Hey everybody. It is the one and only, it is Melanie Day here. I’m your favorite stylist at You've Got Curls and Hair Loss Center located in Lexington, Kentucky.

Today we’re talking about a hot topic, this is something that I get behind the chair a lot. It goes, did you learn about textured hair or afro-textured hair or just curly hair in school? Like where did you learn this? 

Are you ready for the answer? No. I didn’t learn about textured hair in school. And I want to get into it today. 

When I was in beauty school in the early 2000’s, which was not that long ago, but long enough ago that my hair wasn’t exactly embraced, I had totally virgin hair. It had never had relaxer in it, and I wore it in braids. 

When you’re in school, part of the training is working on each other as models, you get credit for it. And it’s not a short amount of time, it was like 300 hours we had to do on our classmates. So my instructor at the time said I was going to have to remove my braids to participate in class. I was going to have to relax my hair.

I was like, wow, I'm gonna have to cut my braids out and get a relaxer in order to comply, to finish beauty school, to get my education, I'm gonna have to do something that I don't want to do. 

Now, this stopped me. What would it have been like if I had locked in my hair, right? Which is a permanent style. And you're telling me like, so you're saying that you can't work with braid or locked hair. As a 17-year-old kid that was pretty traumatizing. 

So I remember my mom, my stylist, and I sitting around the shop, ready to do this, and they were both like ‘are you sure?’ But like, I didn’t have a choice. And they understood I didn’t have a choice, so we did it. 

Now fast forward 20-something years and here I am, teaching textured hair, and being an advocate for natural hair. 

If you want to hear my full story, you’re going to want to watch the whole video linked below but for all of you reading today, I want you to take a second and think about how you can be a change for good. 

You can do right by yourself and your kids by learning how to properly care for natural, textured hair. Just think about how you can be a change for good and how you can have this conversation with your kids about showing self-love and having love for their hair, regardless of what it looks like. 

The world is a mean place and it says a lot of mean things, and you have to be strong to get through. Here you’re going to have a community of like-minded people that are willing to help and help you through that journey because you're not alone. 

I hope this was helpful if it was, please let me know if you would like to hear more content like this, or if you've got questions about healthy hair care tips, or how to grow healthier hair. Let me know once again.

My name is Melanie Day with You've Got Curls and Hair Loss Center, and until next time, take care.