Maybe I just don't know what thick means

Okay ladies...Help me be less confused.
I have various strand thicknesses ; very fine, fine, coarse, very coarse/wiry
However, I feel like over all my hair is thin.

When it's wet it seems very little and because of the way it lumps, I can sometimes see my scalp quite easily in the areas I have fine hair.

The same thing when it's straight, it seems not to be a substantial amount of hair.

However, when I air dry my hair (especially without product) it swells to gigantic proportions, I'm talking blaxploitation era fro. And even when I stretch my air dried hair, it seems to be alot and people comment that I have a lot of hair.

is porosity involved in any way, because I do have highly porous hair, but I'm not sure how that contributes to the swelling of my dry hair

So is it possible that I have thin hair but have a high density of strands on my scalp (which I don't think I do, because when wet I can see my scalp and when straightened my ponytails seem to be holding a small amount of hair. Also, my two strand twists look scalpy, and flatten out my hair)

Or do I have low density of strands but thicker hair strands

What makes for volume, density/concentration of hair strands on your scalp, or actual thickness of your strands, or something else like porosity, product, shrinkage etc. ?


Essentially why are my fros so big, but my other styles, wimpy?

Yes it's possible. There are some people who have fine hair strands but have a lot of those hair strands on her head. There are a whole bunch of different variations of this. I believe I have medium strands and a medium density.

Thanks! I'm just not sure that I have a lot of hair (high strand density) because in some styles my hair just seems so puny. Are your wet hair, two strand twists or straight hair, flat, and your air dried hair big, or would you say medium all the way around?

Hi Lysheba89

I have fine strands but I think there is a lot of them. Dry my hair looks BIG. I have to do my two strand twists on wet hair so they dry plump, otherwise I have a whole lot of scalp going on. I can't do dry twists, they are just too skinny and my hair gets tangled if I try to get a lot of them.

As a baby I had sandy red hair from my mom's grandfather and dark skin from both parents. The hair is dark, dark brown now. But a hairdresser told me I had the fine stranded hair of a redhead. She didn't know my hair was red as a child.
My straight hair was always too fine to lay flat, it would just flutter all over. It was scalpy then too.

I understand what you mean, my hair is somewhat similar. In a ponytail or bun it's pretty small so it's not really thick but overall I have big hair.

Madeaj, that's really interesting that your stylist said that! Also, I would think that two strand twisting on dry hair, has been the way other women achieve fluffier twists, and twisting on wet hair is how to achieve tighter and therefore scalpier flatter (but longer) twists, according to my experience. And my straight hair can be very fluttery as well. So I guess I do have fine but dense hair...
But that fineness is a problem! I want chunky twists, and no scalp showing through, ever!

Curlista, yessss! Also, looking at your avatar, you seem to have a similar texture to mine, so maybe this is just something that happens with our texture? I'm not one to generalize by hair type, but you know, a thing in common, is a thing in common- That's not really a saying...but whatever

You must be in my head b/c I was wondering the exact same thing the other day! As you can see from my avi, my hair appears very thick when dry but when it is wet,straight, or in a pony tail it looks very thin. I do think maybe our is hair thick but the strands are fine so sometimes its looks not so luscious. Lol, another reason for me to stay away from relaxers and perms and stuff.