Have any of you curly girls experienced an apparent shortening of your hair as it gets longer? The hair beside my face seems to be curling more and more as it grows, making it look even shorter compared to the rest of my hair! I keep expecting to reach a threshhold where it will do the opposite due to its growing weight..

By the way, does anyone have an opinion on John Frieda (blonde, in my case) conditioners for CO routines?

/Kate

I noticed that when I would be growing my hair out (haha), it would seem significantly shorter than it actually is just because of the curl. I always expected the weight to take out some curl, but to no avail! ;) I don't think there's a threshold for that, but then again... my hair's never been really long.

And I can't say anything about the conditioners... sorry!  :(

It isn't unusual for curly hair to get more developed as it gets longer.
To take some of the "spring" out of those hairs at the front, after cleansing while hair is still damp (and if you're putting any stuff in your hair do it first) take a hair clip and attach it to the bottom of the curl for 5 or 10 minutes.  The weight of the clip will stretch out the hair and reduce the spring factor.
My hair is wavy, but the longer it gets it is starting to spiral.  I'm only at about 20 inches now-can't wait to see how it looks at BSL!

Good Luck!

yep, and my front hair's curlier than the back.  Oddy enough, it was only mildly wavy till I hit BSL, now it spirals when it first dries.  If I think back though, I had really curly hair when I was little... and was using a hair dryer when I was first growing it out...

Yes this happens and it can be frustrating.  My hair doesn't seem to shorten but rather, it just seems like it's stopped growing because the curls tighten up as it gets longer.  I don't do anything about it though.  I just try and ignore it so it doesn't aggrivate me and one day I will look in the mirror and it will be long!

Did you try the curly girls "Weight a Minute" routine?
Basicaly when your hair is damp you put little heavy barrette, or clip at the end of each curl to pull them down a bit, then remove them when your hair is dry.

HTH :)

Oh, and if you want them to be really pulled down then you can pin them to your shirt, to prevent them from springing back up, or too much

My hair is very curly, and it does seem that the curls get looser as they get longer.  When it was quite long it got to the point that the ringlets were so loose they were almost waves.  However, since then my hair has gotten quite a bit curlier and the hairs are thicker and coarser.  I'm interested to see what will happen now when I grow it out again.