I finally got my 3d programmer (otherwise known as hubby) to draw out some things for me! The big question is what is the difference between curly and kinky hair? Many people do not seem to distinguish between curly and kinky hair but structurally there is a rather major difference.
Now kinky hair can also be curly but curly hair is not always necessarily kinky!  (Reader question from Ehizele on why some hair is more ‘breakable’ will follow soon!!)
Curly hair is simply a spiral or wave while kinky hair has a torsion twist (which can be felt as a permanent crimp) where the hair strand turns around itself (see the diagram).
The torsion of kinky hair is basically the strand twisting around itself. The simplest analogy would be the wringing of a cloth where you turn one side clockwise and the other anticlockwise.
Now kinky hair can be curly and have the same spiral turns in addition to the torsion twist. This creates the dominant type of hair seen among people of African origin – the kinky curly hair. Going by the first analogy on a large scale think of it like wringing a sheet and then winding it around a large rod to form the curl.
Source:
Images modelled on SEM images in (PhD Thesis by Jutta Maria Quadflieg)
Awesome! Do these diagrams help you understand the behavior of your hair better? And where do you strands fall along the line? Are they curly or kinky?
31 Responses
The perimeter especially the sides are more beach wave/curly and the back are perfect Shirley Temple 3B/C ringlets. I am French Creole and Cherokee Indian
My Hair is curly not kinky at all and i`m
black
oh petes sake face it you have hair like wool, kinky hair, its not curly, Shirley temple had curly hair.
Hair texture and curl pattern are two completely different things. You can have curly hair that feels like wool. Black people have curly hair. Are you lost? What are you doing on a blog for black women?
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Well some of my hair is kinky and some sections of my hair is curly. This is interesting.
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hii 😀 i love this information because this explains the difference between kinky and curly hair. i am not african american but i am hispanic, and i have african ancestry from both of my parents side…i happen to be light skin but with kinky hair… i used to hate my hair because people in my school were like you have “bad hair”. i relaxed it in middle school because of the peer pressure and it was the biggest mistake of my life and i regret it now. now I’m trying to leave it natural and i love it, kinky hair is not bad hair i don’t know why people insult kinky hair when i was a little girl i hated my hair because of that and i used to cry a lot. thanks a lot for this information…i like this website! i uploaded a picture of my hair,my hair was washed and was not fully dry it still had water.
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mine are def kinky
One of my teachers at my cosmetology school taught against calling our hair kinky because she said at the end of the day the hair is still curly. It might be very tightly curled or wound but it’s still curly. I agree with her because some parts of my hair do the “torsion twist” but when I stretch it I can still see the curl. So I just refer to my hair as curly now plain and simple.
good to know!!! i have always wondered what the scientific definition of kinky as oppose to curly was!!!! lots of my hair certainly has the torsion twist, this was something i noticed a very long time ago,just didn’t know that’s what made it kinky!!! it the coarser, less porous harder to keep defined sections that has this twist, the front all the way back to the crown, but it is still very much curly. while the sides and whole back third of my head is finer more porous, easier to define and more inclined to staying that way, doesn’t have this twist, or at least not nearly as much ass the previously mentioned areas!!! i wonder how this plays in to the amount of shrinkage ones hair has, it seems as if those torsion twist tighten as well as my curl pattern when shrinkage occurs ! it is severe, wet my hair hangs to the top of my breasts, but as it drys it creeps up to just below my ears!!!!
I’m confused now, lol! I think my hair does both….
wonderful post…
This is great! I think that I fall inbetween kinky-curly as I have about 3 different textures on my head.
Hmm … From this, I guess that my hair is curly. Some parts are curly, and some are kinky curly. I don’t have any kinky hair, since all of my hair forms curls (more so curly than kinky curly). This was interesting.
My hair is definitely kinky because it has no curl pattern whatsoever after I wash it. I have to put something in my hair to give it a curl pattern.
I heart Jc. She’s makes things so plain and I always learn something from her!
Thank you Melanie 🙂
@Avilea above – just click onto the thesis linked in the source for the article
Interesting. Not sure if I have the “torsion twist” in my strands – it would be helpful to see an example of this on actual hair. I am 4a/4b. Is it possible to be 4b and curly (not kinky)? Or does kinky vs. curly have nothing to do with the curl size?
Makes sense, great visual!!
Interesting, I guess my hair is curly.
This was really interesting, thank you for sharing. The top of my hair is curly, but the back is kinky.
Thanks so much for this post, it really helps to have a visual. Most of my hair is kinky curly with a few random patches of curly throughout.
Forgot to say, I love this post. Thanks
I didnt notice my hair was kinky curly, I just always say its kinky but looking at the images helped me get a better view of my hair. My whole head is kinky curly except for the front, that’s the ultra porous kinky hair.
Some of the back of my head is curly, but its mostly kinky and kinky curly
I always knew the difference. I have a patch of curlies (3c) in the middle of my head, a few on the back and two straight (they feel like 1a hair) by my ears I find them quite odd, everything else is kinky.
I get so angry at the straight pieces. They won’t curl with the rest of my hair.
i have one completely straight and GRAY hair just chilling in the middle of my head…it’s actually kind of awesome…
very cool…my head is diverse…the very front is just curly, most of my head is kinky and curly and a few areas are just kinky. It’s great to see such a detailed portrayal for the terms kinky and curly. I figured what curly meant, not so much kinky. I never encountered the term till i became natural.
This is a good scientific explanation. My hair is from kinky to kinky curly in some parts. I also downloaded the scientist’s PHD thesis to read.