Chrystal Hurst and friends talk about their real hair choices: natural versus relaxed, covering gray, salon costs, and why it all matters. They share routines, family pressure, faith, and the emotional weight of how they wear their hair.
Chapters
Well, you asked for it, so let's talk about this hair.
Okay, Chrystal, I decided that probably I should just record my hair chronicles, or is that what I'm supposed to call it?
I don't even know what it's called.
So Chrystal, you would have to ask me to do a video about hair on a bad hair day when I've literally crawled out of bed and threw my hair in a ponytail.
My hair just happens to be done right now, so I thought when I recorded the video, it would probably be the best thing if my hair was, um, done.
So you don't know what I'm about to ask you?
I have no idea. I'm actually nervous that you were gonna ask me a question.
You don't know what I'm about to ask you?
I really don't.
Okay, so I'm talking about hair. I want to know, are you happy with your hair in its natural God-given state?
I am.
You are?
It took a very long time though.
Why did it take a very long time? Um, you both have very, very nice hair and you both have gray. Have you ever covered it up?
Yes.
I did.
I put a rinse in it, but after 2 weeks the gray ate it up, so I decided let it go. I earned them, I'm keeping them.
My natural hair color is a medium brown probably, and it's obviously straight, but I'll just be honest, I haven't seen my hair completely natural since I was about 15 years old.
I'm gonna recolor mine again after—
I hate to say this— after I put a relaxer back on.
Why I decided to color my hair purple streaked, and also why I decided to grow out my hair color and not color anymore.
So you've been natural? Yes.
And you're going back to relaxer?
Yes. Why come? I'm tender kid. You're tender?
It's just too much work. It's just too much work.
It's all gotta go back to there. Then I'm gonna put another color on my hair. Embrace the gray. Embrace it. I love that.
Is this your natural color on your hair?
No, it is not.
Okay, so since you like your hair the way it is, why do you color it?
Um, just add more personality.
The reason why I choose to highlight my hair, I do think it looks pretty, I like it.
If I could change anything about my hair, it would be the gray.
You can see some gray.
So this is the way God made me, and I feel like he did a good job, so I haven't messed with it ever. No highlighting, no coloring.
I've been natural for about 9 years, and I absolutely love it.
So my hair is natural. I've been natural for about 12 years. The reason why is because the perm was just eating my hair up. The relaxer was just making it very brittle and it was breaking.
But let me tell you a little bit about my hair. It gets out of control very easily. I can't manage it and I can't tame it.
So this is also second day hair. I washed it yesterday. So my trick for second day hair is a little bit of this. A little sprinklin' of the powder to get rid of— I have kind of naturally greasy hair, so whoop whoop!
So my sister is retwisting the edges of my hair.
You see that?
I'm not doing all of it. That's the middle of it. This part has been twisted for a couple of weeks. I just took out the edges so that I could retwist those and make it look like it's brand new when it's not.
If you see a big cloud come from me, it's not, you know, anything majestic. It is just the baby powder.
And I do color my hair. I highlight it. I get it highlighted once every 4 to 5 months.
And I have very dark hair from birth and started graying very prematurely in my mid-20s. So I started coloring my hair before I was 30 years old.
I do not do gray. Everyone in my family from 80 to whenever we start going, which is very young. Our best friend is L'Oréal, Clairol, or whomever it is.
So you do it yourself?
I do it myself and I have it done at the salon.
These days I do color my hair to get rid of the gray.
So I have to, um, I have to get it dyed regularly and cut regularly.
And I buy it from a box in the grocery store. So occasionally and for a special occasion, I'll go have it done professionally.
But one of my favorite things to do is to go see my hairdresser. She's awesome. I like to go see her about every 6 or 7 weeks and get my hair cut and colored.
I came home one day, tired of my hair, tired of the relaxed state, having to go back to the hair salon and get touch-ups on the roots. So I went in my bathroom and started cutting.
We do blonde, we do brown, we do red, kind of whatever I'm in the mood for. We just like to have fun with it.
So now with this color, this is an experiment. It's gonna be changed next week.
Also on my second day hair, I do a little bit of curling because God made me with naturally straight hair. Well, sometimes a gal needs a little curl.
And after about 15 years of coloring my hair, It really was a chore, and because my hair was so dark, I ended up with this lovely little skunk line down the center of my head about 2 weeks after I had colored my hair.
I'm experimenting. I don't like doing hair.
It's grown out, and it's not nearly as bad as I expected it to be. I get comments on my hair every time I go out, even though my face is not old enough to have all this gray hair.
The only challenge that I have most of all is working out, because with natural hair you have to go back and wash it again and straighten it. I'm just too lazy for that.
I don't have to worry about when it rains. I don't worry about the wind. And if I try a new style and don't like it, I just wet it and start all over.
It works.
It's fast. I'm lazy.
I call it wash and wear hair because I wash it and go.
My favorite style is the wash and go.
I love my natural hair.
And I never have worn my hair straight during this time.
So I've started straightening my hair every 2 to 3 weeks.
I mean, it was like here, and then I got here, and then I had this like bob look.
I've also been in the process of growing my hair out. I've had short hair for probably 10 years.
So, um, I wear my hair basically in 2 styles.
And I like to wear it naturally curly sometimes, but most of the time I straighten it and then curl it like it is right now.
In the fall and winter, and usually in the fall, I flat iron my hair and then I continue I continue to flat iron it throughout the winter and wear it straight until spring.
So I like to use the curling iron and I do a little bit of this.
One of the things that has helped me embrace being natural is educating myself about textured hair and just learning how to celebrate every coil, kink, and bend of my hair.
And I looked at a picture of myself when I was little at my mom's house one day and I had these huge plaits in my hair when I was little and I thought, where is all that hair? And that was it for me.
It's been quite an exciting journey along the way.
It was also a very expensive habit. I figured up how much money I had spent coloring my hair, and it was close to $10,000.
But then I had to go every week. That's money.
It was money.
It wasn't working for me.
So all through college, I spent a lot of money on straightening it and perms.
Hair has always been important to me, and in fact, the whole reason that I ever started my art business was so I could make a little bit of extra money to go get my hair highlighted because they're so darn expensive.
And I would be in the beauty shop for about 4 hours at a time.
4 hours!
And I felt that was not God's will.
I have 7 children. I cannot keep up with coloring my hair.
That takes a really long time.
So I decided to cut my hair off super short, grow out the gray, and just see what it looked like because I didn't even know what my real hair looked like.
But one of the other things that's helped me is just learning to have fun with my hair.
A little bit of pull, pull, pull, and—
I have a son who's an artist. He's very artistically minded, and he likes to do funky stuff with his hair. And the first time he colored it a funky color, I think it was blue the first time, he said, "Mom, let's put some blue streaks in your hair." And then I had spikes, which was my favorite, but then I had to go everywhere.
You had spikes?
Yeah, like, you know, the spiky— look, like the funky, you know, look.
Yeah, why not? I want to be relevant to my kids. And you know, I've been thinking about it recently too. I want to be relevant to the people I meet.
So short is cheap, and short is fast.
Short is cheap because you get into the barber, you don't have to have a long conversation. How you doing?
How you doing?
The Lord bless you.
The barber, not even the beauty salon, the barber.
Yeah, well, yeah, yeah.
And yeah, I felt that the best thing for me, because I don't wear short hair well, was for me to just keep my hair straightened, so I've started straightening my hair every 2 to 3 weeks.
And a little curl.
So, I don't want people to look at me and think I'm a dumpy middle-aged homeschool mom who can't relate to the real world.
And I guess the moral of the story is if I don't take care of it, like extra care of it, it becomes unmanageable.
I want people to know that I think life is a lot of fun, and I want to be approachable. By people who don't necessarily look like Christians.
So your hair is basically like an accessory for you?
It is.
Okay.
It is.
Ain't no shame in that.
It's a good accessory.
It's a good accessory.
There are just a large variety of wigs in here. I've never worn a wig or weave, and I don't even know if I'd know what to do with all of this. I mean, look at this. It's amazing.
And so I finally had to embrace my own 'cause I didn't wanna lose it from the stripping and just a lot of chemical damage.
Did you notice it thinning at all?
Yes, I noticed the thinning and just a lot of breakage.
And I really do, for the most part, like my hair.
How does anybody even choose which wig to wear? Who knows? I don't.
So this color on your hair right now, you did it or somebody else did it?
I refreshed it on Saturday.
Well, it is French.
I do not do gray, thank you.
You do not do gray. And do you think you will ever be willing to do gray?
Yes, mm-hmm.
At what point?
Just guess.
90.
You'll embrace it when you're ready.
Yes, exactly.
You're not ready.
My mom is 82 years old and she still covers up her gray.
Are you serious right now?
I've had every length and every style, but with that, it has reminded me that I'm fearfully and wonderfully made by the Lord.
I just decided not to put any more relaxers on my hair, and now that my hair is natural, I have to get my sister to help me I guess that's about it.
Those are my— that's my hair story. I think I could call it that. That's the story of my hair.
And anyway, I hope this was helpful, and that's about it.
So I'm having fun with it, and besides, it's hair. It grows.
So there's my chronicles.
See ya!
