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.