Solar Being is an artist, digital creator, and natural beauty who specializes in natural hair sculpting.
After what felt like a monotonous cycle of styling, Solar sought out to explore all the ways her natural hair could take shape. She began fashioning her hair in different styles and shapes such as stars or hearts, and started to garner attention across the internet. Despite mixed feedback from online voices, she quickly found how important diverse representation is within the textured hair community. She wants to normalize hair sculpting to the point where people are expanding the ways we wear and view natural hair in our everyday lives.
“I hope that when people do come to my page that they don’t feel afraid to make it their whole personality either. I want this to be a regular thing and [for naturals] to even take it a step further so it can continue beyond just myself,” she shares.
This journey prompted her to release her own styling product: Powerpuff extensions. These powerpuffs are pre-sculpted hair pieces that people can add to their natural hair to achieve these creative styles.
Solar’s overall goal is to be as imaginative and accessible as possible in the natural hair space. Read on below to learn about her personal hair journey, how she got into hair sculpting, and what advice she has for people interested in trying it out.
What’s the first memory you have with your natural hair?
One memory that first pops into my head was the time that I was watching the news before school, and there was this really pretty, brown-skinned news anchor who had a long, wavy weave. I used to wear plaits; my grandma would braid my hair in these thick braids with ribbons. I always felt kind of uncomfortable with them, because not a lot of people wore their hair like that. I felt like an alien. So when I was watching the TV and I saw her pop up, I didn’t know that it was a weave, but because she was so pretty, I ran to the bathroom and for whatever reason, I thought that, if I could just cut one of my plaits, it would straighten it out. I had a puff of hair in the front of my head for the longest, and it was based on the simple fact that I saw someone that had my skin tone, but not my hair type. When you’re a child, representation really is impactful because you’re like a sponge. You see someone that’s pretty, you want to look like them, be like them, sound like them. It really made an impression on my mind moving forward as I went into school and saw other children with long, straight hair, and I didn’t have that.
How did that memory shape your perception of your hair?
My perception was warped because, looking back at my photos now I see that when I was younger, I had beautiful, long, thick hair, and I just never appreciated it. It took me until I was 18, moving to Los Angeles from Long Island — coming from a small suburban town to a huge city — and I looked around me and thought, no one knows me here, I can do whatever I want with my image. So I cut all of my hair off. I started over. And it was from that starting over, that I was able to experience every phase and really embrace my natural hair.
How did you stumble across hair sculpting and start experimenting with this form of styling?
Through Pinterest. I was already styling my natural hair on TikTok Live and people knew me for that but I felt it was getting repetitive. I went on Pinterest and started looking at historical photos of natural hair and saw all of the different things that could be and were done. I made a video about how being normal is boring and there’s so many different ways we could wear our hair, yet we still do the same thing. I was really challenging people and myself at the time to step out of that whole mindset of ‘even if I’m wearing my natural hair, it has to look like this.’ So I thought, let me try doing spikes, try making my hair into a flower. My first viral hair sculpting video was based off of a hair sculpt back in the ‘70s that was a heart- shaped fro. At first it was awkward for me to post it because I knew it looked weird, not in a bad way, but just something I’d never seen before, so I felt vulnerable. The reactions were beyond what I could have comprehended. People were so in awe. Now I’m comfortable in my skill and all the possibilities I can do, so I’m gonna just keep going.
Can you describe what hair sculpting is and what it entails?
There’s so many different types of hair sculpture artists, so I would say I do natural hair sculpting. I’ve seen a lot of hair sculpting with braids and extensions where people will make crowns or other shapes using the hair. I sculpt using just my natural hair and prioritizing my natural hair pattern. I sculpt my hair in its coily state, blown out state, or when it’s combed out. To perform a hair sculpture, I use a blow dryer if I have to stretch my hair out more, if I need to curl my coils back up I just use my hands, and I use a rat tail comb to get sharper corners. To set my hair at the end, I always use hair spray. Some shapes are harder to hold in a certain state, or it’s harder to see the pattern in a certain state, so it varies by each hair sculpt.
What has feedback been like since you started posting these styles?
It means a lot when other naturals post or tag me saying they tried one of the hairstyles because that’s what I want to see. That’s the special thing about being who we are. We’re just so cool. Recently, there was another writer who messaged me because her younger sister mentioned me as her inspiration. The writer contacted me and said, ‘I just really wanted you to know that my sister mentioned you, and that you’re reaching a younger audience’. That really made an impression on me.
I would say I get positive feedback from a lot of Caucasians. I want to make it clear that nothing’s wrong with that but I’m doing this for my own people. I’m doing it for them. I want to make a worldwide impression in people’s minds like, ‘you just showed me something I never thought was even possible.’ When I see comments from any other race, usually they’re saying, ‘I’m so jealous, I wish my hair could do that,’ and I think we forgot the power that we have with our natural hair. There is some fascination, they’re always asking ‘can you do this or that?’ and that’s why I kind of stayed away from cosplaying because I didn’t really want people to see me as a character. I want people to see me as a person. This is my own self and I’m not trying to be comical or a character from a show. I exist. This is literally just how we look. I can do those other styles but I’m gonna focus on hairstyles that are practical, and that could be worn in the workplace. We have people still thinking that our hair is not professional in these places. I need to connect to my people first, because I’m trying to build an understanding and representation, not just for my generation, but for the younger generation coming after me. I want them to understand you could go to work with a sculpted natural, in a bob, or whatever you like.
Something that has always hit kind of differently for me is reading comments that are negative and seeing it come from people that look like me, because I kid you not, 99% comes from other Black women that are dismissive or they will laugh at me. It’s jarring. And I’m really doing it for them to see that this is something that you could do. But then it’s rejection or saying ‘your hair is unkempt,’ and most of the time it’s from people who do not wear their natural hair. It’s almost like a self rejection, because we all have different types of coily hair patterns, but I’m reflecting back an ability that they have naturally that they might be afraid of.
Do you have any tips for people looking to test these styles on their own hair?
I would say it depends on their curl pattern. One thing about the natural hair space is that it’s very diverse. There’s such a plethora of different curl patterns that I think in the future, we’ll definitely see a new, longer curl chart more inclusive of different coils. But because of that, it’s hard to say what someone should do, because advice shouldn’t be taken so literally. I could only say, for me personally, what I did is cut down on the over consumption of natural hair products. I just stuck to natural oils and water. What I started doing, and came to understand, is that I have to stop neglecting my hair. Just make sure that you detangle your hair with patience, use lots of water, a good shampoo and conditioner, and wash your hair.
Can you tell us more about your Powerpuff extensions?
It’s so exciting. I had this idea for the longest time, because being in the natural hair space, a lot of people have a lot of rules. You have natural hair girls who still straighten their hair, and I would never do that, but then there’s some that don’t use any heat at all, so when they see I’m using a blow dryer, they would never do that. So everyone has their different rules, and I even had rules on myself to not wear wigs or weaves, etc but then I realized, that it’s not about that. I did research on the ‘70s, when wearing a natural was so popular and it was huge. But what I learned is that in the salons, people were selling out of round naturals to all the women that wanted to have this big Afro and couldn’t achieve it on a natural basis. So I thought to myself, I have an audience and a vision for the future, and it’s not practical to for me to really think that, no matter how many tutorials I do, I’m gonna make a huge influence enough to have billions of naturals walking around hair sculpting. It’s not practical for everybody. Not everyone has the time, or the length. People live in different humid areas, people like just being able to take things on and off and put them back on. I finally figured out that I can just replicate what I do on synthetic hair and share this with the world so people could enjoy it. Especially for children that want to wear star puffs.
I’m so confident in them because I did trial and error: how can I make this stay in shape, not flake? How can I color it? How can I make it safe? You can get it wet, it could rain, and you’ll be fine. I’ve perfected it for you.
