3 Ways To Determine If A Brand’s Marketing Matches Your Hair Care Needs

What a time to be a tight curl + natural as we have many viable product options available on the market today.

I personally remember back in 2011 when there weren’t very many styling products available for tight curl + natural hair. The few that were available did not necessarily market to hair like my own or even perform in a favorable manner.

Fast forward to 2024—here in the US we have more styling products than we could ever imagine. Not only are there more styling products, but there’s a number of high-performing products that I have seen do well in many regions of the world. Although we now have more options for styling products, product companies never stop listening to consumers.

The market has gotten ahold of the desire for a one product hair styler. There are a number of styling products that have shown up promising to be a one product solution, but how does that actually play out when combined with your unique Essential Elements? Click here for an explanation of Essential Elements.

This blog post will outline 3 ways that you can determine if a brand’s marketing for a one product solution actually aligns with your individual hair care needs.

#1: Closely Observe Your Hair’s Behavior

When we refer to “hair behavior” in our educational and social spaces, we’re specifically referring to how your hair typically acts on a given day. Hydrated hair is going to feel like your hair, nothing more, nothing less. Coarse, fine, high porosity, great elasticity, or not. The amount of water in it at any given time determines how easy the hair is to style, how long the styles last and whether the ends want to stay attached to your hair.

We highly recommend observing your hair’s behavior at each cleanse/condition/style session—especially after using new styling products. Limp curls, excessive frizz, loss of curl definition, compromised cuticles and weakness/breakage are clear signs that you’re experiencing a shift in your hair behavior.

We highly recommend partnering with a licensed stylist in your area to properly address any issues/concerns. You can visit My Style-List—a location-based stylist directory, for help finding someone in your area.

#2: Learn The Importance of Properly Layering Products

If you’re a seasoned Black Girl Curls community member, then you know that we’re all about properly layering products to get us to our desired finish. However, we’ve recently observed in our educational and social spaces that some naturals really don’t understand the why/how to layering products, so we’ll try to quickly break this down the best way we can.

We like to use botanical gels as our base layer for wash and go styling because they contain herbal extracts and humectants that are used to promote water retention in your hair by pulling moisture from the environment and adding it to your hair.

“Humectants are a group of ingredients (including aloe vera, flaxseed, okra, honey, slippery elm, pectin and marshmallow root) that are used in many hair and cosmetic products to attract moisture from the environment. Humectants are hydrophilic (water loving) and will draw moisture from anywhere or anything and bring it back to your curls.”

We use anti-humectant gels with polymers and carbomer as a top layer over the botanical gel for a wash and go when the climate or lifestyle of the client determines that there is either way too much or way too little humidity in the atmosphere.

By placing the botanical gel next to the clean, wet, and bare hair we are supplementing the hydration available to the hair. The use of an anti-humectant gel over it, which we call double gelling, allows the hair to maintain hold and hydration.

“Since humectants help to provide moisture, the anti-humectants work to do the exact opposite, thus helping to reduce frizz and swelling. ”

For these reasons coupled with our desired finishes, we typically would never use an anti-humectant gel as our base layer or solo on the hair because our hair isn’t able to absorb water under these conditions. Not being able to attract water to the hair is a recipe for dehydration, leaving the hair to feel dry, limp and little to no curl definition.

In addition, we would not recommend using a humectant gel as a topper, or sometimes depending on your Essential Elements, even solo because it could be too lightweight with not enough hold, or lead to more frizz quickly since humectants attract water. We also break this down further in the Five Product Rule.

#3: Trying Out New Products Takes Time

If you’re apart of our SeeSomeCurls course community, then you know that Aishia has recently been documenting her experience with testing out Innersense’s new I Create Curl Memory Gel.

For licensed stylists that speak beyond their own scalps, testing new products looks very different from what you may be used to seeing on Youtube. It could take anywhere from 2 to 3 weeks to test new products.

We say all of this to say that give yourself time when trying out new hair products. We know that we typically like to turn our noses up at things when it doesn’t do what we want the first time, but many hair products have learning curves that you have to adjust given your unique Essential Elements.

For most coarse surface texture tight curlies like Aishia, we have yet to come across a hair product that works very well used solo. Aishia is almost always reaching for a botanical gel first as a base layer in all of her wash and go sets.

If you want more specific tips catered to healthy hair care, where we can troubleshoot with you 1:1 through community posts, videos, live Q&A’s and pictures, we invite you to take advantage of our free 7-day trial to our digital course community—The SeeSomeCurls Visual Library. You can cancel at anytime—obligation free!

Are subscriptions not your thing? If so, we got you! You can grab a copy of our digital Wash Your Damn Hair Styling & Product Guide that offers the same information including detailed styling tutorials, our full curated product list, a breakdown of how to properly use products and much more! Use the coupon code ELEVATE at checkout for $20 off your copy.