An Interesting Observation....

I helped a friend take out her 6 weeks old full head sew in recently. Her hair had been cornrowed all back and then the weave sewn across the kind of cornrow-sewing combo that makes it hard to get to your scalp. One thing I noticed as I was undoing the cornrows was that there was hardly any matting at all, the only little matting I noticed and it was so small was at the nape, her hair and scalp were very very oily as in my hands were super oily I had to keep wiping them with a paper towel. So I asked her how often she oiled her scalp or sprayed her roots while she had the weave installed because it was so oily. She said she never oiled it all and had not washed her hair in the six weeks her installation was in either, that was the oil from when she greased her scalp before the installation. I asked her what grease she used; lo and behold it was petroleum jelly! My friend is not on any hair regimen that I know of she gets everything done at the salon the most she does is tie a scarf at night, style in the morning and once in a while grease her scalp. Washing, deep conditioning and all that other good stuff, she gets done at the salon. She is natural by the way and wears long term protective styles most of the time.

 

Sorry I don't have photos of my friend's hair after take down I was not quite thinking of doing a "petroleum jelly" blog post at that particular moment. The idea hit me much much later the next day.

Petroleum jelly has a bad reputation in the hair world due to the fact that it just sits on your hair and really does nothing at all for your tresses in terms of nourishment.  I have mentioned on this blog before that I have no problem using products that contain petroleum jelly as part of the ingredients especially as a styling product or pre poo. While it is true that petroleum jelly and it’s by products just sit on your hair and have no nourishing benefits, they can serve some other purposes that are beneficial to hair. These are my observations based on what I noticed during the weave take down;

• Because the petroleum jelly just sat on her hair it prevented her hair from matting which could have led to breakage during takedown. The little matting she had at the lower nape was as a result of shower water getting into that section even with a shower cap on.
• This is a person who never oiled her scalp or sprayed her roots once when the weave was in, so the petroleum jelly by sitting on her scalp ensured that her hair and scalp were never dry the entire six weeks. Her hair may not have been "moisturised" but it stayed breakage free on take down due to the greasiness that provided plenty of slip.
• Undoing the cornrows was so much easier thanks to the greasiness of her hair the braids just slid through my fingers.
• Detangling her coarse natural hair which was more like combing through to be honest after take down and before washing was a breeze once again thanks to the greasiness less hassle during detangling equals less breakage and more length retention.No tangles, no knots and very limited matting at the lower nape area.

To be honest as much as petroleum jelly and petroleum jelly based products have a bad reputation in the hair world it stayed winning in this instance by doing more good than harm to my friend’s hair.