about it…
A third option is that life in general just loosened my curls. I had what I affectionately call a puberty part 2 in college that saw me go up a cup size, down a sanity size, and finally grew me the butt I never had. Whether or not that had anything to do with the birth control I was on, off, then on, and off again I’m not sure. I was also on and off a few different prescriptions during my matriculation. Considering the various effects that came through on my body and brain, it’s not a huge stretch to say something could have happened to my hair as well.
What is certain though is that curls change.
For better or worse, our hair, like our bodies, is not going to stay the same forever. The important thing is to be able to love yourself through whatever changes occur, even if it’s not something you like. I’m trying not to spend time thinking about what I’d do if my curls do something like spontaneously lightening, or jumping off my scalp in clumps, but we’ll see what happens.
What about you, curlies? Has your curl pattern ever changed?
Can you trace your changes in hair type to certain events in your life?
Let me know, I wanna hear your story!
