**UPDATE** Curly Chemist(ry) Does It Again With the PMP Method

**UPDATE** Welp, I now know that my hair hates coconut oil. Apparently, this is something I can use on my skin but not on my hair...

I am now looking for something else to use. I'm considering a few different oils - olive and grapeseed are the first two I will look at trying. I was going to use my babassu oil but it comes in small jars and is too pricey for pre-poo use. At this point, to recover from my experiment with coconut oil, I am going to use some of the Hydra Steam Masque I have left. I am learning that a lot of people can't use coconut oil on their hair. Live and learn, right? This natural hair thing is a journey!

 You all should know by now that one of my favorite YouTube channels is Curly Chemistry. The young lady with smarts and great hair shares good ingo & I always call her the Curly Chemist. By the way, she has a website where you can find out about her book (I need to get a copy soon), and she is on Instagram and Facebook. I pick up a lot of hair tips from her videos and she had done it again with what she calls the PMP method. Listen, she really tells you how to PMP (or pimp, get it?) your hair.

I was fascinated with the video because I had already recently switched up my own hair routine by adding some old-fashioned Blue Magic grease and learning to better use the curl creams in my pantry.

With all the curl creams I have collected for a few years now, I only just recently realized that I was using them all wrong. And there's no excuse. They are curl creams with instructions right on the labels. Most curl creams are also moisturizing, and I had been using them only as moisturizers. Instead of smoothing them through small sections of my hair to accentuate my curl pattern, I had been globbing them on and waiting for them to just magically produce curls. Dummy-dum-dum. Now, I actually use them as directed.  Imagine that. As a result, I have fallen in love with products that I had given poor reviews to.

The hair grease thing was brought to mind when I recalled my mother using it all the time when I was a kid. She used it herself and never combed, plaited, or styled my hair without some grease. 

Back when my family lived in our little West Texas hometown, a local man did hair in the basement of his house. Mr. Leon (who later went on to become quite a sought-after hairdresser all over Texas and beyond - to the point where he and his clients used limousines to pick each other up for appointments) never did my weekly hot comb press- and-curls without using hair grease. 

Seeing memes like this tells me that a lot of people have similar memories!

These days people refer to such products as "hair dress" or "conditioners" (which I think is how they were always labeled), but back in the day, Mama called it "grease", or "pressing oil". A lot of people would just refer to any hair grease by the name of whichever one they grew up with: Posner's, Blue Magic, Ultra Sheen, Royal Crown, Super Grow, or Sulfer 8. 

My mother had beautiful, healthy, shiny, glorious hair. Then again, she was a glorious woman.

That's a hot comb press n curl right there!

So, anyway, I am going to be trying to pimp my hair with the PMP method. For those of you like myself, who have to take notes about everything, here is the basic rundown as I caught it (and how I will be applying it):

• Penetrate using a pre-poo for from 30 minutes up to overnight. (Overnight for me.) I'm going to use either coconut or babassu because I always have those around already and use on my skin daily. Good stuff. (For my skin, I mix babassu with glycerin.)
• Moisturize using a water-based conditioner or leave-in. I already use a mix of water and Aussie Moist as a leave-in after washings so...
• Protect with oil (not coconut though & I can't remember why not so watch the video). I am going to use the Blue Magic I have.

Between-wash care depends on whether you have low- or high-porosity hair. I have very low-porosity hair so I will continue to use my "wet" leave-ins or water-Aussie blend (or water mixed with whatever conditioner I have around). Lately, I found a big old bottle of Lustrasilk when I had a burst of energy and cleaned under my bathroom sink. 

This stuff is amazing! That is a FULL bottle of activator and an almost full jar of curl pudding. Just been hanging out in a box under the sink for about 5 months...

Anyway, yeah, Curly Chemist has inspired me once again. Now, of course, as with anything, you have to do what is right for you and use common sense. I'm not a professional so I can only tell you what I like for my own hair routine. 

Meanwhile, I was talking with my best friend about the Blue Magic I've been using (and love!) and she said that she grew up using Murray's.  And a lot of people know about the famous Madame C.J. Walker. I'm pretty sure that some of us have folks in our circle of family and friends who used some of her products.

As for me, I have to tell you that I have fallen back in love with Blue Magic. I forgot how soft and lovely it makes the hair feel. Also, one application keeps my scalp nice and moisturized for days. When I was using some other oils and butters, I had to re-apply them almost daily. The big jar of Blue Magic is cheap (as long as you don't get it from Amazon!) and it takes literally just dabs of it to treat my entire scalp and a few more dabs to palm over my hair. On Amazon, you either have to get a 3-pack of the 12-oz for around 17-20 bucks or a single for about $9. I got mine for 5 dollars at a beauty supply and when I run low, I can go to Ebonyline (not secure until checkout!) or another online beauty supply and get it for about $6.  If I want to order a minimum of 3, I can get them from Family Dollar for under $2.50 each and have them shipped free to a local store for pick-up. So, yeah, Amazon can go away on this one.

The ingredients in Blue Magic (and I got the "original" anti-breakage formula) are shown on Amazon like this:

• Petrolatum
• Lanolin
• Lecithin
• Mineral Oil
• Fragrance
• Green 6
• Violet 2

This is the label on the jar I have:

Not much different

I also remember one of my aunties using the green-colored Blue Magic. ~shrug~

Anyway, I am going to give the PMP method a try. It's not much different from my regular routine except for the pre-poo with oil. That is... lots different. We'll see how it goes...

Peace

--Free