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Wel­come back WB4S read­ers to another install­ment of #ShoutOut Sat­ur­day! This week’s ShoutOut goes out to Brit­tany Thomas, cre­ater of Loc Rocker, a web­site who’s motto reads, “Because Rockin’ Nat­ural Hair is a LifeStyle.”

I couldn’t agree more!

(Brit­tany and her locs (GORGEOUS))

On her site, she gives nat­ural hair care tips and insight into the jour­ney (and trust me, its a jour­ney) of the ins and outs of hav­ing tex­tured, nat­ural hair.

I will be vis­it­ing her site quite reg­u­larly! Although I’ve had nat­ural hair for the bet­ter part of 6 years, I still have my fail­ures. Sad, I know. This is also a great resource for those of you who fre­quently con­tem­plate ditch­ing the “creamy crack” for a nat­ural alternative!

Here are a few tips that Brit­tany shared on Stylist.com:

1. Give your hair water, water and more water. Whether you’re loc’d, rockin’ a TWA (teeny weeny Afro) or a huge Afro, your hair needs water. I spritz a bit on my hair daily. It’s as if my hair craves it every morning.


2. Cover the crown at night. I used to go through this crazy mis­con­cep­tion think­ing that I didn’t need to wear a scarf at night because, “Duh…I’m nat­ural.” I could not have been more wrong. Black hair is extremely frag­ile and sleep­ing on cot­ton pil­low cases can be quite dam­ag­ing. Do your crown a favor and rock a satin bon­net, scarf or pil­low­case at night.


3. Focus on hair health and not length. You can always bet on your hair grow­ing. Maybe not at the speed of light but it does grow. Focus­ing on main­tain­ing a healthy scalp and hair, I think, is more impor­tant than adopt­ing the Rapun­zel syn­drome and wish­ing on a star that your hair grows down your back in two weeks.


4. Go to a pro­fes­sional if you want to color your hair. My hair has received more at-home hair dyes than pro­fes­sional ones. But it’s bet­ter to be safe than sorry, espe­cially if you want to lighten your hair by bleach­ing. Yeah girl­friend, let’s leave that to the professionals.


5. Her hair is pretty, but love your own. It took me some time but I am finally in a place where I love my hair uncon­di­tion­ally. As nat­u­rals, we tend to obsess over nat­ural hair pho­tos and videos, which in turn has us lust­ing after hair tex­tures and lengths that aren’t what we have at the moment. Stop that. Love your hair. Love that it has two or three tex­tures going on. Love the way it moves and the way it feels.

This is me, I don’t put enough pics of myself up, but I’m work­ing on it! I went to a home­com­ing party in 2010 with my nat­ural hair and all its BIG glory! This is a go-to in the sum­mer, because I HATE, HATE, HATE to spend money on get­ting it pressed only to have it look like a hair sponge by the end of the day. I will now be tak­ing Brittany’s advice and spritz­ing it with water daily (now seems like a no-brainer) because it looks NOTHING like that on day 2!

Again, kudos to Brit­tany and her work on Loc Rocker! Nat­ural hair wear­ers (namely me) need as much advice as pos­si­ble and its great to have a place to share ques­tions and perspective!


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By JaNea @janeaNOTjane

Edi­tor at Shoed-In Mag­a­zine
JaNea @janeaNOTjane is Shoed-In Magazine’s found­ing edi­tor which means she loves and is well versed in shoes. A for­mer finan­cial adviser, she may occas­sion­ally offer you some unso­licited advice about your money management.