Night Time Plaits, Afros and Bangs

A week or so ago I was thinking to myself, “what straight hairstyles can I adapt to my kinky hair?”.

At some point I thought about bangs and did some research to find out that there are other naturals out there who have tried and succeeded at producing kinky bangs.

Some used twists or plaits. Others actually did twist or plait outs angled out and down from the face. Still others used headbands to lay the hair down and reinforce the “bang effect”.

Thought there may be some naturals who can wear a proper bang, I am not one of them.

Recently I tried my hand at it though and came up with this

After days of wearing my hair under a beanie I unplait my hair. One thing I did in preparation for trying bangs was to plait the front- middle portions of my hair facing forward and I trained them by tying them every night in that precise direction.

Next I fluffed it out into a fro making sure that I kept each section’s directionality. This is the first fro I actually really really like! somehow with the hair going forward it just looks better to me. Disappointingly, I’ve noticed that my hair never looks as long in pictures as it looks or feels to me in real life. Bummer.

I didn’t use this exact headband (ha!) but you get the point. This was a careful shindig though because some parts of my hair had to go back (the sides) and the top part had to go forward in order to create the bang.

After I got through that particular minefield the next part was to tighten the head band while slide the sides backward. I figure you can go as far back as you want. I’ve seen some people wear the bang with a beanie or head wrap so whatever looks right on your head is fine.

At this point I’m like, “Why oh why did I lop two inches of my hair off at the front?!”, sigh my bangs would be so much more banging if those inches were still there. Nevertheless, variations of this can be done by just having a bang made of twists or plaits or anything you can invent. Also, you can force the hair longer by using a plait out like I did versus a twist out because plaits keep the curl pattern loose.

To banging,