When I first started thinking about going natural, I had just finished high school and it was the summer before my first year at college. Actually, I had my last perm in the 7th grade. Back then I didn’t identify as a “Natural,” — that term wasn’t as big a thing as it is now. I remember going to the hair dressers and having them describe my hair as either “unrelaxed” or “virgin” hair. In my earlier days of being a natural, I still got my hair pressed religiously OR it was in braids/Twists.Those were the only two ways I wore my hair (save that one time I got a weave because prom and graduation were so close together).

The very first natural hair video I ever saw was of MahoganyCurls (wonderful natural hair vlogger, check her out) and she had, still does have, beautiful hair. However, she doesn’t have my type of hair–from the curl pattern, texture, and porosity–we are almost nothing alike. And yet, she was really the ONLY person I watched when I was looking for tutorials of twist-outs, braid-outs, and, of course, the elusive perfect wash-n-go. Although it was nice to see her product reviews and natural hair tutorials, to be honest it was more of just hair porn for me.

The methods and products that MahoganyCurls utilized didn’t work for me as well because I wasn’t a 3c kinky curly kinda girl. And that’s okay. To this day–eons after I officially embraced the natural hair movement–I still subscribe to her channel even though I am now aware of our differences in hair.

There is this idea in the natural hair movement that we shouldn’t be so focused on hair type because there are more important things to consider such as porosity, or hair density. While I agree that there are things more important than hair type that naturals should consider when trying to devise a hair regimen, I do believe that hair type matters because it gives you an idea of what certain styles will look like with you hair type. At the end of the day, we all have a certain style that we would like to achieve and the fact of the matter is that a 3c, 4a, and 4c twist-out all differ from one another.

I had fallen in love with a hair type that I didn’t posses and my eyes were trained to look for 3c twist-outs and when they didn’t come out that way I thought that the style had failed. This led me to over-manipulate my hair, trying to replicate something that I would never achieve. In my first year, I frequently complained, “my hair doesn’t curl.” I had gone natural my first year of college with unrealisitc expectations of what my hair was going to look like.

Fortunately, my sister sent me a braid-out tutorial from Naptural85 (another amazing natural hair vlogger, get hip!) who describes herself as “4a, 4b in the crown.” I fell in love with her and her videos because I was seeing someone with my kinda hair. It was from her that I finally got the message that I should probably be using heavy butters instead of creams to style my hair. It was also from her that I realized that yes, my hair did curl, but it also did something else, it coiled.

As a 4a (predominantly)/ 3c (in the back and crown), and 4b (around the edges) natural (many naturals posses multiple curls types), I was ecstatic to see someone like myself rocking all these natural hairstyles that I had tried doing but wrote off as failures because they didn’t look a certain way. This is why the hair typing system matters. It is in no way the only thing which one should consider when thinking about their natural hair, but it does provide a standard look-a-like, a guide against which all kinds of naturals can get a sense of what their unique hair type can do.