After the initial attempt at
straightening Lorana’s hair, she was talking with her sister about the service, and telling her about me. As it happens, the women in
Lorana’s family tend to have very coarse, curly hair and her niece was desperate to do something with her curly bush of a mane.
Brittany is a lovely young girl with beautiful hair, and to be honest, I did sort of try to talk her out of straightening out her curls.
However, this is something she has wanted for a very long time and I realized how happy it would
make her to be able to look into the mirror and see straight hair. Because of this, I agreed to do the straightening, but I did spend
the remainder of the consultation visit discussing her hair care routine and what she needs to do in order to properly care for her
hair and keep it shiny, manageable and healthy.
Preparation:
During our consultation, part of my examination was to perform a porosity test on Brittany’s hair
and I determined that her hair was, in addition to being coarse, very thick (densely packed) and very curly, also very resistant.
{If you want to check the porosity of your own, or someone else’s, hair you need to use a spray
bottle with water and mist the hair from about 6-8 inches away. Porous hair will immediately soak up the water and as it becomes
saturated, may become spongy and matted (if it’s damaged). Normal hair will have the water bead up initially but the moisture will
be absorbed within a few seconds. When sprayed on resistant hair, the water will immediately bead up and usually sit on the surface
of the hair shaft rather than being absorbed. Of course, it will eventually absorb (usually) but it may take ten to fifteen seconds.}
Because of this I selected an Exothermic Perm formula, which would be a stronger formula and be
better able to penetrate and process in a safe period of time. Brittany’s hair was shampooed with a clarifying shampoo to help open
the cuticle a little and remove any residual product from the hair.
Before beginning the straightening process, I did a preliminary cut to shoulder length in order to
minimize the amount of hair that we would need to work with. I also used fine tooth thinning shears in order to remove a considerable
amount of the bulk from the hair. This, too, was intended to maximize the results of the straightening process by minimizing the amount of hair being straightened.
Straightening:
Working with her hair still damp, I sectioned the hair into the “T-section partings” and proceeded
to combine the waving lotion and activator. Once combined, these two chemicals create a reaction that generates heat to speed up the
processing and allow the waving lotion to penetrate and work better on resistant hair types.
I lowered the back section of the hair from the bottom up in ˝-inch slices and applied the waving
lotion to the scalp end of the hair and combed it through to the end with the fine end of a styling comb. This was repeated until the
entire back section was saturated and combed smooth.
From there I worked on the left, then right hand sections of the head and saturated and combed
through the hair in these sections. Once the entire head was saturated, I combed everything through once more and covered the head in
plastic for about 10 minutes, smoothing the hair beneath the plastic with my fingers while waiting.
After 10 minutes, I resumed combing through the hair to smooth out the curl while the remaining
time for the processing ran out. After the timer sounded, we moved to the sink and rinsed out the hair carefully and thoroughly with
warm water, wrapped the head in a clean dry towel and blotted the excess moisture from the hair.
