The Days When I Had My Hair Pressed

Last night I got this idea to write a post on this topic – Pressing the black woman’s hair.

I remember this oh so clearly, you see when I was a young child, my mother introduced me to the method of straightening my hair by pressing it.  She was trained in this field and had a few clients of her own.  They would come to our home and she would press their hair.

How she did it:  The hair had to be wash and thoroughly dried before starting the process.  She used iron combs that had to be heated - she did this on the regular cooking stove.  She had a special stove that she heats the combs on.  She did not use the stove that our meals were prepared on.  I remember she would have at least two combs on the fire, as she use one comb, the other one would be kept hot so as she finished using one, she would replace it back on the stove and begin using the other one.  That way she would not have to wait for a comb to get hot.

Before applying the hot iron to the hair, my mother would apply some Dax (this was a great product on those days) grease to the section of the hair to keep it moist. 

She would apply the hot comb starting from the root to the end of the hair paying special attention not to burn the scalp and the ears.  May times people would get burnt at the ears.

After the entire head of hair was pressed, she would then use a curling iron which was also put on the stove to hot.  We did not have electrical curling irons in those days.  She had different sizes, a large and a small one. Depending on the length of the hair, she would use the curling iron with the appropriate size iron.


These are my mother's hot combs,  I am sure they are many years old.  Eventhough she does not use them anymore she keeps them in storage.

The pressed hair would last for approximately two weeks.  You could not get anything from the fridge immediately after having the hair pressed, the body had to be allowed to cool down after all that heat to the head.  You could not get your hair wet, or go swimming – the hair will begin to change from being nice and smooth to a bit wavy and eventually back to its original texture (‘kinky’).  If you sweat alot – big trouble!

Check out this website with tips to pressing hair without damage