Dear Ouidad:

I am 33 years old, have very thick Type 3b hair and I follow most of the below tips:

• Use duckbill clips on the crown of your head to lift top curls
• Let hair air dry or use a diffuser
• Once your curls are dry, rub a little pomade into the palm of your hands and smooth over your hair gently
• Do not use a brush or comb on your dry curls
• Reduce tangles by sleeping on a satin pillowcase

6 months ago I went to a new stylist who used bleach to give me blonde highlights, and it’s been a disaster ever since. I have been getting highlights since I was 19 and my normal stylist NEVER used bleach. I took for granted that the new stylist wouldn’t use bleach and so I failed to mention anything to her. Overall, my hair is healthy, and I just had it cut a few weeks ago by someone who does a really good job cutting curly hair. My dilemma is that the strands of my hair that were bleached do not curl nicely like the rest of my hair. Now that the highlights have grown out about 2 inches, I have two inches of dark roots with normal curl, followed by about four inches of straighter bleached hair, followed by my normal corkscrew type curls. I look ridiculous! Do I have to wait for all the bleach to grow out, or is there something I can do now to repair that part of my hair and get it to curl again?

Dear Bleached Curls:

Bleach strips the proteins out of your hair, causing your curls to collapse. You should use a Deep Treatment (concentrating the treatment on the bleached hair portions”> every 10 days to revive the proteins that have not been totally stripped so your hair will curl while you grow it out. For styling use a leave-in conditioner and moisturizing styling gel like Moisture Lock and Curl Quencher.