Alright, I know I went over genetics hair wise, but I never thought about mentioning maintenance until recently.
As most know, I'm now a college student and in my second year here at university. I still live in the dorms.
Now, I'm not in the same dorms as last year though. This year I'm in a community dorm so I don't have to clean my own bathroom.
One thing about this year is that my floor is even more diverse. Another thing is that we're all females on our wing of the dorms.
I've started to see all the hair maintenance WOC do and it's insane to see how much work it can be.
There's moisturizing to keep it from frizzing out, braiding it, special ways some of the women wear their hair to bed, braiding, weaving, and many other things.
I didn't know much before and it showed in my writing for Nic since I knew nothing about natural kinky African hair.
Now that I've learned quite a bit, it's something you may want to consider showing in your book if your female lead is a WOC.
Not as a major point but as a way to add in that slice of life that most Y/A books can have.
Here are some examples that would seem like ways to touch up the story:
At this point, I had had enough with the situation. Chris had made things worse, the fight during work time in class wasn't my cup of tea either, and to top it off, my hair was finally at the point of needing a change. These braids are now old, their trouble lately has only soured my mood.
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"What are you up to?" Alexia asked Charlotte.
"I'm just fixing my hair," Charlotte spoke. "I blow-dried it and now it's too frizzy."
Charlotte then looked at the bottle she was using. Only a few drops were left.
"Alexia, could you hand me that other green bottle up in my shower caddy?"
Alexia grabbed it and brought it over to Charlotte. "Here you go." She then took a seat next to Charlotte and continued her story from earlier, "I still can't believe Naomi did that though. She sabotaged the entire game!"
While that's only two examples, it gives a little room to write more and also add in some daily tasks or feelings your characters may have.
I'll also add that there is hair problems for white females too, but it's something pretty common that is dismissed a lot. That's simple natural curls.
These for white females usually means tangled hair in the morning and rituals of taking your shower after brushing your hair in the morning if you don't want prepubescent Hermione frizz hair.
This hair is pretty easy to talk about, so I'm not going to discuss it further.
All hair has some type of management, so do research on your character's hair type depending on what you pick for them!