Reason #21: letting go and moving on

One of the things I'm really digging about my reasons for dreadlocks series is the patterns that crop up!  Today's reason is from Dianna, and it's really two, and together they offer something I see a lot of -- which I think is akin to a rite of passage, maybe -- and something new to me, but probably just as common in the world.

Dianna's more mature than I am

First time out, Dianna made what was a big commitment to her:  a full year with dreadlocks.  (Now that I've passed the year mark myself, I wonder if my five-year commitment was biting off more than I can chew.  No . . . but it's still a bit nuts.)  She says it was "an exercise in letting go" of her appearance, so she could "focus on [her] inner beauty" instead.  It actually also "helped me to see my outward natural beauty" after she looked beyond mascara and eyeliner.

After her year was up, Dianna's hair had clumped into some pretty big sections, and her scalp wasn't digging it, so she took 'em out.  Awhile later, she applied that experience to her second set of locks, which are a couple of months older than mine.

This time around, Dianna was specifically looking to mark a transition.  As she told me via Facebook:

My marriage fell apart, my grandmother passed away, and I left behind a masters degree to take to the road. I travel now, and I earn a modest and plain living working various renaissance festivals. Many of us who travel have or have had dreadlocks. I suppose you could say some view them as a rite of passage. For me, perhaps they are just that, and more.

So yeah, I've heard similar stories, and I will probably hear more of both types of reasons in the future.  Now I'm starting to think I should be doing a better job tagging these posts so we can see what types of reasons we've all got.

Feel free to suggest tags in the comments!  Do it generically or, if you're in a super-helpful mood, visit the list of reasons for dreadlocks and suggest them directly on your favorite post!

Reason #20: life transformation

Only her hairdresser knows they're fake

And then there's Donna, who's the first person I've talked to who had fake dreadlocks put into her hair to start things off.

That was the first thing she said, in fact:  "You obviously know that they're fake, right?"  

As it happens, I did not.  Donna's locks are made of synthetic hair, but it's not easy to tell that they're not all her hair if you don't know better.  She's had plenty of people assume that hers are natural.

"I was going more for Matrix than hippie," she said; cybergoth is more her thing.  She's always had lots of colors, ranging from blacks and blondes in the professional world to rainbow hues back in college.  "I thought if I were ever to do dreads, I would put in extensions."

She has hippie friends who call them a travesty, but she just sees her hair as a way to have fun.

For Donna, her hair was a way to signify the major changes in her life.  "I lost my job a year and a half ago, and I had a major transition," she said, which also included losing over a hundred pounds.  "I figured I wanted to have fun, and have fun hair," she said.

"I had this conservative, straight life, and now it's the reverse," she laughed.

A year ago: scared to shampoo

I left the mirror steamy as a courtesy

A year ago today I was nervous about washing my hair.  It was the first time I was going to try it after the locking, and I had to wear a stocking to make sure I didn't rip them apart.  My hair sucked up shampoo like Jewish cooking does salt, and then, hours later, after they were finally dry, I had to wax them again.

If you're one of those people who believes that white people shouldn't have dreadlocks because all the extra work should be telling us something, you're preaching to the choir here.  By this time a year ago, I realized that making and maintaining dreadlocks, at least using my chosen methods, was much more work than I'd ever done on my hair before.

Of course, I also was starting to have more fun with my silly hair.  I asked a dreadlock poll question which had such epic rhymes that thirteen people have answered since I asked it a year ago.  How cool is that?

One year later, I'm still spending more time than I should be on my locks (well, on half my dreadlocks anyway), and I'm pretty much done with that.  Once this test period ends next month, I will be very, very glad to neglect my locks like a normal person.

5 Reasons Why People Wax Dreadlocks

If you're considering waxing dreadlocks, be advised:  you're about to step into a big pile of hot wax yourself.  Waxing is very controversial, and passionate, intelligent people argue for and against it.  I finally decided to test it out on my own head to benefit people who are thinking about getting dreadlocks.

But the controversy doesn't have much effect on the decision to use wax.  I've compiled these reasons why people use wax in their dreadlocks to help explain why.

1. Google loves wax.  Do a search for "dreadlocks" and what do you see?  If you're like me, your eye drifts down past the paid results, and because I'm looking for more in-depth information, right on past Wikipedia, and I click on Dreadlocks.com.  That site gives a bunch of advice, and has prominent links to DreadHeadHQ, which is where I got my start.
   Bottom line:  sites which advocate wax come up higher in search engine results.
2. Wax replaces patience.  "If you want tighter locks faster, you will use wax."  Dreadlocks, like yoga, is all about patience, but there are plenty of people who are interested in getting the results in as short a time as possible.  If someone wants it badly enough, he or she will decide that the information supporting wax is more compelling than the warnings against it.
   Bottom line:  People believe what they want to believe.
3. Smooth is sexy.  Locking hair involves a lot of fuzzy areas.  Getting dreadlocks tight and smooth is a goal for a lot of people, because it is easier to maintain a clean, simple profile with mature locks.  Fuzzy gets connected with dirty in peoples' mind for some reason.  Smooth, not so much.  Wax can indisputably create less of a flyaway appearance, and that's something a lot of people value.
   Bottom line:  People like the look of waxed locks.



Short dreadlocks laugh at gravity

4. Waxed locks behave.  I've had my locks for a year now, and those first few months were rough!  I had to cover my hair or beat it into submission on days when I simply couldn't afford to look ridiculous.  (There were plenty of times when I actually reveled in how silly my hair looked, but it definitely was ridiculous.)  I used a bunch of techniques, including hats, water, and wax in various combinations, one of which I would not recommend.  A small amount of wax in a dreadlock makes it go where you want it to.  If a waxy core really does build up inside a waxed lock, it's not enough to make it permanently into a bendy figure.
   Bottom line:  Wax gets young locks to lie flat.
5. Marketing.  What wax opponents wish wasn't true is that marketing matters.  Every tale told about the horrors of wax may be true, or they could shameless anti-wax rumors, but none of that matters.  What matters is that dreadlock wax is marketed to fulfill a perceived need.  The information is easier to find, and its reported benefits speak to the desires of a wide swath of people.  Opposition to waxing has little to no money, and without a profit motive it also lacks a really cohesive strategy which would link its facts to the desires people have.  In the "industrialized world," people are programmed to seek out the product which will solve the problem in the most efficient way.  That solution doesn't have to be effective, it just has to be convincing.
   Bottom line:  Marketing works because people want the easy answer.

For every argument against wax, there is a plausible counterargument.  It can be frustrating to try to figure out the truth.  The one thing that is absolutely true is that no harm will come to your hair because you choose not to wax your dreadlocks.  Using wax might make them lock faster, or it could put them on the path to ruin, depending on what you choose to believe.  The truth probably is more complex, containing aspects of both sides of the story.

When it comes down to it, wax is a personal decision.  Some people don't ever know it has baggage, and other people don't care.  There will always be waxers, and those who try to talk them out of it.  Which will you be?

A year ago: Styracosaurus

Something about constant, low-grade pain must make my creative juices flow, because the post I wrote a year ago about my first day with dreadlocks is a really entertaining read.

Don't let the smile fool you.

After I warmed [the wax] and worked it in, Robin took the blow dryer to it so it would melt andreally get in there. The heat was enough on my inflamed scalp to make me gnash my teeth and rend my clothing, which is why I'm glad I was wearing a high-quality sweater from L.L. Bean, for it was quite resistant to rending.

In amongst the colorful language I used to complain about how much my scalp hurt, there is an interesting insight:  on Day One, my locks were about three inches long, and the first inch (at the base) wasn't locked.

Down locks are happier

One year later, my locks are 5-7 inches long, and the first inch or two isn't locked.  When I compare the nature and nurture sides, the length is about the same, but natural locks have a longer unlocked base -- they're the ones hovering at about two inches.  I don't think it's logical to believe that wax makes the difference, and I stopped experimenting with root flipping before I started this test, so that's not it, either.  I believe the bands I have used at the base of the locks (which also make it harder to measure how much is unlocked, so I focused on those locks without them at the moment) are helping the bases lock faster.

I kind of miss looking like a spiky dinosaur, but I don't think I could afford enough wax to make that happen again.  Maybe armature wire?

A year ago: What's on TV?

A year ago I sat mostly still for something like six to eight hours as my wife yanked a metal comb through my hair over and over and over again.  Getting ready I was excitedly picking movie selections, and in summary the day looked more or less like this:

. . . which doesn't even remotely begin to capture how horrible it felt, but I really needed to grin and bear it.

One year later I have locks that stay put, and are older than some of the things in my life.

It's obvious that my video skills are still not even close to as cool as my wife's.

A year ago: excitement builds!

A year ago I was nearing the day when my hair would be forced into submission.  I had researched how to lock my caucasian hair, and was convinced that my best choice would be to get a "dread kit" from one of the product suppliers.  A friend of mine, intrigued by this wacky hair-as-art-experiment, started talking it up.

One year later, I am well aware that there are more locking options than I had realized.  I've learned that wax, in particular, is very controversial, and I'm well into a test of dread wax and other techniques to see if they are as good, or bad, as some people say.

A year ago: pondering patience

A year ago I was asking myself the question, "Why do I want dreadlocks?"  I rambled a bit, but my answer came down to one word:  patience.

 Where it starts will be with a desire to learn more patience, which is one of the reasons I admire trees and other plants as much as I do.  Trees can only adapt to the world by using one tool:  slow, methodical growth.  In comparison, blooming flowers and ripening vegetables in the garden seem swift, but gardens themselves are best improved year over year in the long haul.

One year later, I haven't made so much headway on the whole patience thing.  I got tired of using wax, tired of not using wax, and then decided to do both.

Rubber bands

I've been careful to only use rubber bands on my nurture side, but I figured it was one of the more extreme things I'm doing.  I mean, what harm could a rubber band do?

When my friend Tim was thinking about locks, I offered him some of my excess bands for sectioning off the hair.  He agreed that having locks of roughly even thickness was what he wanted.  (We also spoke about wax, and I'll be coming back to that in a post soon.  There are more reasons people choose to use wax than some people recognize.)

So I was surprised when Tim told me he was not using bands, because he'd heard that they "cause clumping."  My immediate reaction was to ask, "Isn't that the point?"

I think what Tim had heard is that bands can cause thin spots and break hairs.  If they're too tight, yup, they can.  It's his choice, but I still think that rubber bands are not likely to be harmful, and the fact that I won't use them on the nature side is mostly me being extra cautious, in case I'm wrong.

A year ago: is my hair long enough?

My hair was free to roam.

A year ago today, I was fretting over my hair.  I'd made up my mind that I was going to lock it, but I wasn't sure if it was long enough yet.  My patience being what it is, I didn't want to wait.  I rationalized moving fast:

The main advantage of locking the hair when it's shorter is that it will take less time for my dreadful friends to help me.  The backcombing process can take six hours for 18 inches of hair, and is painful and tiring.

One year later, I know I wrote those words, but oh, I did not understand the meaning of "painful and tiring" when I posted that passage.  Nope, not by a long shot.

I daresay the locks have grown some.

My worries were for naught -- my locks have endured, despite the short hair we started with, and the controversial waxing, crocheting, and all the other hoo-hah that's been going into my nature-vs-nurture test.

And my hair has grown longer, too, but what I not sure 100% sure of is how much more they've locked in the past 50 weeks.  Living with them day after day makes it harder to notice change, and I'm not really sure how to measure it.

My friend Amanda Catherine, who hadn't seen me in a couple of months, just told me that my locks are lookin' fine, so that was a nice boost.  (I'll have her reason for dreadlocks posted here as soon as I can get her to hold still long enough to tell me about it.)

One thing I'm positive about is that I hate the length of my hair this April.  To much volume for a hat, not enough length to tie it back.  Of course, the milestone that everyone with locked hair looks forward to is being able to use a lock to tie back the rest of the hair.  At the base of my neck, my longest locks are about three inches, so that's going to be awhile.  Some people have told me that it's easier to shave the back of the neck than to get that hair to lock, but it's steady as she goes.

Reason #19: always wanted them

Tim is another one who has wanted to lock his hair for awhile.

A year ago: blogging begins

A year and two days ago I launched this blog with my first, tentative reasons for dreadlocks.

I know that there's a good amount of negative stereotyping and perceptions about dreadlocks, mostly because I've shared a lot of those perceptions myself.  People who wear dreadlocks are dirty, aimless people who can't get a job, right?

All the hat I ever needed

Even though I was considering them, I really didn't like looking at locked hair.  I would glance the way people do at naked bodies in a public locker room:  curious, but not wanting to stare.  The staring would have been in part from fascination, but at least a little from revulsion.  Even though I had been thinking about them for quite awhile, my emotional reaction that they must be dirty was still mixing it up with the new, more rational understanding that washing locks is not only possible, but a really good idea.  I definitely had a knee-jerk reaction against locks, so much so that my second post, the following day, chronicled how I wanted to hide my dreadlocks once I had them.

When I can't be bothered, it looks like this.

One year later, I look at dreadlocks.  I talk to people about them, asking their reasons for dreadlocks (and please, do send in your reason if you've got one).  It's a conversation starter, and it doesn't feel awkward to me anymore.

One year later, my hat can still fit all of my hair, but not without it looking like I have a beastly occipital bone tumor. While pulling it back right now makes me look like a mangy chicken, a ponytail holder working with my hat pulls off something of a round head profile.

This post is the beginning of a new, regular feature for this blog, called one year later.  In each post, instead of simply talking about myself, I will talk about how I was talking about myself a year ago, and then talk about how differently I talk about myself now than I did then.  I hope that this feature will allow me to create new, self-absorbed content with a minimum of effort, while avoiding a metaphysical feedback loop which could eliminate all traces of me from the space-time continuum.

Luckily for you, my reader, if I fail you will never have read any of this in the first place.

Reason # 18: Low maintenance

YouTuber rockemknotty responds to my question,"What's your reason for dreadlocks?"



Submit your reason for dreadlocks to be featured here!

Reason #17: no other choice

AnnMarie doesn't have dreadlocks anymore, but if you want to check 'em out, they're the ones that I used to create the header image for this blog.

They were this big!

"I didn't really have a choice," she told me.  Her reason for dreadlocks is that somebody started giving them to her and she just decided to go with it.

"The first one was really, really big," AnnMarie recalled.  In the picture here she's demonstrating where a helpful person with busy fingers got the process started, and with how much hair.  It was a big enough chunk that she thought it would be easier to let 'em lock than to try to take it out, which she figured would involve lots of hair loss.

It was at a Rainbow Gathering that she went ahead with it.  "I decided to try to do one lock a day," she said, but "there was a lot of hair," so she and her friends had a lot more work to do than could have been finished on that schedule.

Five years later AnnMarie lost her locks, and this past summer she loaned those locks to me for my blog.  Check out her first attempt at making them into a hat in this dreadlocks vlog -- she's since successfully turned them into a cool knit hat!

Reason #16: spirit

Jason dreamed of dreadlocks from a young age.  "I always pictured myself with dreadlocks," he said.  "When I was a kid I used to draw myself with dreadlocks in a bandanna."  

Drawing in positive energy through dreadlocks.

He doesn't say that those childhood drawings were his reason for dreadlocks, though.  I think that his reason for dreadlocks was also the reason that Jason drew himself with them when he was a youngster.  I'm calling his reason "spirit," because he talked a lot about the spiritual energy associated with dreadlocks.  Here's what he told me he believes:

• Jamaicans people wear locks because it makes it easier for God to reach down and pick them up to bring them into Heaven.
• They are the mark of the snakes around Shiva's neck, and represent fearlessness.
• They are antennas which draw in positive energy from the universe.

And yeah, he's wearing the bandanna, too.

It didn't occur to me to ask Jason about his method, which I think is kinda interesting too, but if I get that info from him down the road I'll come along and post it up and link to it from here.

Be sure to let me know your reason for dreadlocks if you want to be featured here!

End of the line, DreadHeadHQ Dread Shampoo!

I've been waiting for this day for months:  I have finally run out of dreadlock shampoo. How cool is that?

Shampoo is the one thing that I can't really use on just half my head.  That means that if this proprietary product is having a deleterious effect, I won't notice a difference from one side to the other.  No good!

Now I've read (sadly I can't find where at the moment) that the dreadlock wax business depends upon products that remove wax in order to survive.  If that's true, then I should think that my nurtured locks will be impacted.  There should be more hardening of those locks, and I should be able to detect surface wax for longer periods of time.

I'm now using a natural shampoo recipe which was my staple before I started this madcap adventure, and which I understand is a pretty common one for dreadlock care.  However, according to this article on waxing dreadlocks, a baking soda and vinegar regimen can also be used to remove wax, so it's possible that I won't see the buildup I'm expecting.  But maybe this combo will work better at wax removal than the shampoo.  Not sure how I would demonstrate that, but feedback is welcome!

Reason #15: chef hats

Josh used to have the most perfect afro that I have ever set eyes upon.  It was carefully sculpted into a gentle, bulging ellipsoid.  Other than when I used to watch Mod Squad episodes as a kid, I have never had any exposure to a badass afro like Josh's.

"I wanted to wear a chef's hat." --Josh

There was a lot of pushback from his friends when he finally went ahead and got his fro locked.  Facebook was abuzz with reactions of shock and horror.  I had one person tell me, "When he turns his head quickly, I can still see the afro."

So what's Josh's reason for dreadlocks?

"I wanted to be able to wear a chef's hat," he said.  He's studying in a culinary program, and as awesome as his afro was, there is not a toque made that he could put on top without it looking ridiculous. I can't imagine how it would even work, personally: would he shove his afro up the tube, or embed that hat a few inches deep in the hair, or bobby-pin it to death on top? And how much taller than a normal human would that make him, anyway?

And it turns out that maintaining a picture-perfect afro ain't easy -- Josh was spending way more time on his hair that he wanted to be.  He described the process to me, but I'm afraid my eyes just glazed over and I was unable to grasp all the hoops he jumped through daily to make that hair of his seem like it never changed.  I was even recording the conversation, but my phone mysteriously stopped recording before we got to that part.

Eerie.

As for method, Josh got his hair braided and he is planning on just leaving it like that.

Reason #14: art

Tori, hard at work labeling labels. 

Tori wanted dreadlocks from the time she was six years old.  "I was fighting my hair," she told me.  "It was a constant battle of brushing out the tangles."  When she discovered that there was such a thing as dreadlocks, she was enamored.

It was a long time before her dream came true, though.  "I wanted to be in a stable place in my life," she said.  She had her young daughter to think of.  That didn't happen until she secured a job working for a local town, first in the assessor's office and then at the recycling center, where she has taken piles and piles of what seemed to be random crap and organized it into a veritable marketplace of reused materials.

But that's a story for another blog.

The story for this blog is her reason for dreadlocks.

Some of Tori's artsy beads.

"I did it for art," she explained to me.  Sure, not having to comb her hair mattered to Tori, but what really captured her imagination was the artful and pretty things one could do with locks.

Things like putting in decorative beads and bows and strings and things.  Like braiding and tying and dyeing.  Wrapping with wire and doing what inspires.

Tori is fascinated by my nature-vs-nurture dreadlock test, but as a friend and disciple of Soaring Eagle, she is pretty sure she knows how it's going to turn out.  She rattled off a list of ways that wax can ruin locks, and reminded me of how she had wax coming out of hers for over two years after she stopped using the stuff, a tale that I've already recounted here.

Yes, it's crossed my mind to put stuff in my own locks, but no, I am not quite ready to do that.  I don't want beads unnecessarily influencing the development of my locks during this period of testing.  But yes, some of those beads are really pretty!

Reason #13: love (guest reason!)

Beginning with this post, I'm seeking out reasons for dreadlocks from other people who have them.  Honestly, I don't know why I didn't think of it before.  If I get bored of that, I can start asking them their top reason for not wanting locks . . . or ask the same two questions of people who don't have them.  And of course there's no reason why I should exclude people who used to have locked hair, but don't anymore.

Okay, now that I have pretty much ruined any chance of people clicking on this post by giving it a completely boring intro, let's move on.

Today's guest reason for dreadlocks is provided by Justin Holmes.  Justin is on his second set of dreadlocks, and for these he's going pretty damned natural.  "I rip some apart sometimes, or encourage a particularly stubborn one to do something different, but that's about it," he said to me.  Justin declined use of my metal comb ("I think I need something sturdier") and doesn't spend a lot of time paying attention to his hair at all.

Mr. Holmes is a computer programmer extraordinaire and the main force driving the Slash Root Tech Cafe, a storefront business which blends fair-trade coffee, freely-shared live music, and open-source technology into a platform for free thought and free expression.  If that explanation of the business doesn't suit, stop by their shop or just hire them to build you a web site.  You won't be disappointed.

Justin's reason for dreadlocks:  he's single and he says it improves his chances with the ladies.  Given his years of experience (at least four or five the last time he locked up), I have no reason to question him on that score.

Thought for today

Would dreadlocks be more acceptable if we called them "paleo hair" instead?

Crochet conundrum

I think that I figured out one of the advantages of using wax. For at least a week at a stretch, when the wax is in, I can't crochet my locks. For a fidgeter like me, you really need an excuse to stop fidgeting. The wax gives that. Since it's kinda addictive and almost certainly can do more harm than good when overdone, these little waxy breaks are a godsend.

Warnings of Waxy Worries

I had some warnings about wax given to me today, and they're so far the most credible ones I've heard.

The young lady told me that she'd started her locks with wax six years ago, and showed me that on close inspection tiny white specks could be seen on them.

"That's the wax working it's way out," she explained.  She'd stopped using the stuff after a year.

It stands to reason that if you use too much wax it's going to build up.  Some naturalists say that the so-called "residue-free shampoo" is designed to strip the wax out just to prevent that sort of thing.  Wax buildup leads to moisture buildup, which can lead to mildew or lock rot.

Not pretty.

So I still think that it's the misuse of wax that causes problems.  What I don't know is how much wax is really too much, and that's worth thinking about.  I've always been confident that I can detect the wax in the lock, but maybe I can't.  As I write this I note that my nurtured side is still moist from this morning's ablutions, but the natural side is quite dry.

Better still, I think my waxing hand has been getting heavier.  That's much more insidious.  Wax could very well be a wonderful locking agent, but if it's easy to misuse or overuse, well that would automatically make it inappropriate for American consumers.

Nature vs Nurture: Some visual differences emerge

I need to become better at taking pictures of my hair.  Close-up pictures that lets you see exactly what it is that I'm talking about.  But hey, if I can't paint a picture with words then the seas will rise anyway.

People, at least when they're prompted, say that they notice a difference between the sides of my head, and they can identify which side I'm leaving alone and which I'm futzing with.  I couldn't figure out how to embed the online version.

Here's a quick table laying out what I'm doing with each side of my head.

	Nature side	Nurture side
Lemon-saltwater spray	Yes	Yes
Wax	No	Yes
Palmrolling	No	Yes
Crochet hooking	No	Yes
Clockwise rubbing	No	Yes
Lock Pepa	No	Yes
Rubber bands	No	Yes
Split-and-twist	No	No
Dread Shampoo	Yes	Yes
Separating	No	Yes

Some things it's hard to do on just one side, like shampoo and the saltwater spray.  The latter (lemon juice and sea salt in water, spritz after bathing) is a replacement for a product, and the naturalists seem to like it so I'll stick with it.  The shampoo I'm going to use until it runs out, but I have ideas for a more meaningful replacement when that time comes.

I know there's an actual term for the technique I called "split-and-twist," but I forget what it is.  It involves parting the unlocked hair at the base of the lock and feeding the entire lock through the opening.  I'm holding off on doing this to tighten the bases, as I've heard that weakens the locks and I would rather look into that separately.

Speaking of separately, "separating" simply means cutting or breaking strands from one lock which get stuck in another.  I'm curious to see if my nurture locks will start to grow together.

PS - if you desperately need a fix about my dreadlocks and I haven't posted in awhile, check out the Dread Like Me YouTube playlist.  From time to time I'm in a visual mood instead of a writing one.

Collected notes on perception

I've jotted a few notes down here and there about the perception-altering qualities of dreadlocks.  Here's what I've got:

• A friend of mine picked up my metal comb and asked me what it was for.  I told him, "That's how we put in my locks," and he froze for second, as if I had said, "That's how I cut open live kittens."  I don't think he noticed that I noticed.
• The right side of my head - the nurture side - had a serious itching fit when I was out in the cold today.  Don't know what it means.
• Is there such a thing as dreadlock assault?  Two people have told me tales about unconscious people getting dreadlocks put in without their consent.  In both cases the tale teller didn't know the alleged victim directly.
• Having dreadlocks myself doesn't keep me from wondering if someone else's locks are clean.  There's no easy way to tell, not visually.
• Only after I started locks did I have strangers compliment my hair.
• I got a pretty bad eye infection a month or so ago, and I wondered if I'd scratched my eye on a lock.  They're every bit as annoying as unlocked hair is at this length, with the added features of bludgeoning mass and a cruel, spike-like tip of hair that's been deliberated roughened up for extra abrasive locking power.

Perception is subtly changed by this hair.  Some of that perception is mine, but not all, and it's usually hard to quantify it, but it's there.