Curls for Girls – Part 1 – The structure of the hair

I always say that the very best hairstyles for you will take advantage of your natural hair texture, but what happens if you want something totally different? Curls are back in style now, and this can be a real problem for some people who have naturally very straight hair, or that live in a humid environment.

My friend Rhys Alexander, from The Screamstress, has asked about ideas for holding curl in hair that doesn’t like to curl. This really is a pretty large subject with many different variables because wearing a hairstyle that goes against the natural tendencies of your hair (that will actually hold for longer than one minute) is a building process. To start, I want to talk about some hair structure basics and how they relate to curling your hair, because you must alter the structure of your hair (either permanently or temporarily) in order to achieve curls.

Warning: This is very basic chemistry – but is the minimum you need to know (unless, of course you retain a personal stylist)!

Your hair is mostly made up of strands of protein, with a scaly covering called a cuticle that holds everything together (think snake skin). The hair strand pictured above is a split end, but it gives you a good picture of the protein strands inside of the individual hairs (cut these off every 6 weeks!). These protein molecules are bonded together chemically in several different ways. When talking about curls, we are concerned with Hydrogen bonds (H bonds) and Sulfur bonds (S bonds). As you might imagine, Hydrogen bonds break every time you wash your hair (think H₂O) and as it dries, the bonds are reformed. An example of this is putting your wet hair into curlers, and drying it. When you take out the curlers after your hair is dry, the H bonds have reformed, and, voila!, you have curls. The reverse of this example is also true: When you have put in these beautiful curls via H bonds, all you need is a little moisture to start breaking them down, and the moisture in the air is enough to start (and often finsh) the process.

Sulfur bonds are permanent bonds, and are the ones that define your natural curl (or lack thereof). These bonds are why, when you wash your hair, it reverts back to its natural state. However, we are lucky to know the secret of breaking sulfur bonds and reforming them, so it is possible to recreate the structure of your hair–enter the Permanent Wave.

Making any of these types of changes in your hair requires you to give up something in exchange for what you want. Every time you open up the cuticle to get in to change the structure of the protein strands, that cuticle never shuts back down as tightly as it was before, resulting at a minimum in loss of shine. The more force you have to use (via heat or chemicals) to enter the hair and break the bonds, the harder it is to get back to where you were before.

Fortunately, there are many, many different products in the marketplace that help make up for what you have lost, so most people can style their hair the way they want to without much visible loss in appearance and health of your hair. But, in all honesty, some people just cannot (or should not) achieve what they want, and this is something that some women either come to terms with, or have very bad looking hair.

More to come soon–thanks to Rhys for the question!