I Tried Using the TikTok Famous “Curly Girl Method” on My Non-Curly Hair

Let’s be honest, for those of us who lack naturally curly hair, adding even a little bit of wave and volume is what we all dream of. There’s nothing more ideal than leaving a day at the beach and letting your hair out of a salt-water-soaked braid and into perfect, tumbling, mermaid-esque waves. Yes, maybe the natural beach wave idea is a little overhyped—I personally tend to emerge from the beach looking like a wet mop—but the romanticized idea remains. As we enter this autumn season and beach days are becoming more and more of a sunkissed memory of the past, I find myself longing for my kinky wavy summer hair.

Lucky for me, while scrolling through TikTok one afternoon, I stumbled across the magical world of “the curly girl method.” I clicked on the tag and found myself deep in a rabbit hole of hundreds of videos of women with semi-wavy hair following the same styling routine and coming out with coily, bouncy curls. I immediately did some digging and found out everything I could.

The curly girl method, or CGM, is a series of steps and rules for people with naturally curly or wavy hair to boost their curl and achieve the healthiest locks possible. The method was originally created by Lorraine Massey in her book “Curly Girl: The Handbook,” which is a tell-all on how to diminish damaging habits in order to get the bounciest curls around.

And let me tell you, one Google search made it obvious to me that CGM is a big deal in the curly-hair community, and tons of women swear by this routine. This begs the question: Will this routine actually work to transform semi-wavy hair into bouncy curls? Obviously, I had to try it out for myself.

This method consists of a set of rules and a styling routine: no shampoo, no heat styling tools, no towels, no combs or brushes, no sulfates and no silicones. The regime allows you to cleanse hair once a week and involves a method called co-washing, where you cleanse your hair with conditioner only, skipping out on shampoo completely. The purpose of this is to avoid frizz and dryness that can come from shampoo stripping the natural oils from the hair, leaving the hair shinier and healthier looking.

While many in the CGM community swear by the no-poo method, it takes time for hair to become used to the sudden lack of shampoo, so to avoid looking greasy, I plan on using a gentle sulfate-free shampoo in my routine. The styling part of the routine follows these steps:

Squeeze out water from hair with a 100% cotton T-shirt in a scrunching motion (we are going to be doing a lot of scrunching BTW).
Next, section off hair and scrunch in a leave-in conditioner of your choice.
Repeat step 2 with a curl cream then a hair gel. Make sure every strand is covered with each product.
Scrunch with a T-shirt again to remove any excess water.
Wrap hair in a dry T-shirt to allow curls to set for around 20 minutes.
Let hair air dry and avoid touching it. Some people use a diffuser, but I am going to be trying this method without heat (for experimental purposes, of course).
Once hair is mostly dry, scrunch some more with your hands to remove the crunchy feel of all the product you’ve put in.
Shake out your roots to regain some volume, and voila! You should be left with shiny curls.

With my hair soaking wet after getting out of the shower, I began following the steps: scrunching a leave-in conditioner, sectioning off my hair and scrunching in a small amount of curl cream (I read that less is more when it comes to this step), then scrunching in a curling gel. I tied my hair up in a T-shirt, put on some Netflix and waited. The actual routine was definitely much more time-consuming than my usual brush and dry hair care routine, so I had to cut out some time for this experiment, not knowing how long it would take. I took my hair out of the T-shirt once it was nearly dry and scrunched some more.

The result that I got once my hair was fully dry was voluminous and super wavy hair. I don’t know if I would classify it as curly, per se, but definitely wavier than it was before. See for yourself!

Naturally, my hair type is more frizzy than anything else, so I wasn’t fully expecting the curly girl method to work for my hair type, but I was pleasantly surprised! The waves lasted all day, however, they did frizz up a little bit in the heat, but nothing a little hair oil couldn’t fix. As for whether or not I will be doing this again, I think whenever I have some extra time on my hands to pamper myself, I will definitely be doing this routine again. Hooray for heatless beachy waves!

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Are you as excited as we are about the curly girl method? Try it out and show us your results by tagging us @theedgemag on Instagram!