Interesting ways to describe thickness of strands

[Yame]

What are some interesting words or sayings you would use to describe the coarseness or fineness of your hair? (aside from the ones that were already used on our hair typing directions)

There was a thread on coarse hair a little while back that I really couldn't identify with... so I began to doubt the coarseness of my hair. I then put it through a bunch of "tests" to see whether or not my hair was actually coarse. I found out that, for the most part, my hair is indeed coarse (although I also have a lot of fine, shorter hairs all over the place which make it a real PITA to keep a neat bun or braid) Here are some things I learned about coarse hair, along with a couple of things I already knew.

1. You could actually sew with a coarse strand. Hair is more unruly than thread of course, but I was able to sew onto a piece of cotton using a strand of shed hair.

2. Coarse hair is stretchy and hard to break. After sewing, I tried to just pull the needle off so I wouldn't have to go and get a pair of scissors... but the strand didn't break, it just stretched a little. I had to try a few times for it to break.

3. The ends of my coarse hair feel like little needles if I poke myself with them. Or like poking myself with a large paint brush. Actually, sometimes I think my hair looks very synthetic.

4. This might be gross to some people, but I have once in the past used a strand of my hair as dental floss because I didn't have any with me, and there was something stuck between my teeth.

5. When I do a regular braid, the coarse hairs that are shorter poke out of it and make it look really weird.


As for fine hair... since I haven't dealt with it too much, I wouldn't know too many ways to describe it. But I was playing with my fine-haired friend's hair yesterday and noticed:

1. It reminds me of really really soft, but much longer dog fur (and I don't mean this to be offensive at all, dog fur is very nice to touch!).

2. She had some feather extensions put into her hair, and they caused a lot of knots that were REALLY hard to get out! I never knew hair could be that hard to untangle. Actually the kind of knots she was getting remind me of the sorts of knots I've seen in my dog's fur, when I had a dog.

3. When I braided her hair, there were hardly any strands poking out, aside from the layers of her hair... but up until the part where the layers start, the braid was neat and perfect, unlike any I could ever do on my hair.

4. The ends of her hair are soft and if I tried to poke myself with them, well... it just wouldn't work!


It's interesting to see just how different hair can be just based on coarseness. I can definitely get a better appreciation now for how different hair types can require very, very different care!

[Mairéad]

You see, I feel really confused about my hair. It certainly isn't course, but it doesn't have the characteristics of fine hair. It doesn't tangle or anything like that! So, I've assumed that I have M stands of hair.

But what are the characteristics of it? Just in between?

[Fairlight63]

My hair is definitely on the fine side. When detangling my hair it has reminded me of trying to get tangles out of my Brittany Spaniels ears - working from the bottom up & trying to pull apart the tangles with my fingers - yes I can relate, LOL
Also my braid ends are very soft - definitely not like a paint brush.

[Chetanlaiho]

I don't really know how to describe my individual hairs. I can definitely see it if I hold it up to the light, and I can kind of see it on a dark background (my hair is brown) but I think cotton strands feel courser between my fingers than my hair does ^^;

[Yame]

You see, I feel really confused about my hair. It certainly isn't course, but it doesn't have the characteristics of fine hair. It doesn't tangle or anything like that! So, I've assumed that I have M stands of hair.

But what are the characteristics of it? Just in between?

I think it's harder to describe hair that isn't on either extreme. So what I would say is that, while my coarse hair feels synthetic (like paint brush bristles) and my friend's hair is soft and almost as fine as dog fur, your hair probably just feels like... well... actual human hair!

[jaine]

Adult dog hair feels really coarse to me ... do you mean puppy fur? Or maybe there's some breed of dog out there with really soft hair that I don't know about...

I always thought fine hair feels more like cat hair! :kitten:

[archel]

My fine hair, especially with a light oiling, feels like silky cat fur. (Yay!) I have fine hair but a LOT of it, so some hairdressers have mistaken it for very thick hair and done things to it that aren't really meant for fine hair. My current hairdresser gets it, though. When my hair is in a braid, the ends are soft. When I pull on one strand of hair, it does not stretch at all and has zero give and breaks almost immediately, which means that it's not only fine, it's dry.

What's weird is that the grey hair coming in is wiry and coarse, so I can look forward to being an old lady with thick coarse hair that is wiry and springs around all over the place being unruly. Sigh!

[Yame]

Adult dog hair feels really coarse to me ... do you mean puppy fur? Or maybe there's some breed of dog out there with really soft hair that I don't know about...

I always thought fine hair feels more like cat hair! :kitten:

It depends on the breed. I've had a cocker spaniel and a poodle, both had soft, fine fur. But yes, cat hair is a good one too.

[PraiseCheeses]

As someone with fine hair, I can't tell you how often I've been on a S&D session, and while preparing to trim a bad split noticed that it was actually two hairs that were not split at all. But wait! There are actually three hairs! No, make that four! And here's another one! And another!

Six or more strands (usually clumped together with oil) should NOT be able to masquerade as one normal-ish strand. :rolleyes:

[Yame]

As someone with fine hair, I can't tell you how often I've been on a S&D session, and while preparing to trim a bad split noticed that it was actually two hairs that were not split at all. But wait! There are actually three hairs! No, make that four! And here's another one! And another!

Six or more strands (usually clumped together with oil) should NOT be able to masquerade as one normal-ish strand. :rolleyes:

LOL! Now, that's an interesting one! I guess that teaches you not to S&D when you've oiled your hair?

That reminds me of one other way to describe the coarseness of my hair. Sometimes, I have these splits that split the strand in half. Sometimes, I get the urge to pull them if I don't have scissors (I know, bad...bad!) just to see what will happen. I will pull on one half and it'll split farther and farther up the shaft and eventually come off. Now the remaining strand is thinner, but still coarse enough to be considered a medium! I can split my hair in half and it still doesn't become fine!

[seaj]

I have coarse hair and it likes to stab me through my shirt when it's down or even in braids. Makes me really itchy. It also irritates my face. Maybe that's why my acne is generally restricted to my jaw line? Those darn ends keep poking me! That should be mostly over in a few more months I hope.

[emelnd]

As someone with fine hair, I can't tell you how often I've been on a S&D session, and while preparing to trim a bad split noticed that it was actually two hairs that were not split at all. But wait! There are actually three hairs! No, make that four! And here's another one! And another!

Six or more strands (usually clumped together with oil) should NOT be able to masquerade as one normal-ish strand. :rolleyes:

Lol, this. There is a maltese dog in our apartment, my hair is comparable in texture to hers and gets in knots so easy too. I have a lot of individual strands with knots in them!

Now that I am using henna my strands are more medium than fine. I have some premature graying too, just a few strands. Those are coarse. Also I found one or two really black and really coarse strands. I don't know if those are freaks. Maybe they are just greys that really took the henna/indigo two step dye I did once... Probably just freak hair though.

[Panth]

Meh, I have fine hair but I'm afraid currently my ends do feel rather like a paintbrush. They've been suffering since I've moved to a much less humid climate over the summer...

[pepperminttea]

As someone with fine hair, I can't tell you how often I've been on a S&D session, and while preparing to trim a bad split noticed that it was actually two hairs that were not split at all. But wait! There are actually three hairs! No, make that four! And here's another one! And another!

Six or more strands (usually clumped together with oil) should NOT be able to masquerade as one normal-ish strand. :rolleyes:

Yes, this! I thought it was just me. :o

[MissManda]

Yes, this! I thought it was just me. :o

Thirding that statement!

S&D is awful because I have so much hair and it takes me several days to do a decent split-end hunt.

I'm fairly sure I have finely-textured hair. The only characteristic that doesn't match is that my hair hardly tangles in normal circumstances. Windy days are a different story, however.

[CurlyMopTop]

I can soooo relate right now. My white hairs comming in are also very coarse and wirey. I can not S&D for the life of me! My eyesight is not the greatest to start with and I have the same problem with looking for splits. What I think is a split is actually several hairs (even without oil). My hair is curly so I have natural clumps making it even tougher to see splits. If my hair wasn't brown, you wouldn't be able to see an individual hair at all. My hair is actually softer than my dogs and my cats. Kind of feels like silk, even the tips. It's very fragile, tangles, breaks and damages very easily. Even the hair in my canopy that I classify as M are not very thick, but thicker than the other babyfine hair. At least I can see those individual hairs without eyestrain (lol). Wish I could describe it better, but it's difficult to put into words.

[luxepiggy]

My ends feel just like the bristles of my Dior eyeshadow brush. I have M hair (^(oo)^)

[haibane]

One thing about fine hair... Even when my hair is really, really dry, it still feels soft. It can be really difficult to tell if it's dry or not. The strands are just too thin to get stiff at all, even if they're so dry they're breaking off at a touch.
Before LHC I had no idea about this. But with proper moisture my hair can become almost ridiculously soft, so I'm learning to tell the difference.

[HintOfMint]

Haha, I've done the dental floss thing in a pinch.

[darklyndsea]

I can do the dental floss thing with my dark brown hairs, but I have to use 2 or 3 of my blonde hairs if I want to do it. Maybe my hair is thicker than I think it is? The ends of my braids definitely feel like paintbrushes after they've had the super stiffness taken out of them.

[lacefrost]

snip

1. You could actually sew with a coarse strand. Hair is more unruly than thread of course, but I was able to sew onto a piece of cotton using a strand of shed hair.

2. Coarse hair is stretchy and hard to break. After sewing, I tried to just pull the needle off so I wouldn't have to go and get a pair of scissors... but the strand didn't break, it just stretched a little. I had to try a few times for it to break.

3. The ends of my coarse hair feel like little needles if I poke myself with them. Or like poking myself with a large paint brush. Actually, sometimes I think my hair looks very synthetic.

4. This might be gross to some people, but I have once in the past used a strand of my hair as dental floss because I didn't have any with me, and there was something stuck between my teeth.

5. When I do a regular braid, the coarse hairs that are shorter poke out of it and make it look really weird.


snip

This! I hate to admit the floss part but sometimes you go to the restroom after eating Italian and all you have is a shed hair. . .I'm just sayin'. . .you make do with what you've got.

And my hair does feel like sharp needles. That's why if my hair is at all tangled, it feels rough like a wire. When it's not, it feels like super soft horse hair or cotton.

Coarse hair is also strong enough to put beads on.

[Cassie 123]

I've done the floss thing, too. :o

I can remember having finer hair as a little girl. The tangles really are much worse in fine hair. The coarse hair I have now has little interest in tangling.

As for dogs - mine (a Samoyed) had coarser guard hairs and a superfine fluffy undercoat. I had to look closely to tell if a shed hair was one of his guard hairs or if I had lost one of my greys.

But with all of that, I still ranked myself as "M/C" because a single strand of my husband's hair (black 1a, Chinese, and just past classic in his younger years) looks a good 30% thicker than one of mine.

[GRU]

Someone coined the phrase "goat hair" a while back. I can relate....

[Chetanlaiho]

But with all of that, I still ranked myself as "M/C" because a single strand of my husband's hair (black 1a, Chinese, and just past classic in his younger years) looks a good 30% thicker than one of mine.

Haha, D(Chinese)BF has the same hairtype (although more a 1b) and his hair makes me feel like my hair is ultra fine xD

[Cassie 123]

I was looking for something else when I ran across this (https://www.23andme.com/health/Hair-Thickness/). It says that a person with East Asian or Native American ancestry from both parents is quite likely to have hair that is 40% coarser than somebody of strictly European or African descent.

[NotInPortland]

As someone with fine hair, I can't tell you how often I've been on a S&D session, and while preparing to trim a bad split noticed that it was actually two hairs that were not split at all. But wait! There are actually three hairs! No, make that four! And here's another one! And another!

Six or more strands (usually clumped together with oil) should NOT be able to masquerade as one normal-ish strand. :rolleyes:

That happens to me all the time too, there are so many times I've nearly snipped off two perfectly healthy hairs thinking it was a split!:p

[Chetanlaiho]

I was looking for something else when I ran across this (https://www.23andme.com/health/Hair-Thickness/). It says that a person with East Asian or Native American ancestry from both parents is quite likely to have hair that is 40% coarser than somebody of strictly European or African descent.

Wow O_o would explain DBF's hair (of which I have eternal envy). I always think that if we have children, they would basically have my dream hair xD (if it would be a combination of mine and his that is).

[lacefrost]

I was looking for something else when I ran across this (https://www.23andme.com/health/Hair-Thickness/). It says that a person with East Asian or Native American ancestry from both parents is quite likely to have hair that is 40% coarser than somebody of strictly European or African descent.

That sounds about right. Most people from African descent tend to be fineys and I've seen people from European descent be all across the board. But I've never met an East Asian person with fine hair. Not saying they don't exist, cause they do, but just never met one. I did meet one with naturally curly hair. But I digress. . .

[Avienda]

As someone with fine hair, I can't tell you how often I've been on a S&D session, and while preparing to trim a bad split noticed that it was actually two hairs that were not split at all. But wait! There are actually three hairs! No, make that four! And here's another one! And another!

Six or more strands (usually clumped together with oil) should NOT be able to masquerade as one normal-ish strand. :rolleyes:

Mine is kind of like that. It's fine as well, but I have to be careful to make sure I only have one hair i'm cutting when doing S&D. I often find it's two hairs.

[MissManda]

I've also heard that fine hair can and does feel like feathers on a bird. :)