As you’ve seen in the blog – Em has a wild mane of curly hair! So here are a few tips she’s learned over the years to beat the frizz and keep that curly hair looking soft and beautiful.

1. Skip the Wash – Okay, so i’m not asking to you to be dirty and not take a shower! Curly hair needs the natural oils from our scalp that shampoo can strip away. So massage your scalp with conditioner when you shower, but keep the shampoo to every other wash. The first thing I do when I hop in the shower is lather my hair with conditioner, I let it set in my hair while I do the rest of my wash, and rinse the conditioner out at the very end, letting my hair get as much condition as possible. Important tip: put the conditioner in from the bottom of your hair up. You can take a wide tooth comb in the shower with you and work your way up your hair by entering the condoner at the bottom and slowly combing upwards, or just use your fingers to pull the conditioner through your hair. That way you condition the ends of your hair and add less weight to the healthy hair at your scalp.
2. Wide tooth comb – only when wet – seriously, this goes out to all of you ladies out there with curly hair who had a mom with straight hair – throw out that brush!! I’m not gonna lie, at 33 my mom (with stick straight hair) still asks me if i’m going to comb my hair before we go out! My favorite response is “You think it looks bad now, let me go comb it” But really, that brush should just go in the trash! If you think your hair was frizzy before, run a brush through it and see what happens! In all seriousness though, when you get out of the shower, apply your product to the ends of your hair, and then run your wide tooth comb through to spread the product evenly around. So many times we start at the top of our head, which weighs down the curls at the base of the scalp and leaves very little product at the ends which get frayed and frizzy very quickly. If you notice your hair start to get frizzy, don’t try to add more product to tame it, touching your hair as it dries just makes it more frizzy. Start over, wet, conditioner, wide tooth comb from the base. Which leads me to my next point.
3. Don’t touch! – Everyone always sees those beautiful ads where the model is running her fingers through her hair! Resist the temptation! The more you touch your hair as it dries, the more it will frizz.  So get out of the shower, throw some product in your hair, a couple of scrunches, and then don’t touch it for the rest of the day!
4. Alcohol, sulfate, and paraben free! – Trust me on this one, at 33 I have grey hair! Yikes! So I see my hair dresser approximately every 6-8 weeks. She trims the ends of my curly hair (a must to prevent the triangle hairstyle) and gives my roots a lift. My skin tone actually looks good with red – so I add copper to my hair. When I come to see her after 2 months, she is always amazed at how healthy my hair is, and how well the color stayed in, since red fades the fastest. She is definitely attributing this to the organic shampoo I use. Alcohol dries out your hair, and the waxy stuff they put in many shampoo and conditioners prevent your hair from actually absorbing the conditioning. It just creates a waxy surface on the outside. And those parabens (preservatives) tend to do more damage then good. It’s great that the shelf life of your conditioner is years beyond when you’ll use it, but the damaging effects to hair aren’t worth the savings when you buy cheap conditioner. Ladies – we have curly hair – your conditioner is your best friend to fight the frizz!
5. Skip the straightener – The straightener not only dries out your hair, adding to the frizz, but it has a tendency to change the bounce and volume of your curls. If I want a straight do (because seriously we all have those days) I wait until I go see my stylist. One, she has a much better straightener, two, she’s going to use product in my hair to keep it conditioned and reduce the frizz, three – she can see the back of my head. That one part of your hair that never looks as good as the rest because you’re arms don’t reach back there and you can’t really see it! I let it straight for about 3 days after she straightens it, so that the natural oils in my hair can regenerate the curls, and I enjoy being a straight haired girl for a couple days! Running my fingers through my hair, checking out the awesome highlights she just put in, and knowing that I didn’t add any damage to my hair on my own. No burnt hair, no over drying, no cheap products, and no damage to the volume or shape of my curls.

So I leave you with these words of wisdom, things I wish I would have known during my awkward high school years. Even into my twenties. Now, as a professional, I don’t want my wild mane of hair to be what people are focused on when they meet with me. The longer it gets, the harder it is to maintain that carefree soft curl look. So I hope these tips and tricks have helped, even just a little!

xoxo ~ Em