Can someone please clarify the difference between coily, kinky and curly? I don’t subscribe to the hair typing system so I just figured, “Hey! I’ll stick with some basic terms to simplify things.” I thought perhaps general terms that are already readily defined by a dictionary to describe hair could be useful; you know, words like curly, kinky, coily?
The more I pondered this thing the more I realized it’s not as cut n’ dry as I thought it would be. The thing is when it comes to using words like coily, kinky* and curly, I often get stuck. The more I thought about it the more I recognized that I don’t have a clue what the difference is. For the most part, it just seemed that they were used interchangeably so I got to wondering if there are distinct differences. Now I have been natural all my life and still have difficulty with explaining the difference so I can only imagine those who are new to healthy natural hair care.
It seems that of the three, curly is the most obvious. To most of us, curly hair has a pattern of spirals, but is it different at all? Just peep this definition of curly from merriam-webster.com:
A series of connected spirals or concentric rings formed by gathering or winding: a coil of rope; long coils of hair; to form (as the hair) into coils or ringlets
Hmmm…so if I’m to follow this, curls are coils so that would make coily a synonym for curly? I paid particular attention to the words ‘concentric rings formed by gathering or winding’. In mulling over the matter, I was interested in finding descriptive terms that would indicate that the state is a result of something that is naturally occurring. Notice how in that definition it is not explicit?
In a forum over at Curly Nikki this was the point that stood out in the very short thread:
Kinky* is fluffy, wirey, or tight. Curly is the hair making S shaped patterns. Coily is the hair making O shaped patterns. [Squeaky82]
When I was growing up, I remember studying my father’s hair and telling him itlooked liked he used tiny rollers. My daughter has the same hair. If she wets her hair and rubs it a bit, it separates into dozens of tiny coils. So beautiful.
Me? My hair is kinky. Fine and with some coils, mostly kinks that will degenerate into naps and knots if I’m not careful. My sister has the same hair except extremely coarse. All of our hair will frizz and fuzz, but I consider my daughter to have coily and myself to have kinks.
I consider curls to be…well…curls. IMO, I think anything that you can pull a brush through without breakage is curly.
The best description I saw was by youtuber: ProtectivePrincess. She did a “Master Your Texture Series” where the 2nd episode was focused on Curls, Coils, Kinks, strand thickness and overall density. The video is a little over 7 minutes, but definitely packed full of substantial information. Check it out.
Hmmm. I have all three on my one head. A real problem when I was getting that perm because I required three separate processing times. Right. So the stylist opted for bone straight which killed my hair. So. I cut all that out and started over. Out grew masses of kinky hair that once properly nourished wet down in about one minute and separated into coils that if left to dry would have been straight as in not straight nappy. Cut close and wet with product it’s curly; grown out with heavy product application it’s coily; brushed flat and held with pins it’s wavy. I find the hair typing system is just another way to create some hierarchy of good and bad hair. It’s all good if it grows out of your head. When all this hair typing and light medium dark code typing of Black women stops we will have won the war set in motion by white supremacist thought and practice. One love ladies!