Curly Hair Styles Biography
Source(google.com.pk)Did you know that the Jheri Curl, worn so proudly by the Jacksons, Ice Cube, and your crazy aunties and uncles, was invented by the son of Irish immigrants? Yep–’the curl’ was made by a white man!
Below is a timeline for what I did with Brown Girls Hair throughout the years.Born as Robert William Redding in Rantoul, Illinois in 1907, Redding’s interest in the beauty industry began during the Great Depression when he realized that hair stylists and makeup artists had the best paying jobs (even in the midst of great poverty, folks were still getting their hair did–heyyyy). As a young man, he taught chemistry and worked as a hair stylist eventually becoming one of the first men to get a cosmetology license. When the products he was using did not meet his expectations, he began experimenting with chemicals and mixed them with household items like mayonnaise and vinegar to create his own shampoos. Later on, it was Redding who brought the pH balance factor in when it came to shampoos and invented the first creme rinse conditioner. He also started hair companies Redken, Nexxus, Jheri Redding Products Company, and Jhirmack some of which are now owned by other brandsWhile permanent waving had been a popular technique since about 1872 when Marcel Grateau developed a tool that would curl the hair, it was widely done on clients with straight hair. It was Jheri Redding who first started to experiment with permanent waving on excessively curly hair using small toothpicks for rolling the hair. And thus the Jheri Curl was born and every pillow in African American households around the United States became saturated with the juice.A jheri curl was a two-part application that consisted of a softener (often called a “rearranging cream”) to loosen the hair and a solution to set the curls. The rearranging cream used pungent chemicals, causing the naturally tight curls to loosen and hang. The loose hair was then set on perm rods and a chemical solution was then added to the hair to permanently curl it.
Perming the hair was time and labor-intensive and expensive to upkeep. The harsh mix of chemicals required for the process caused the wearer’s natural hair to become extremely brittle and dry.