What Is My Hair Type?

I bet you thought this was going to describe whether you have 3a or 4c natural hair. Well, that is another article, this one explains the difference between hair types as described by product manufacturers.

Most products you see in the beauty supply store refer to 3 hair types. Normal, Dry and Oily hair. However, these titles seldom help us at all when choosing a product as normal for you is different from someone of a different ethnic background or even from your mother for that matter.

As if the 200 billion products on the market weren’t confusing enough, adding these titles to them really doesn’t help us to choose and frankly makes no sense at all. Normal hair doesn’t exists. What is the baseline for normal hair? Is it fine, curly and soft or is it thick, coarse and dry. Our hair varies so much by texture, color, maintenance, climate, styling needs and processing so normal just isn’t possible.

The next title we see very often is Dry Hair. What is dry hair? Dryness is a state or condition of your hair and not the type. You hair can be normal and dry, curly and dry or even coarse and dry. There are number of reasons why your hair could be dry including thyroid issues, dehydration, bleaching, heat damage, over processing, environmental and more. Finding the root cause of the issue will help you to better fix it or find the right product or ingredients to help. As I type this I can tell you my own hair is excessively dry at the moment because not only am I breastfeeding but I also had it bleached a year ago just before I got pregnant and I haven’t been taking care of it since. My scalp is dry and this is a huge reason why the ends are also dry.

Our scalp produces sebum which is natural oil that keeps