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Gather around kiddos, we’re about to educate you on some real shit; the black hair industry. We know many of you , especially guys, some girls, and many white people, are just mind-fucked by some black girls hair. One day your girl is rocking some luscious, long hair down her back, and then next month you see her in some braids and then all of it’s a poofy afro. And your’re just like 

The black hair industry is a whole another world that people fail to know about. There’s science, art, and of course money in this world black hair. Almost worth 10 million dollars, the black hair industry is damn near close to the porn industry. So we’re gonna break it down for you and hopefully give you a better understanding, so grab a seat and maybe even a pen because 

 

Natual Hair:

Ok we’ll start with the most natural state and most recent trend in the black hair community. You may have seen many people using the terms “I’m going natural” or “I’m natural” or even “I’m transitioning”.

“Natural hair” consists of the state where an African American’s hair has be untouched and by untouched we mean no perms (chemical straighteners), flat irons, curling irons, absolutely nothing. That afro you may see often is very tight coiled, kinky curls. But that’s not what natural hair only is. Styles such as dread locs, twists out, bantu knots, curls(some may have more defined curls than others),etc. are all styles that are in the form of the natural state. 

Some celebs that have been rocking their natural hair are Janelle Monae, Solange, Erykah Badu, Corrine Bailey Rae, Jill Scott, Diana Ross,  etc. 


The increase of natural girls has been rapidly growing; From Tumblr, YouTube, millions blogs , there are tons of websites dedicated for natural heads. And with the rise of natural beauties, tons of natural hair companies are also emerging. Natual hair isn’t the easiest thing to maintain and it takes time, patience and alot of care. These natural hair companies have designed products to make the hair softer, managebale and also define those tight curls. Carol’s Daughter has been around for a while and has quite a fan base. 

Some other popular brands are Miss Jessie’s found at stores like Target. 

Eco Styler, a popular product in the natural world to lay down that hair and define curls. 

 

And while being natual is beautiful and can save you a trip to the salon, these products are not cheap. Many natural heads are dropping 20 to 40 dollars on a bottle of shampoo sometimes to acheive that ” super shiny” “frizzless” “pillow soft” curly hair. Beauty is never cheap. 

Relaxers:

Creamy crack, chemical hair straightner, perms, relaxers, whatever you want to call it, this is the stuff everyone has been abandoning lately. Even the sight of the white stuff has everyone running. Once you go natural you just don’t go back.

Relaxers are hair creams, usually white that people use to soften the hair and “relax” the natural curls and depending how long you put it in, makes the hair straight and soft. Now Chris Rock‘s movie Good Hair, he explains the science to relaxers.

Makes sense why alot of people are going natural now? But they’re lots of people who still choose to perm their hair. Perming creams are usually about five to seven dollars and usually come in a box with small bottles of shampoo, conditioner, gloves, perming cream, activator (a liquid to pour inside the cream) and some type of moisturizers, different companies vary. It also varies in hair types like normal, coarse, extra strength, etc. 

Weaves:


Weaves. This might be a whole another post, but we’ll try to keep it short and sweet. Ok so the cheapest and most attainable weave you can get it synthetic hair. Let’s get this straight, synthetic hair is not horse hair! One ew, and two let’s get real. What synthetic hair is made out of synthetic fibers or plastic. It may come in a weft for weaving or bulk, which is used for braiding hair. So girls you see with braids or twists like these are usually wearing synthetic hair. These can range from a dollar (for braiding hair) to 30 dollars.  

When people say human hair, it is still synthetic, but acts like human hair; you can put heat and products just like your normal hair. These also come in inches from 8 or 10 inches to maybe 24 inches depending on the company. We also got the remy’s and all that good stuff, but we’ll keep it simple and leave it there. 

So I’m sure you’ve heard of the Brazilians, Malaysians (side note Beyonce had some Malaysian in her recent hair accident) Peruvian, Eurasian, the list goes on and on. These are your higher end hair, where people are spending anywhere from 100 dollars and up for a bundle (three bundles is usually a full head of weave). So thats about at least 300 dollars alone on hair. The hair, which is actual human hair, is coming from overseas mostly from Indian temples. So no Brazilian hair is not from Brazil, people. The hair is usually titled “virgin” which basically means it has not been touched chemically and is 100% natural. This hair acts just like normal hair and can last from 6 months to a couple of years if maintained well. But of course you have to get in re installed a few times. 

Whew that was alot. We haven’t even talked about the costs of going to the salon to properly use some of these products. That’s an additional forty to hundreds a dollars a month to actually get your hair done! We can go on and on about the black hair world, but that’s all the time we have folks. 

So we hope you learned a few things and maybe you can make sense of this pat we always do!

PHOTO CREDIT: WENN, Getty Images