Tuesday 4 December 2018

A theory on braids

I want to expand my experiment in laziness on different types of braids. For the original experiment, I found that my scalp got surprisingly tender after the five days. And when I say surprisingly, I don't mean that it got very tender, but more that I was surprised it got tender at all because I rarely "notice" my scalp at all (Did that make sense?)

So I want to try the experiment in laziness with a different type of braids and for less days. I want to see the difference between French and Dutch braids for this.
But I have an idea on how the different braid types will influence the result, so I will try to explain my thoughts as best as I can.


If you imagine looking up or down the length of the braid against your head, the braid has two "parts" where additional hair is taken in along the length.


For a French braid, the hair goes above and into the existing braid.


Which means that for the French braid the place where the additional hair gets locked down is between the scalp and the braid. This means that the hair has to "travel" further and can't be pulled as firmly in place as for a Dutch braid.


For a Dutch braid, the hair goes under and into the existing braid.


Which means that for the Dutch braid the place where the additional hair gets locked down is between the scalp and the braid. Just like for the French braid. But unlike the French braid, the additional hair has to "travel" shorter, can be pulled tighter and is completely parallel to the scalp.

My point with this is that the French braid should develop more flyaways, and become more unstable and less comfortable faster than the Dutch braid.

Tomorrow I will make two French braids to test this on.

2 comments:

  1. I've never been able to do dutch braids on my own hair, but I can say that I do find french braids irritate my scalp more than an english braid. Probably because it's pulling at more parts of the scalp due to the adding of sections. I also found more flyaways with french braiding than english braids.

    Curious to see your take away :)

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  2. That should say I've never been able to do DUTCH braids on my own hair. I can do french, english, fishbone etc, but not dutch.

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