Here are a few pics in chronological order to show you the changes over time. My hair has changed a lot in the 2.5+ years since I made this discovery. The pictures in this post were just the beginning of my journey. If you decide to give the curly girl method a try, I have a post about an affordable start to the curly girl method so you can get going without spending too much money. I am still just in shock that my straight hair is naturally wavy and I never knew. I’ve seen a bit more improvement but I have a lot of learning and experimenting to do before I can share more. Once I saw some improvement with just squishing and plopping, I decided to try curly girl method in its entirety. The picture on the bottom right is my hair after a deep conditioning treatment back before squish to condish or plopping.

The bottom left photo was my hair on an average day when I was still washing my hair as usual and brushing. The top right is my hair with my old shampoo and conditioner (again, not curly-girl approved) but I added in a hard-cast gel while plopping and then ‘ scrunched out the crunch‘ when dry). I was did not use any hair styling products, and I fully rinsed out my shampoo and conditioner (which had silicones and sulfates so they were not curly-girl approved products). In the photo below, the top left is my hair after just doing ‘squish to condish’ and plopping. If you have truly straight hair, it will remain straight despite these methods, according to what I have read. If you do this and see more waves and/or curls in your hair – then you likely have hair that wants to be curlier than it is able to be based on your current method. From there, I added a gel and I saw a lot more shine, less frizz and better-defined waves. I did this, and I saw more waves and more defined waves in my hair than before, but the difference was fairly subtle. Just wash with shampoo, rinse, then use conditioner, rinse, and then “squish” your hair up to your scalp to see if waves form. If you are just trying this the first time, you do not have to do that. If you look up squish to condish and/or plopping, most tutorials will talk about certain hair products, or doing things like leaving conditioner in your hair. Someone told me to just use my normal hair products, but to squish to condish while in the shower, then to plop my hair, and then to NOT touch my hair until it is 100% dry, and to not use a comb or brush on it at all. I started reading about the curly girl method and found out that many people with straight frizzy hair actually have curly hair if they treat it right! I was intrigued – but I didn’t want to purchase curly girl approved products yet because it sounded expensive.

For example, some people with naturally curly hair will just have frizzy, poofy hair if they use a brush after washing their hair because it breaks the curl patterns. Then I found out that to maintain their naturally curly hair, many people have to treat it in a certain way.

My hair has always been straight, yet when looking up content about frizzy hair, I kept finding information about curly hair or wavy hair. I talked about how I had hair that appeared damaged and frizzy, with a frizz halo all the time. In August of last year I shared my Frizzy Damaged Hair Products blog post.

Squish to condish natural hair