For the average black woman, hair grows half an inch every month. But length retention seems to be a struggle. As a result, it often looks like ‘black women’s hair don’t grow long’, especially in comparison to women of other races.
Bad Care Not Bad Hair
A lot of times, the issue is not our length, but our practices. Until the recent natural hair revival, heat styling and excessive use of extensions and unhealthy products were relatively common. Protective styles tended to focus more on style than protection. People with long hair tended to have more limp split ends than healthy strands. Holding on to split ends seemed like the only way to retain any length – making it a choice between length and health.
Who says you have to choose, though? Apart from genetics, there’s no reason why we can’t have the length of healthy hair you want. Yet, it very often does feel like we’re faced with a choice between one or the other. As it’s a bit of a struggle to get many ladies to trim their hair regularly for maximum health, in a bid to have longer hair. But it doesn’t work. A choice between limp or breaking strands doesn’t seem like much of a choice when you really think about it.
Prune and Trim
If you know anything about gardening, you will admit that pruning improves the overall health of a plant. Cutting off dead parts stops decay in its tracks and allows the plant to flourish. The same principle applies to hair growth. If you trim your split ends, you prevent them from splitting your strands further and weakening them.
Combining this regularly with other hair care practices including deep conditioning every other week and moisturizing daily will make your hair stronger and healthier. You get to retain your inches too.
And lastly, you will come to see that when it comes to length or health, you don’t really have to choose.