Anthony Payne

My perspective is coming from a very specific place: 16 years of working with hair across textures, while becoming increasingly interested in what happens when hair is allowed to naturally air-dry and exist in its own structure.

You might eventually arrive at some of the same conclusions I have. But you can’t fake the pudding.

Eventually, your understanding of how Afro hair behaves will show.

“it’s better to retain length when Afro hair is kept stretched.”

Okay… why?

What exactly is happening to the hair when it shrinks?

It stays put. It shrinks amongst itself. So is the actual problem the shrinkage—or is the problem detangling, matting, manipulation, or trying to style hair that naturally wants to occupy less space?

Because I want to challenge this idea that naturally air-dried Afro hair is somehow impossible to maintain, impossible to keep, or impossible to grow.

Maybe the hair isn’t the problem.

Maybe we just haven’t learned how to live with it in the state God designed it to be in.

And every time we describe naturally existing Afro hair as defective, difficult, or something that has to be stretched into submission just to survive, it’s almost a slap in the face at God.
He didn’t make anything incorrect or improper.

And he damn sure didn’t make the hair he put the most work into self-destruct.

Weightless?
That’s unheard of.
So I’m going to keep asking the questions that nobody seems to want to ask:

What if Afro hair isn’t difficult to maintain?
What if we just haven’t learned how to maintain it without constantly changing its nature?

I’m open to being proved wrong…

I’ve started looking at hair the way we look at plants.

Not just the way they look—but the ecosystem that allows them to grow.

Plants have soil.
They need water.
They need sunlight.
They need pruning.
They need the right environment to thrive.

Hair has an ecosystem too.

The scalp is the environment.
The hair is the structure.
Water matters.
Sunlight matters.
Grooming matters.
How you manipulate the hair matters.
And what you do—or don’t do—to the ends matters.

We spend so much time asking, “What product should I use?” or “What style should I wear?” when I think the better question is:

What does my hair ecosystem actually need?

That’s the foundation of my philosophy.

I’m not interested in simply making hair look good for the day. I’m interested in understanding the relationship between the body, the scalp, the hair, the environment, and the grooming practices we use every day.

Once you understand the ecosystem, hair care starts making a lot more sense.

And if you want to understand your hair ecosystem, that’s exactly what I help people do.

Reach out. I’ll help you understand your hair differently.

Atleast let’s help the kids yall!

One thing I think being a hairstylist has given me is a perspective I probably wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else.

I’ve been able to sit in the salon and watch different cultures, different hair types, different grooming practices, and different trends move through the same industry.

And when you zoom out, you start seeing patterns.

What people think is “new” to Black hair culture has often already happened somewhere else.

I watched the beauty industry teach stylists to sell products. Then I watched stylists teach clients to become dependent on those products. And once the industry saw how profitable that relationship was, why wouldn’t they take that same business model into every other market—including Black consumers?

Capitalism doesn’t care who you are. It cares where the money is.

It will find a problem, convince you that you need a product or service to solve it, and then sell you the solution over and over again.

That’s why I get frustrated when people think everything happening in Black hair exists in a bubble.

It doesn’t.

I’ve watched blowouts, braids, extensions, wigs, products, trends, and grooming practices travel across cultures. I’ve watched the beauty industry evolve, adapt, and then bring those same mechanisms into new markets.

And because I’ve spent my career actually watching hair culture from the salon chair, I can see the pattern.

Sometimes you have to zoom out far enough to realize what you think is uniquely happening to you is actually a much bigger system.

And once you see the system, you stop being so easy to sell to.

I’ve spent my entire career dealing with weight in hair.

I was trained in a predominantly white cosmetology program, where so much of haircutting is about controlling how the hair falls around the oval of the head—creating shape, removing weight, establishing 90° angles, one-lengths, etc.

But working with Afro-textured hair made me realize how much of that language doesn’t translate.

Our hair can behave completely differently when it’s coiled, shrunken, stretched, blown out, or pressed. And when we stretch the hair, we can suddenly create a completely different relationship with weight, density, and shape.

Yet a lot of our haircutting education has historically focused more on changing the texture than understanding the structure of the hair itself.

And I think that connects to something else I’ve been thinking about:

Do we have a scarcity mindset when it comes to our hair?

We can be terrified of losing a strand because we’ve been taught to value every bit of hair we have…

…but then turn around and expose that same hair to excessive heat, tension, chemicals, or other forms of stress because we’re trying to make it look a certain way.

It’s an interesting contradiction:

“What if I lose my hair?”

while simultaneously doing things that can contribute to losing it.

Maybe the conversation isn’t just about having more hair.

Maybe it’s about understanding the hair you already have.

So I’m curious:

Do you think you have a scarcity mindset when it comes to your hair?

When was the last time you were actually comfortable removing hair, thinning it, cutting it, or changing it—without feeling like you were losing something you might never get back?

If anyone wants to debate these facts please DM me!

And this is where the “protective style” conversation gets diabolical.

We keep calling it protection while our community is dealing with traction alopecia and central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia—conditions that can result in permanent hair loss.

CCCA alone has been estimated to affect up to 15% of Black women. Some studies have reported traction alopecia in roughly one-third of Black women, depending on the population studied. (American Academy of Dermatology⁠)

And before somebody gets emotional: I’m not saying every wig causes alopecia.

I’m saying we cannot keep calling a practice “protective” simply because the hair is hidden.

Research has found associations between traction-heavy practices—including braids, extensions and weaves—and hair loss. (JAMA Network⁠)

So if we’re constantly putting our hair away, manipulating it, compressing it, attaching things to it, and creating tension around the scalp…

At what point do we stop calling that protection and start asking whether the practice is actually damaging the ecosystem we’re supposedly trying to preserve?

Because hiding your hair is not the same thing as protecting it.

And if your “protective style” leaves you with less hair every time you take it down, what exactly are you protecting?

I rarely hear people talk about “hair care” for white hair.

And I don’t mean products. I mean an actual hair-care philosophy.

Even through cosmetology school and working in salons, so much of the curriculum was about styling, enhancing, cutting, coloring, and creating an appearance. “Hair care” often became: use this deep conditioner, use this product.

But Black hair culture has historically had an entirely different relationship with maintenance.

Bonnets. Satin pillowcases. Wrapping the hair. Oiling. Detangling rituals. Protective styles. Hair growth. Preserving the ends.

And what’s fascinating is that even when some of these practices aren’t actually as protective as we’ve been taught, the philosophy underneath them is still about preserving the hair.

I think part of that comes down to something incredibly basic:

Hair that naturally falls around the head behaves very differently from hair that grows outward, rises from the scalp, and coils back into itself.

That physical difference creates a completely different relationship with maintenance.

And maybe that’s why Black hair culture developed such a strong “take care of your hair at home” mentality.

Not because Black people simply care more about their hair.

But because our hair has historically required us to think about what happens to it when we’re not in the salon.

And honestly, I think cosmetology has a lot to learn from that.

Don’t let them fool you.