There seems to be this general belief that Asian women generally have pin straight hair. As one Vietnamese American creator on TikTok has proven, however, some Asian women may have wavier hair than they think.
As an article on L’Oreal’s Hair.com aptly puts it, while Asian hair may have common characteristics like “shine, weight, and dark color,” it can, in fact, vary in waviness — whether it’s just “a hint of body” or “texture that verges on curls.”
New York City-based TikToker Alyssa Nguyen recently took to the digital platform to show her wavy hair tutorial for fine Asian hair, as someone who had always thought she had straight hair.
“I used to have stick straight hair…and then somewhere around my 20th, 21st birthday, my hair just stopped drying straight,” she explained on Oct. 9. “It would dry with the tiniest bend in it, as if I had slept wrong, you know? And then it was getting more frizzy and more coarse-feeling but it was still a fine texture.”
Thinking that her hair was damaged, Nguyen chopped it off to her shoulders and then noticed something else — her hair began to dry in “literal ringlets.”
“On a whim, I tried a wavy hair routine on my hair and then it dried with waves,” she said. “And that’s how I found out…and then it’s gotten wavier over time.”
A 2020 study published in the National Library of Medicine reported that Asian hair, generally speaking, is recognized for its “straightness, dark pigmentation, and large diameter.” Of the three “major ethnic groups” looked at in this study, Asian hair was seen as the “relatively straightest,” African hair was the “curliest” and Caucasian hair ranged from straight to curly.
Nguyen’s ‘long-awaited’ tutorial
To achieve a wavy hair look that suits her texture, Nguyen begins with wet, fresh-out-of-the-shower hair, which she applies Shea Moisture Leave-In Conditioner to. She…
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