After hundreds of hours of combing, washing, styling, and generally caring for your hair every African-American woman knows hair care is essential. We’ve all been frustrated to no end with our hair sometimes, especially when it seems like no matter how hard we try, it never turns out right. Blood, sweat, and tears- sometimes lots of tears- go into taking care of and styling black hair. Also, just as much care can go into taking care of our skin. After years and years of trying a copious amount of products and tons of methods for taking care of my hair and skin, here are my favorite products.
Hair Care
Here are some of my go-to products for maintaining and styling my hair. Cantu curl cream is an essential for me and basically my most trusted styling product. For wash days, I use Aunt Jackie’s shampoo and conditioner that keeps my hair soft and smelling great! For everyday use, I put argan oil and take biotin pills to keep my hair strong and moisturized. I’ve also found it very helpful to sleep with a silk pillowcase to reduce frizz, or you could wear a bonnet. As an added bonus, most of these products are affordable and last a long time!
Skin Care
Making sure you don’t have dry, ashy skin is another essential in everyday life. To shower with, I use Philosophy’s vanilla birthday cake soap which smells amazing and helps keep my skin soft! For lotion, I use Hempz in the scent Pomegranate and this is non-irritating and also provides a great smell. Cetaphil is a twice daily cleanser that is sensitive skin approved and good for basic upkeep of skin care. I also like to have a moisturizer that has SPF in it, so Neutrogena is a good option for this! Lastly, I use Chapstick religiously, so Carmex is a must for me because of its moisturizing properties.