To put it simply, actress Kerry Washington is stunning week after week as “Olivia Pope” on the hit show Scandal. Her outfit is tight, her shoes are stunning, and her hair is usually laid perfectly. But according to the 42-year-old star, becoming a mom to Isabelle, 5, and Caleb, 3, is what inspired her to stop straightening her hair.
“I like to wear my natural texture, especially now because I have children and I want them to know that their hair is perfect as it is,” Washington told Allure for her November cover story. “They don’t have to change it or straighten it. They can, but they don’t have to.”
When she’s on the set of Scandal, Washington admits she requires (quite) a bit more maintenance. “There’s someone who follows me around all day long on the set. Like, literally follows me to make sure there’s not a single hair out of place,” she said. “This is somebody’s full-time job.”
“I have grown to like my hair more and more over the years. I won’t have any chemicals in it. I stopped relaxing my hair in my early 20s,” she said.
When asked how Kerry maintain Kerry’s natural hair, her stylist of over 15 years, Takisha Sturdivant-Drew, gives us the tea.
“I wash and condition and trim it every six weeks,” Takisha explains. “People tend to get caught up on length but you have to trim the hair to keep those split ends off and to allow new hair to grow and be healthy.”
“Kerry loves texture and she loves to play around with any type of wave because she just likes the way that looks on her face,” continues Sturdivant-Drew. “Her hair is very curly. It’s not tight or a spiral, it’s more of an S. We started…
…straightening it a lot, but I said that my goal was to keep it healthy. I wanted to go back to her natural texture because I like the curl pattern of it, and she agreed. We started to braid it, leave it, and let the texture come back into the hair, which is where she’s at today after having her two kids.”
“There are little tricks that you can do with natural hair to prevent shrinkage,” Sturdivant-Drew says. “For this style [above], to get it big, all I did was take my Dyson Supersonic with the comb attachment and blew it on cold. Hot would make it straight. I lifted the roots up to expand it and make it bigger.”
“I’m not heavy on products. I never have been, because I like the hair to move and have some bounce when you walk. If anything, I’ll put a little Oribe Superfine spray on to hold the hair.”
Kerry isn’t the only celebrity to go natural. Both Alicia Keys and Sanaa Lathan have done it as well. Whatever the magic is that’s happening, it’s working. Go ‘head Kerry!
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