How To Soften thick 4C Hair

Because wash days are so much work, women often ask how to soften thick 

4C hair.  A typical wash cycle can take three hours.  It can require you to banish the husband with the kids.  No kids?  It requires you to change your status to “not available” so your friends don’t report you missing.  No one who has straight hair can understand why until they are asked to help!

If you speak to most girls with curly hair ( thick curly hair just means you get hard time), they can

recall fear when it came to hair wash day.  Your mother would start gathering the products and you would hope some missive-bearing religious person would knock the door.  The comb outs after a week were murder but your mother would expect you sit quietly while she stretched those strands.  Adult women still have this fear.  The only difference is that now you get to do this to yourself!

There are some of the ways how to soften thick 4C hair after you wash.  They are:

• Moisturize, moisturize.  Soak it to death and comb until all fallen strands are removed.  Twist or braid to keep the length while it dries.  This is the ideal way if you are keeping it natural.
• You can apply a straightening product like a styling lotion.  Section the hair into small sections.  If you are new to this game, making them small is essential.  Blow dry each section and pin it away so it does not get wet while you finish the job.  You can choose to just blow dry it or you can straighten with an iron to make it more shiny and smooth.  The benefit of this is that over time the hair texture softens.  Be warned that straightening too often can make some parts of your hair stay straight permanently.  This can also happen if you make the temperature of the iron too hot. Hair returns to natural  texture when wet.
• You can color it.  The peroxide in color makes the texture soften also.  I am not recommending you do this unless that is what you want.  I am just pointing out that it does soften the texture.
• Some people apply a texturizer.  A texturizer is a mild relaxer.  It does the same thing a relaxer does, just slower.  If your hair is thick or you get the texturizer for kids, the hair will possibly not straighten all the way.  This does not mean you are free to let your hair go.  You have to do treatments every week and get regular trims as with a regular relaxer.
• There are other products such as keratin straighteners that can reform the curl.  They do change the curl somewhat because of the heat required to bond the product to the hair.

Whatever method you chose, I hope this helps you figure out how to soften thick 4C hair.

By Paula Barker, Silkie Locks Hair Design