I have never written about my hair, but the experience I had today deserves noting.
I have extremely curly hair and come from a family of mostly straight-haired women, so the history of my woes goes way back to when I was four and decided to have all my hair chopped off just to keep my mom from strength training by pulling on it each morning. Then I sobbed for months, because I was teased at school, where they said I looked like a boy. After that I spent approximately ten years of my life with a ponytail, then an afro and then a self-cut afro… At some point I kinda sorta figured out a better way to style it and have pivoted on that formula ever since…
On the other side of this story, I became a huge Youtube fan almost as soon as it came out, I remember hours of looking and sharing the randomest videos with my college boyfriend who started me on the vice. At some point I stumbled onto tutorials, so that’s where I get all my DIYs and makeup tricks. Evidently, I soon found a community of curly haired women shairng tips, tricks, product reviews, dos and don’ts… I was immediately hooked.
I can’t pinpoint the first time a heard about it, but I’m sure it was in a Youtube video, “the Deva cut”… I saw a bunch of reviews that ranged from rants about how it was the end of life, to praises on it being the best invention since the wheel. I knew I really wanted to try it, especially since I saw the amount and quality of research, development and training behind it. Finally, somebody understood that curly is nothing like straight hair; trianed stylist to cut it and built a whole line of products that are not merely marketed for girls with curls, but that differ from other products on factors other than scents and actually do something for the hair.
I came to Texas for the holidays; the months that led up to me coming here were filled with blog posts and tutorials, so I thought that I would get to my haircut at a high point… Little did I know just how badly it had been cut before. In Nene’s words, my hair didn’t look the way I wanted it to because they had “texturized the shit out of it”. Which means that it fell in a way that made me think I was getting a bald spot on the back of my head, since I had no hair there, except for a couple of oddly long strands.
My experience at the salon was great, I got a next-day appointment at Alter Image, showed up punctual and started the consulting session, Nene Tran Dean, my stylist, asked a lot of questions about the products I use and about my daily routine. She juggled between beauty conversations and filling me in on the town gossip (some girl is getting married and another one has a cheating husband); there wasn’t a lot of people, so the remaining free stylists sat around, commented on my hair and gossiped. It was, hands down, the funnest trip to a salon.
The main difference between the Deva Cut and any other haircut, is that they cut the hair completely dry “eyeballing” how it naturally grows and falls on the shoulders and back. There’s different kinds of shapes they can give it, depending on how often each client wears it straight. There’s also an entire line of products that are tailored for curly hair, looking to hidrate it (since it is naturally very dry), detangle it and maintain its natural oils.
After my cut, Nene washed my hair and carefully explained how I could replicate what she was doing and what kind of products she was using. Then, she gave me a pile of magazines and sat me under a drier, when it was done, the ends were still quite wet, so she explained to me what a diffuser does and how to use it. I told her I’m leaving town tomorrow, back to Mexico, where “the curly revolution” (as they market it) has not started, so she recommended a couple of products to me and let me help out with the final styling.
It was the first time I walked out of a salon with styling I liked, by now i’m used to running to the nearest bathroom and just redoing it all myself, yet this time I genuinely liked it, it wasn’t flat ironed and I didn’t look like the hot mess I usually look like when I ask stylists to leave it curly; lion is the first word that comes to mind. Anyways, my hair feels great, so I’ll have to figure out a way to either replicate this in Mexico or keep coming back to the States to get my hair cut…
Either way, I owe my current beautiful hair and the awesome experience that came with it to the web, specifically social media. I love how being connected means expanding horizons, even on the little things.
Updated: this is what it looks like 
