Welcome to It’s Textured, a column where we untangle the joy, trauma, confusion, and frustration that can come with Black hair. This month, associate beauty editor Annie Blay-Tettey comes for curly cuts, the beloved dry-cutting method for curly hair (meant to enhance shape, volume, and definition). Reflecting on her failed curly cut, Blay-Tettey unpacks the reality that curly cuts don’t work for all curls.
“I love it,” I said to the hairstylist through a not-so-obvious fake smile, attempting to shake out my newly cut curls only to find they’d been frozen in place by a lethal dose of gel and mousse. As soon as I left the salon—one that claimed to specialize in cutting all types of curly hair—I began googling “hairstyles that help fix a bad haircut.”
In the past, I’ve flinched anytime someone came near my head with scissors. As a Black woman with 4C coils prone to severe shrinkage, I held tightly onto every inch of my hair. But that aversion to trims often meant wearing twist-outs with straggly ends and an uneven shape.
The TikTok algorithm could sense my dilemma: Last summer, it started serving me videos of women getting curly cuts—a method of dry cutting on curly hair meant to amplify shape, volume, and curl definition while retaining as much length as possible. The thinking here is a cut that looks good right after a wash could look drastically different once the curls have dried. Dry cutting, in theory, reduces the chance of surprises after you’ve left the salon.
With all these alluring claims and convincing results from the videos, I booked an appointment. In the same way that the excitement of a first date can make you blind to a person’s flaws, my eagerness as I embarked on my curly-cut journey I missed a few red flags. In retrospect, when I was browsing curly cuts on social media, I mainly saw women of color with looser curl patterns. (I’d guess most of them were in the 2C to 4A range.) The before and afters of their bouncy strands going from unruly to neatly shaped were so mesmerizing I glossed over the fact that none of these women had hair that looked like mine—until I walked into the salon and saw it in real life.
Despite the slight uneasiness, I tried to reassure myself as I sat down in the salon chair, looked around, and saw how different my texture was from the other clients. These stylists were curly-hair specialists! I was in good hands! I’ve reported on curly cuts before; I knew they could be transformative. After six years of wearing my hair natural, I was looking forward to seeing those results.
I got a standard shampoo session, then was placed under a hooded dryer to let the deep conditioner penetrate (and, of course, to let my hair dry) before any scissors came near my head. Once the stylist began cutting each curl—and I do mean each individual curl, one at a time—my initial thought was, Wow, this is going to take forever. Thus began my first gripe with curly cuts: “A curly cut can take about an hour and a half to two hours, which includes the wash-and-go styling after the cut,” says New York City-based hairstylist Karen Miller, who specializes in styling and cutting textured hair, both curly and stretched, and works with stars including Quinta Brunson and Solange. “A standard haircut on blown-out textured hair takes about an hour.”
Most curly-cut appointments will end with a natural hairstyle like a twist-out, a braid-out, or, most commonly, a wash-and-go. (Now that you’ve enhanced your curls with the cut, it’s time to show them off, right?!) Despite my protest that wash-and-gos always leave me with a shrunken-up, stiff Afro, the stylists insisted it was the best styling method for my texture. So they coated my hair in copious amounts of gel and mousse before diffusing it. As I predicted, I was left with a shrunk-up Afro. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a TWA, but it’s not what I was used to nor what I felt I signed up for. The shape of my curls looked spiky and as I went to shake my hair, expecting some movement, like the women I saw on TikTok, I got nothing. My curls were stiff.
Did I mismanage my expectations? Maybe. But in the following days, I became convinced that my hair wasn’t meant for curly cuts. The next morning, my curls were dry and coiled together with no bounce or movement. White flakes of gel residue floated down from my hair every time I moved my head ever so slightly.
I thought restyling my hair using my usual techniques might help, but even after washing my hair (just two days after the appointment) and doing my signature twist-out, my hair still looked spacey: My Afro lacked fullness and I could see gaps in the cut. I couldn’t quite make sense of this until Miller shares with me that “the curls you have on day one of washday aren’t the same as day two and so on. Curls are a group of strands that clump together and sometimes they appear healthier curly than when blown out and separated,” Miller explains. So while my hair appeared more uniform (albeit spiky) at the end of my curly cut, when in a more stretched state—which is how I usually style my hair, as I tried to emphasize to the stylists at the salon—split ends and gaps in the overall shape became more evident.
More than anything, I was left with a whole lot of confusion. Why did curly cuts seem to work for the rest of the natural hair community but not for me? I had Black, curly-haired friends who raved about their curly cuts, so what went wrong with mine? Looking back through the curly-cut success stories on the salon’s Instagram and reflecting on my own experience, I’ve concluded that curly cuts simply aren’t for all curly girls. Miller agrees: “I find that those with looser curls and wavy hair can get away with a curly cut because the hair tends to be more stretched out,“ she says. “[For those with tighter curls] it’s best to have your hair cut stretched. It allows your stylist to see more clearly what needs to be cut.” At the very least, your stylist should be mindful of how you’re actually going to style your hair once you’re home. I would never do a wash-and-go as they had done, so that shouldn’t have been the final look used to check the results of the cut.
“Cutting curls in their natural form became popular around 2011 when everyone decided to go natural and wanted nothing to do with any form of heat,” Miller says. This complete villainization of heat that happened during the natural hair movement perpetuated the misconception that all curls are created equal. But the truth is, some curl types thrive when stretched out with heat.
In the same way that it was wrong to assume all heat is bad for all curly hair, it’s also wrong to assume that curly cuts are good for all curly hair. As this truth sank in, my frustration with being duped by social media began to subside. For some, the dry-cutting technique really is a game-changer. There are many beautiful curly-cut results on the internet (the same ones that lured me in).
This isn’t a hate letter to curly cuts. It’s a plea to the natural hair community to be transparent about how many natural hairstyles, products, and methods aren’t made with coily type 4 hair in mind.
A few months after my failed curly cut, I went to a salon in Queens and got a haircut on silk-pressed hair. The experience yielded the confidence every woman wants after a hair appointment. My ends and the overall shape of my hair looked neater, both when I wore it curly and straight. Fast-forward about six months, I was due for another silk press and trim (Yes, I know I should be getting trims more frequently, but that’s another story.) This time, I gladly let my stylist apply the appropriate amount of heat to my hair, stretching it out before cutting. After all, true autonomy means knowing what actually works for your hair—regardless of what an algorithm suggests.
Discover more Black hair stories:
- My “Heat-Trained Hair” May Actually Be Heat-Damaged
- For Black Women, Traction Alopecia Costs Us More Than Our Hair
- Everything To Know Before Getting a Keratin Treatment on Natural Hair
Now, watch Suni Lee's 10-minute olympic makeup routine:
