Years ago, Cofounder of Urban Bush Babes Cipriana pictured above, gave us the secret to her long 4C natural hair and I am going, to be honest, I thought to myself there has to be more to it than that.
Cipriana said that she does loose twists in her hair 99% of the time and uses those twists to create updo styles which she wore quite often.
The manner in which she handled her hair just from the video showed the level of manipulation she probably did on a weekly basis, which was low to almost zero.
I have no idea if Cipriana’s regimen is the same today but looking back there is a lesson to be learned from how she handles her 4C hair.
Why loose twists are a great option for Afro-textured hair
Afro textured hair thrives on moisture and low manipulation because the texture and shape of each individual strand can easily lead to knots, tangles and breakage.
When you do loose twists you allow the hair to stay organized as it grows out and keeps chunks of the hair together because there is strength in numbers.
Curlier textures naturally do this when they clump together after being properly moisturized. Clumps are great because your hair naturally protects itself that way. Clumps are stronger than individual curls so unless you want to create a fro let your clumps remain intact.
How to do a loose twist
The technique is simple, but you just grab pieces of your hair and loosely twist them together then style the loose twists in whatever style you want.
Watch Cipriana do it here (skip to 2:38):
Here is Alicia James demonstrating her loose twists who used to use a similar regimen as well:
4C natural hair does not need a ton of manipulation to thrive it needs care and minimal styling. At the end of the day when we do cute styles that is pretty much for our own satisfaction, which is ok, but just know that for your hair to retain length the less you do the better.
I love the idea but how do they maintain the twist? Do they take them all down, wash, then retwist them all once a month?
I wear my hair similarly to that except its roughly shoulder length. While it is twisted I can moisturize as needed by either spraying the twists with water, or soaking it in the sink or shower and doing the LOC method with a liquid or creamy leave in, oil and maybe a butter. Be careful with the butter because if you overdo it it can cake up and be heavy. I wash every two weeks so I can take the twists out a day or two before wash day and have a very defined twist out. Prepoo, detangle and wash and twist it back up again. You can adjust the amount of time between washing based on what your hair needs but the biggest thing is that you can maintain and moisturize the style with very little manipulation. You can set the twists on rods or rollers to make curly styles and pin it up for updo styles, and can switch between the styles just by wetting your twists and restyling as desired.
So simple yet I never thought of this technique in this way. I have bra strap length hair and I wonder how this would translate. I also wonder how they are stretching their hair before installing the loose twist. pardon me if this is explained in the first video I only watched the second.