Thought for today

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

Half a plan for the new year

Right now my locks are pretty fun:  they're still short enough that they can stick just about everywhere when I want them to, but long enough that they'll point more or less down when I ask really nicely.

They're about half-locked, so there's more to go to make this locky thing happen.  Of course, how to take the next steps is going to be important, particularly if I want to do explore the options in anything approaching a systematic fashion.

stop trying to fix them. the more you work on them the longer it will take for them to get really tight..after a year or two you can blunt your tips if they dont do it on their own

That's what Cherubim666999 said on my six-month dreadlock update video.  It's an argument I've heard before.  Messing with them, including the usage of products like wax, slows down the process.  I'd be better off letting time, and the compression of many nights of sleep, do the work.  Naturally, they will lock on their own if I just let things be.

An after-and-before shot.

Ignorance is bliss

I didn't know any of this when I started my locks.  All I knew was how a metal comb could put the locks in, and how using wax to keep them compressed (frequently at first but reducing in the number of applications over time) helps accelerate the process, leading to the tight, stray-hair-free locks I was looking for more quickly.  I knew that there was an alternative; I had considered and discarded a full neglect method as an option.  The only thing I didn't know about at first was the controversy.

Wanted: Doctorate of Dreadlocks

So I started waxy, then I gave wax up.  By October I wanted my wax back, because my hair felt like it was falling apart.  That could also be a sign that wax is bad news in the first place, but I didn't have enough evidence either way.  People swearing up and down that wax is good or bad is terribly interesting, but what I really wanted was some actual research on dreadlock techniques and their effectiveness.

So that's my plan for the new year:  I'm going to go back to using wax on half my head, and leave the other half be.  I'll still wash the whole head as always, but the right side will go back to an alternating cycle of one week of wax, one week of palmrolling, futzing with the crochet hook, and generally screwing around in the hopes that I can make the locks tighten up faster.

It won't be exactly scientific, but at least it will be systematic.  In another six months or so I should have some idea of which method works better.

Metathought ramble about dreadlocks

File under slow feedback:  a friend told me this week that my locks look much better than when I started them.  "They looked horrible," she said.

That is the tricky thing about perception in the early 21st century.  Nobody-but-nobody was afraid to treat blacks poorly when Black Like Me was being written, but now we're much more subtle about how we treat people.  We can't judge a book by its cover . . . or admit to it, anyway.

You can get a little paranoid about this stuff.  You look for non-verbal cues that suggest they're distracted by the hair, but it's harder to find clues that someone is negatively impacted by it.

What I don't want to do is get sucked up into a thoughtcrime cycle - some of the most egregious examples of racism are (over)reactions to a perceived racist threat from whites.  Can't they see that they're inciting this, I rant as I'm following the news.

Well, maybe they can't.

If I allow myself to think about it (which is pretty much when I'm blogging, but rarely else), I can definitely see the difference in how people treat me.  The friend who said, "People won't take you seriously," meant, "I won't take you seriously."  The man who suggested I don't hide them during my political campaign is treating them more like a scandal to be managed than a personal style choice.  The friend who just told me how bad she thought they looked felt that way for months, and probably still does.

Or does she?

When I don't plug my hair into the analysis, I find that I remain as I always was - sometimes puzzled by how people act.  It makes us feel safer if we know what motivates other people.  Since we can never be sure, it's much easier to just ascribe a motivation of our choice.  If the one you pick doesn't feel very sensible, give it time:  you'll find plenty of evidence of your theory once you're thinking about it.

Thing is, I can walk around expecting people to treat me differently because I have dreadlocks, or not.  Whether I do or not, some number is going to discriminate in some way because of my hair.  Others will not.  At the end of the day, I can be all pissed off about how I was treated, or I can not even remember it.

If I go looking for a fight, I'm sure to find it.  If I don't, one might find me anyway.  The former keeps me stress-free and positive, but the latter will probably give me more to write about.

I will never possess sufficient curiosity to write a convincing fight scene.

Not tonight, I have to wash my hair

I washed my hair for the first time today.  Twice a week is recommended for new locks, with the suggestion that you can wash more frequently as they tighten up.  My mother washed my hair once a week and I keep to that schedule (unless something makes me grimy), so the question is going to be whether this new hairstyle attracts more dirt.

Am I a bank robber?  Only my hairdresser knows for sure.

I'm not entirely sure I did it right.  I wore a stocking on my head because the locks are still fragile, so the first challenge was getting the damned thing over my head.  When I finally stretched it out enough to fit, I felt like my skull was in a medieval torture device.  I used the dreading shampoo by washing through the stocking, and there was no sudsing at all.  There were suds when I used this shampoo just prior to dreading, so I don't know where they went. Were they sloughed off by the stocking or absorbed by the dreads?

I focused on my scalp, because that's where everything you don't want on your head tends to show up.  I scrubbed as best I could through the nylon, and squished my head around to get the soap in my hair to come out as I rinsed.

The post-shower fluffhead look

Shampooing is definitely dangerous, because with the nylon removed I can tell that there's less wax, and the locks are all much less tight.  Looking at the picture, I think that some of them may have doubled in width.

I don't think I could have done that by taking off the stocking too roughly (think there's a how-to video for that?).  Thinking on it, it's probably because the wax which is helping to compress the hair until it locks was washed out.  I guess that means that I did it right after all.

So the washing means I have to add more wax, based on the approach I'm taking to locking my hair. The debate over whether or not to use wax or not is a really fierce one, believe it or not, and it's worth a post of its own to explain the different positions and how I made my choice.  I've made it, though, and it means that I need to put wax in a lock if I can't detect any in it.  After my hair is completely dry I'll be adding a small amount of dread wax to about half of my locks. I can do it while watching television, but it's probably going to add half an hour to my hair routine on washing day, which is a lot.

The daily routine right now includes checking locks for wax, rewaxing the ones that need it (again, only if I can't feel any wax at all), and palmrolling each of them for thirty seconds, or a minute for the rewaxed locks.  Eventually I will be using wax only every other week, and mature locks have no need of it, so the time requirements drop off.  I won't be washing my hair any less, and with the time requirements I sure as hell hope I don't have to wash it more.

Drying takes more time, too.  I prefer shorter hair because I can quickly towel it and let it air dry, and that takes longer now.  I also find that my scalp itches while it's drying.  I don't think I will start using a blow dryer, but I can't put a hat on wet dreads so the time factor could force my hand if I have to be somewhere. Especially when they're fluffy like this, I'd prefer to keep them covered in a lot of circumstances.  I'm a journalist, and it would be a distraction if my hair became the story.

Coming soon:  a video from dread day.  I have the link to the Flip video and should have time to figure out how to edit it together soon.

Why do I want dreadlocks?

Egads, what on earth am I doing this for?  Why do I want dreadlocks?  It's an important question, part of the whole mental-preparation process.  This video is definitely worth ten minutes of your time if you want to dread your hair.  I'll clue you in below if it's not worth spending ten minutes.

As Jonny Clean explains, knowing why I want dreadlocks is going to make it easier, because the reason will give me the commitment and the will to get through the hard parts.  For the first six months that's going to include:

• The long day of initial locking
• Daily palm-rolling of locks and checking for loose hairs
• Weekly waxing
• Regular washing, every two or three days for most of the process

My reason, and my commitment, will also carry me through as I learn to explain my hair, answer questions which I'm sure will get tiresome ("You wash your hair?" "Yes, I just can't use the chemical crap on most stores shelves because the residues will cause rot and mildew."), and potentially deal with bias or discrimination based on my appearance.

Writing a book about it isn't going to cut it - that's too circular.  For me, like many people, this is going to be a spiritual journey.  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.

Where the journey will take me after that is unknown - and that's part of the fun.  I like being surprised.

It looks like this will be happening in about a week or so, although the full cast and crew hasn't been lined up yet.

What a dreadful idea!

Maybe it's just a way to have a midlife crisis that costs less than buying a sports car and a new mail-order bride, but I have decided to lock my hair, as in dreadlocks.  I'm also going to write about the experience . . . how it gets done, what it's like to have and maintain dreadlocks, and most importantly, how it shapes how people perceive and interact with me.

That last part - chronicling those perceptions - inspires the name of this project.  Dread Like Me is a play on Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin's story of how he became black in order to experience racial oppression in the southern United States.  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?

Of course, I've also worked with attorneys who have locks, and it didn't keep them from commanding respect, so maybe it's more than just the wearing of the hair that forms those perceptions. The name is also rhymes with Dead Like Me, which is a bonus.  Maybe the creators of that show wanted to remind people of Black Like Me; I don't know, I just had the idea this moment.

I'm a writer whose greatest challenge is finding things to write about, so I'm hoping I can milk an ebook or maybe even a publishing deal out of this idea.  Can't hurt to try, hmm?