Our Beauty of the Week is an of the up and coming natural hair bloggers in London. Melissa Walters has already amassed over 11 thousand subscribers on YouTube – now that’s impressive! It’s not hard to see why with her super useful and informative tutorials for ladies with kinky hair!
1. Why did you go natural? How long have you been natural?
About four years ago I made the decision to stop relaxing my hair, not because of a catastrophic disaster from a relaxer, I was just sick and tired of how thin, lifeless and brittle my hair was.
After about a week of staying up all night watching natural hair care tutorials like an addict I was ready to take the plunge and thought I had swotted up enough to know all about how to care for my natural hair. How wrong I was ! It took between 1-2 years to figure out how to style, manage and sometimes control my hair.
2.Can you summarize your current hair regimen?
I’ll deep condition my hair once a week, and as its coming up to the winter months, the more thick and nourishing the better! If I’ve got the time I’ll leave it in overnight and shampoo and condition in the morning.
I love sealing my moisturisers in with oils. I used to use a gel to make the curls look more defined but hated the flakiness and crunch-like feel to my hair. Using an oil makes my hair less defined but I’m used to the wilder look now. I try to co-wash in the middle of the week but the longer my hair gets the more of a struggle that is.
3. What are your staple hair products? Which could you not live without and why?
I use literally any of the OGX conditioners as my deep conditioner – they all work really well! My conditioner of choice is Tresemme Moisture Rich Conditioner, sometimes I even use it as my leave in conditioner because I love the consistency.
My favourite leave in conditioner would have to be Shea Moisture’s Curl Enhancing Smoothie but it’s definitely something I buy and use sparingly as it’s a little pricier than other styling products but totally worth it.
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4. As a YouTuber do you feel pressure to always have your hair perfect?!
I literally cannot count the amount of times I’ve seen other women’s curls on Youtube & Instagram and compared them to my own! As someone with 4A (kinky) hair it’s not hard to fall into the trap of longing for looser curls, or trying to find the fastest way possible to stretch my hair out. But over the past couple years I’ve learnt to love my hair, and to work with my hair not against it.
Being on Youtube and other social media has slyly made me self-conscious of my ends. I’m constantly grabbing scissors and trimming my ends because I feel like they’re always thin, which has left me with a lopsided fro. I definitely be getting it done by a professional next time!
5. What are your hair goals for 2017?
I think I will definitely experiment with colour. It sounds silly as I’ve spent the last year growing my colour out because of the damage it had done to my hair but I want to have fun with my hair! I don’t want to be restricted to certain colours or styles. Hopefully I muster up the courage to go for and 2nd big chop this year as it’s something I’ve wanted to do for ages.
6. Who is your celeb curl crush?
I wouldn’t say I have any celeb curl crushes, more YouTube hair crushes. Laila from FusionofCultures is a youtuber whose videos I would watch non-stop before starting my natural hair journey, and after falling in love with her hair she inspired me to go natural. I also love Whitney from Naptural85.
7. For many naturals it’s a journey to fully understand their hair. It’s a process of trial and error. What was your “Curls Understood” moment (the moment you felt like, “I’ve got this!” or any essential advice you wish you had known at the beginning of your hair journey)?
It was a whole year or two into my natural hair journey that I finally felt that I understood my hair, it’s such a steep learning curve! As my hair grew longer it had much more hang time, which made it easier to style, I‘m also a fan of stretching my hair out before doing styles to make it much more manageable.
My main advice would be to experiment with different products, styles, regimes to find out which is best for you.
Knowing that I have have mainly type 4a hair (with a little 3c up in the mix) helped to guide me as to which regimes would work best, and the best way to achieve certain styles. What works for another person maybe not be what’s right for you so take this into account when looking at reviews for products etc.
See more of Melissa…
YouTube: Melissa Walters
Instagram: @melfacemish
Tumblr: melfacemish.tumblr.com
Facebook: MelfaceMish
