Tight Curls Defined

Tight Curls are more than a curl pattern or a designation in the imaginary curl alphabet. Tight curls are cultural. They exist in historical hair care practices, community aesthetics, and shared stories/memories.

Black Girl/Folks Curls span from very tight pin spring to marker sized spirals and beyond. When we begin to see the hair through it’s essential elements (texture, density, porosity, elasticity, etc) and not as the “texture “ category or “4C” labels the beauty industry is working to pigeonhole tight curls + natural hair into, we are able to see the client as an individual.

Texture, density, porosity, curl diameter etc. don’t have an ethnicity or race, but the ethnicity and race of the client often impacts how we as professionals perceive our clients hair.

We may think that because hair is tightly curled that it follows a different set of rules on cutting, coloring, and styling than what we’ve learned. We may not feel confident and equipped to properly serve the tight curl client.

Cut It Kinky is here to tell you that all of the theoretical information you need to know about working with tightly curly hair you already know. You use it consciously and unconsciously every day at work.

What you may not have learned in cosmetology school and advanced education was how to practically apply that information to real life tight curls.

You likely didn’t learn the proper culturally competent and/or consumer driven verbiage. You didn’t learn about the salon quality and high performing backbar products for tight curls that aren’t distributed through your local Salon Centric, Armstrong McCall, and CosmoProf. You didn’t learn how to see or shift your techniques to cater to the 3-D nature of Tight Curls.

This lack of exposure we see among many (not all) of our professional cosmetologist peers is why the Cut It Kinky education journey begins with a Level 1 look and learn focused on the the art, architecture, and aesthetics of Tight Curls. We appreciate the cosmetologist desire to delve into hands on experiences from jump because we are hair nerds just like you, but there is a good amount of pre-work that must be done prior to taking shears to a client models hair in a cutting class.

Ready to get started with your Cut it Kinky education journey? Learn more here.