African American Waist Length Hair: 5 Inches in 7 Months

Waist Length Hair: Coily, Fine Textured and LONG!

January 2012

August 2012

Seven months has certainly given Miss Dimples lots of growth! In the picture on the left, taken January 2012, her hair lays about 5'' away from her bottom. In the picture on the right, taken in August 2012, her hair rests right above her bottom. I did a small trim recently, and plan to step up her deep conditioning treatments until the next trim (probably in October).

•  I never really get her hair "dead straight", because I'm still learning what the correct/safe flat iron temperature setting is for her hair. Her hair is very fine, while being tightly coiled--so this gets kind of tricky (avoiding heat damage).

• She seems to have exceeded her 1/2'' per month! It makes lots of sense, as she's a very active girl. It's said that good old cardiovascular activity helps promote hair growth, due to the blood circulation and all that good stuff. 

• Something that may have attributed to the length retention is that we don't do much with her hair, besides weekly wash/co-wash and style. Her hair maintenance is very low manipulation. Her heat sessions are probably every 6 months. So I'd say the recipe for her hair length retention is that I just care for it, and leave it alone.

Standard two strand twists still remain my favorite length retention styling/texture. So many styling options, easily moisturized, and very hard to damage. Most of all, a style like this can last all week (or two--if times get rough LOL), maybe freshening up the hairline. Also, a style like this is easy on the hairline (very important). If you haven't heard it from me yet, I promote two strand twists for all curl textures that I've ever come across. Using two strand twists to grow long hair is pretty much a surefire way to set about getting the job done.