Okay, so before things spiral out of proportion with this title, let’s make one thing very clear. Everyone was happy when the Curly Acceptance Wave started making rounds, no exceptions. Mostly because curly hair was finally being accepted after so many years of being shunned as “unacceptable” and “not beauty standard compliant“.
But here’s the thing — you know how Harvey Dent says “you either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain”? Yeah, well this kind of applies here.
See, although this doesn’t apply to everyone, the rising Curly Community we were all so proud of has actually turned a little nightmarish. And, yes, we’re going into all the reasons why
A lot of people are promoting harmful products
Okay, so we already know that curly hair needs more products and attention than straight hair does, but here’s the thing — some products are literally nothing but harmful.
And sometimes, these products may not work for your hair, specifically. But nothing will deter certain influential bloggers from promoting these products because, well, they’re promoters. Yes, not everyone does this and some people do apologize, but enough people still do this to cause a problem.
Ironically perpetuates unrealistic standards
One of the most wonderful things about the curly hair resurgence is that everyone got to shed society’s expectations of how they and their hair should look like. Everyone simply got to be natural, without reservations.
And then, of course, that ended shortly. Soon after, some of the curly hair groups (because, again, this isn’t everyone) started promoting glossy, loose curls as the only curls that matter and that’s just not realistic. There are literally so many types of curls, from loose ones to the tightly-coiled ones and choosing one over the other, simply because they look ‘nicer’ is frankly horrible.
Some promote the fact that straight hair can become curly
Let’s get one thing out of the way really quickly. Curling your hair for a night is completely different from trying on a ton of products and treatments and the like so you can change the very nature of your scalp.
And now that we’ve clarified that, let’s clarify this. Straight-haired people can never ‘turn’ their hair curly. It just doesn’t happen and some bloggers and groups are implying/saying it will probably cause harm on the long run because the only way it’ll happen is through hormone-balance change.
Not enough people are saying that all methods and products don’t have to work for everyone
Curly hair groups have introduced a lot of hair-care methods and lines upon lines of products you can use to maintain your hair’s look but here’s the thing.
These methods don’t work for everyone and neither do all the products listed. You wouldn’t know that from the way everyone’s talking, though, because some people and groups kind of treat it as a “one ring to rule them all” situation.
