Reader request: French braiding, part 1

Meghan requested a French braiding tutorial, and I thought I'd do her one better and do a few videos over the next month, building up to a video on doing the serpentine braid. So here's the first part, on how to do a basic French braid!



And a couple of pictures...



This is what a French braid looks like from the front or the top.



This is what the underside of a French braid looks like. I actually learned to French braid my hair this way--I grew up in a largely African-American community, and my friends who could cornrow taught me, so I originally French braided upside down. Instead of placing strands of hair over each other, you pull them underneath each other. It's a really cool look to do, especially for French braid pigtails.



And this is what my hair looked like today. It's extremely oily and this is not the best braid--I'm terribly uncoordinated upside down!--but this goes to show that you can do just about anything with a French braid once you figure out how to do it :)