Let’s Talk Wigs

Hey Beauts!

Good week so far? Can you believe it’s already the end of August?!

As I write, I am in my first hour of the Cherry Lola treatment. Yup, I have begun my first 7 days of the Maximum Hydration Method (MHM). I hope to chronicle these 7 days via pictures and update you occasionally afterwards. I am usually very spontaneous with my hair. Heck, my big chop wasn’t premeditated. This is the first time I have planned when it comes to my hair. Part of my planning led me to seek out another wig for at least the seven days I shall be doing the MHM. Reasons being that I am not a big fan of my wash and go results, and there may be times when I don’t complete the MHM overnight and need to go about my day with treatment still in my hair.

So…

Let’s talk wigs!

Source: Wikipedia

Wigs are a form of protective styling, right? However, I struggle with how much ‘protection’ they actually give. From my understanding, the point of protective styling is to minimize frequent hair manipulation. With wigs, though, I am of the opinion that one probably manipulates hair as much as one would have without the wig. True or no? Either that, or one might neglect hair more than one would when hair is in other forms of protective styling. Of course these opinions are based on personal experience, and I may be an anomaly. But I am interested in reading what you think of wigs in terms of protective styling.

With weaves and wigs, I favour the curlies. One of the few reasons I decided to go natural is that I am a big fan of coils and curls… all types of big hair. I find that the curly wigs tend to require more care than straight ones. From past experience, a fave curly wig can go from glorious to ‘did you get that out of the trash?!’ in only of few weeks of wearing. So in this post, I shall provide some tips on how to care for wigs (especially synthetic curlies) in order to get the most life out of them.

1. Minimize finger combing

This, I find particularly difficult. I do not like the perfect curls in new wigs. I like the more real look and so I tend to finger comb through the curls a lot to get the desired ‘oh nothing, it’s just my natural looking big hair’ look. However, the more finger combing one does, the more prone to tangling one makes the wig. More tangle, more matted look, unhappy wig, unhappy wearer. Along with minimizing finger combing, of course…

2. DO NOT BRUSH!

Don’t do this. It is curly wig suicide. There will be tears.

3. Store with love and care

I am guilty of throwing wigs wherever, underneath a pile of clothes or somewhere on the table with a bunch of other stuff. Apparently, this doesn’t fare well with wigs. They want to be treated like you would treat a real head of hair. For this reason, I got a phantom head for my wig. However, I recently learnt that if the wig has those strappy things, you can also hook those and hang the wig on the door knob or on a hanger.

4. Condition and freshen

So for the longest time, I was so sure there was no need to use products on my wigs. Wrong. Synthetic or natural, the fibers that make up the wig need rejuvenation from time to time. So endeavour to apply some conditioner (I favour spray leave-ins for this purpose) and also there are some wig fresheners in the market. The fresheners basically help to remove the cocktail of odours that your wig might have decided to take on from its interaction with every smell in the atmosphere.

5. Wash 

Try not to do this too frequently. How I do this is to fill the sink with warm water, add some conditioner and leave the wig to soak in this sink mixture for say, an hour. Usually I might forget I have it in there so it might stew for more than an hour. Rinse. Then holding the wig upside down, finger detangle. I recently learnt that this is the only time it is alright to brush a curly weave without destroying the curls.

Right. There you have it. Personally, I tend to get sick of wigs after a short while but I find them highly useful as well, especially for days when I’m too busy to spend any time in trying to make my hair presentable?

So I would like to hear from you… What do you think about wigs? Are they really protective? Or just functional and have aesthetic value? How do you care for your wigs?

Thank you for dropping by today. Have a brilliant week.

– Mee Mee

xx