The Chart Was Not Built for Indian Hair
The Andre Walker hair typing system, the 1-to-4, A-to-C grid that dominates every curl forum and shampoo label, was developed in the early 1990s in the United States, primarily to categorise the hair textures of Black and white American women. Indian hair was not in the room. The curl patterns common across South Asia, from the loose, heat-flattened waves of a Punjabi woman to the tight, undefined coils of someone from Tamil Nadu, do not sit cleanly inside any of its boxes. Forcing them in produces bad advice: products recommended for 3C hair that turn an Indian 3C into a frizzy, crunchy mess, because the chart does not account for the specific porosity and density profiles that Indian hair tends to carry.
