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: 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.

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!

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.

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.

State of the Locks

We got a little excited with the stuffing . . .

What with an unexpected snow storm followed immediately by Halloween, I remembered to wear a costume but I forgot that my locks had a milestone - six months!  Election Day (and being a "dreaded Republican" candidate myself) has also slowed down my writing, but it's time for a state of the locks address.

My hair is definitely longer than it was at the end of April.  Some days it's also a helluva lot fluffier.  It's still short enough that I find myself with the occasional stick-straight-out-from-my-scalp lock when I wake up in the morning . . . but that's assuming that this will actually happen less often as they get longer.  That assumption is only based on what I've seen on other heads.

Longer and fluffier locks!

What my locks all have is a portion that's tight, and doesn't need any help to stay that way.  There's a certain amount of looseness near the base of all of them, and a good amount of the tips are giving me problems, but I don't have a single lock that is completely in shambles.

I haven't been using any products in at least a couple of months . . . no rubber bands, no wax, nothing designed to make them tangle faster or hold together while they do it.  As I mentioned before, I may go back to using some wax.  My wife thinks that some of the locks need to be rebackcombed, but that goes against everything I have researched and I'm resistant to the idea . . . pending an experienced source that agrees with her and a sudden desire to feel that pain again.

Some of my locks are only a third locked, with such a long tail that I can't just pull the loose hairs in and let it go with that.  A few of them still have rubber bands in them; I can feel them inside and I don't know how much they're doing to help maintain lock integrity.  A few of them are solid from stem to stern.

It's still about patience, I get that.  We (my wife and I) pull loose hairs in, and some of them fall back out.  The fluffy pieces need to be palmrolled regularly, something that I believe (based on the progress with and without) would be more effective with wax.  My hair seems to benefit from its judicious use.  In locked form the hair is still much too short to be pulled back, and so keeping it looking somewhat neat can be out of reach on some days.

It's all about patience, and some days I'm just not very patient.  I want to know what these things will look like once there's no more corona of flyaway hair, once I don't have any locks I can shove a finger through, once the hairs have gotten used to living in colonies instead of as individuals.

I've survived my first summer.  The heat wasn't that bad and the locks weren't that long, so it probably wasn't much of a test.  I don't know what this winter will bring, but the challenge of drying my hair properly will shift into a different gear for sure over the next six months.

I don't think that locks are terrible, and I know that mine are more appealing to the eye than many I've seen.  I still want the process to speed up, and I still know that you can't always get what you want.

Reconsidering wax

Last night a business associate whom I hadn't seen in a couple of months asked me if I had given up on the dreads.  I knew that some of them were feeling a bit loose, but it was a bit of a shock to have some think they were on the way out!

I have had a couple of changes in my maintenance routine of late.  I have

• stopped using wax
• not added new rubber bands to replace the old
• aggressively latch-hooked many tips with limited success
• stopped asking my wife to work on them
• run out of Lock Peppa

One or more of these changes have led to my locks loosening instead of tightening.  I don't think it's the rubber bands on their own, but they certainly keep the tips together while they're trying to lock.  It's not the latch-hook; that just pulls hair in, so either it's going to stay there or it's not.

I got frustrated with how much of a big deal it is to have someone else work on my hair - it's more like a hair appointment than just doing something together, and the other person isn't going to have my pain response to regulate the routine.  I know my wife is willing, but guys aren't built with any serious pain tolerance.  However, even though it's easier with someone else's eyes on my head, I don't think I am missing as much as I was back in April.  It takes me more time and it would be good to get the help, but I don't think it really is making my locks fail.

Is wax the best or worst thing for my dreadlocks?

The two products might be the variable to revisit.  The wax, in particular, gave me a set routine:  wax and palmroll one week, pull in loose hair the next, and alternate.  Once the hair is pulled in, the wax keeps it still for awhile, training it to stay there.  As the wax dissipates it has a chance to lock in and tighten.

It could be that the locking process will continue without wax, but much slower.  It could also be that my hair needs the extra help to lock up, and it's just going to get looser without it.

I understand better why wax is so controversial - it's difficult to tell if it's an impediment or an accelerant for the locking process. It's easy to understand how too much wax can lead to mildew and rot, but it's harder to determine if a moderate amount is the right choice.  I think it may have a lot more to do with the quality of one's hair than any other factor.

So I'm thinking of going back to wax, if nothing else.  I want to see this process through, and my months without wax just haven't seen the same progress as the waxen beginnings of the locky journey.

Waning waxing

So I'm coming to the end of my dread wax supply, and I don't have any plans to buy more.  I think the stuff has been helping, but there's no way to be sure if I keep using it.  As it is, my wax-on-wax-off alternating weeks has been reduced to waxing it every other Friday.  After yesterday's application, the first since my dreadful mess, I only have about half of what it takes to do my whole head, and that seems like the right time to move on.

State of the locks: three months and one week

I've already started using homemade dreadlocks products, starting with a replacement for Locking Accelerator.  What's great about that product is that its makers offer a homemade substitute on their site.  Mine includes a bit of lemon juice, but I used less salt so I'm going to up my ratio a bit next time I make it.

Some products don't seem to have a homemade replacement, like the Lock Peppa.  I just don't have a convenient supply of bentonite around town, and that stuff really works.  I'll probably be buying more of that at some point, but I'm not out of it yet.

The wax is another story.  There's good arguments explaining how it helps by compressing knots once they've been tightened, but when you hear that the wax instead inhibits locking by preventing the scales on the hairs from catching on one another, it also sounds reasonable.  Most of my backcombed locks are tightening nicely, but I have a handful that have resisted, and I've backcombed them again (a couple twice by mistake, I think), with little improvement.  Maybe not using wax will help them, maybe not, but I don't see how it could hurt them any.

Particularly since my dreadlocks survived a chlorine pool.

The experiment continues!

Sorry I'm late, I was doing my hair

Self-portrait experiment number 37

The myth that dreadlocks are low-maintenance has been debunked in my mind.  Well, it's probably safer to say that dreadlocks are like political campaigns:  you can put into them as much time and energy as you want to.

The other night I was late for a party because, for the first time in my life, I was held up doing my hair.

Are you kidding me?

I had a collision of priorities, namely:

1. Wash my hair
2. Wax my hair

It may seem simple enough to do both, but it can be screwed up.  I'd put off waxing for an extra week so my wife could focus more on blunting the tips (she felt she had the technique down, but wanted more time to have it on lockdown), so wax was on my mind.  Moreso it was hot and humid and a good waxing makes for a more party-ready appearance.

The washing, like the waxing, could have been put off a day without it being disastrous.  I'm more likely to err on the side of caution when it comes to hygiene, though, particularly since this is my first summer with matted coils of hair on my head.

So I showered, and washed my hair, and only then did I realize that I didn't have the time to let the locks air-dry.  I got busy blow-drying the hell out of them, but this was no time to be forced to master patience!  I hadn't budgeted for that extra time.

After wringing, toweling, shaking, and hot-air drying for longer than I wanted to I gave up with the locks damp, and set to waxing.  I'd have to blow-dry them again anyway.

Waxing dry locks isn't just a good idea - it's damned near the law of physics.  The wax slid off moist hair until I mashed on far more than is good for them, and my next round of blow drying was difficult because the wet hair held the heat, and burned the hell out of scalp whenever I pointed the dryer at any spot for more than about three seconds.

I moved the dryer around a lot, softening but not melting the wax.  My wife noticed, and forced me back into the bathroom where she all but held me down and gave me a stern drying so that I wouldn't look like I was wearing candles on my head.

I think the blisters should be healed any day now.

Reason #7: longer, healthier hair

I've never had my hair grow as long as it has since I started my dreadlocks.  Putting them in made the hair a lot shorter, but withing a month it was clear that there was growth, which was not at all what I expected.  Locking and tightening, yes, but lengthening?  Not even.

Seems that all the clockwise rubbing, palmrolling, and waxing has been stimulating my scalp something fierce.  Even my hairwashing is a lot more scalp-intensive, because I kinda scrub between the locks before I wash them.

I guess all this talk about brushing your hair to make it grow has some merit.

Low maintenance hair?

Maybe if my commitment had been to leave my hair completely to its own devices for five years and see what happens, I would have ended up with low maintenance hair, kind of like how letting a field return to forestland is low maintenance.

But alas, my commitment is more like training bonsai than letting land lie fallow.  And, like bonsai, it takes as much work as patience.

So how low-maintenance is this mass of hair?

• For starters, I'm using a blow dryer.  I've done that maybe three times in my life up until I started this experiment, but now I use it to melt wax, as well as to dry my hair if I'm going to wear a hat or it's just really humid out.
• Then, there's loose hair management and blunting the tips.  These are both activities that take teamwork to do somewhat easily, and they also both often have to be repeated.
• Yesterday I rebackcombed a couple of stubbornly loose locks.  I wasn't expecting to have to do that again, ever, but for at least one of the two it definitely helped tighten it up.
• Every day I take a few minutes to palmroll, and days without wax I also do some clockwise rubbing to create new knots.

Here's a video about blunting those tips:

I'll talk a bit about specialty products in an upcoming post.

So no, I'm not finding this to be an experiment in low maintenance.  It's actually one of the longest-term, highest-time-investment commitments I've ever made.

Water, water everywhere, especially in my locks

Humidity brings the Medusa look.

So I've discovered that humidity has as much power over locked hair as it does any other.

I did have a friend (who keeps his hair no longer than half an inch) tell me that dreadlocks repel water much like an Afro does.  That had not been my experience, but I tend not to correct people in public until I just can't stand to keep my mouth shut.

Now that the moistness of the air has shot up for the summer, I'm feeling like I understand how Medusa must have felt.  Never has my hair looked more snakelike  . . . the Gorgons must have had some kind of water snakes for hair.  More on Medusa in a future post

There are ways to keep them tame, but these fierce serpents definitely like to perk up with very little provocation.

• Wax, especially wax that has been softened by a hot shower or bath, makes them malleable.  Even if you believe that wax does not help hair lock, it definitely can help shape it.
• Hats can  also keep hair down, particularly ones like my favorite took, pictured here.  If I want to use this hat to tame my locks for uncovered display, water can again be ally as well as enemy.  Even unwaxed hair, when crammed underneath the old brown-and-tan when partially dry, will yield to the demands of fashion.

No telling what's hiding under here

So water can cure what is causes, but I have to do so cautiously.  First and foremost, my locks need to be allowed to dry thoroughly or I'm setting myself up for mildew, and I cannot to begin to imagine how disgusting that would be.  If I don't ever get a chance to write about mildewed locks, I'll consider myself blessed.

I hadn't thought about how the power of weather can control your hair, locked or not.  This is new, interesting, and from a maintenance perspective, pretty damned annoying.  There are times when it's okay to look wild, but humidity doesn't compromise all the easily.

I wonder what winter will bring to this mane of mine?

State of the locks

A brief report on how these locks of mine are maturing.

Rounding out two months or so, about two-thirds of my locks are definitely tightening up and becoming solid.  The remainder are in varying states of "mushy," and are mostly being held together by the base and tip bands alone.

As to the tips, we started to blunt some of them yesterday.

We tried it out on a handful, with some success . . . I put bands back on one or two but I'm pretty sure te others we tried will tighten up sweetly.

The loose hairs being fed into the locks seems to be an endless chore.  I've gotten pretty good at making dread balls, but I can't for the life of me get them into the lock without help.  I have a halo of hairs above my head, and little by little I hope to see them all go where they belong.

Trickier is going to be the flyaway stuff on the surface of the tighter locks.  Time and good advice should help me figure out if there's anything I need to be doing about them.

So far, so good.  I don't think wax is slowing my locking down, and my haberdasher bears that out.  Maureen is African-American, has had locks for twenty years, and recommends the use of wax in them.

Tips for tips

The advice keeps coming, and I'm really appreciative.  If nothing else, it's validating my experimentation.

Tame locks are happy locks

One tip I got after lamenting my epic bed head was something I had tried with remarkably good results:  soaking in a hot tub.  It got those bad boys to settle down, and stay settled for days.  I don't think I will need to use wax for cosmetic reasons if a half hour of glorious immersion will do the same thing.

That same friend of mine, who tells me that she studied locking techniques for a year before she began her first set, also suggested aloe for conditioning/taming, spoke highly of tea tree oil, and suggested a semiannual vinegar rinse as well.

This is really good news to me, because my long-term plan is to divest myself of commercial products.  The shampoo I was using prior to locking is just baking soda and water with a little bit of tea tree oil, and the rinse is apple cider vinegar with a drop of vanilla and a cinnamon stick.  I still need to find out if that drop of vanilla in the formula will cause problems, but I think it's only for scent, so I'm fine with dropping it from the recipe.

One of my local locked friends, Amanda Catherine, has really amazing blunt tips on her locks.  She explained that they come from a technique which she'd been taught, but for which she did not have a name:

1. Take a lock near the base and put it between the second and third fingers of your non-dominant hand.  Your palm should be facing away from your scalp.
2. With the fingers of your other hand, grab the lock, leaving less than an inch between the two hands.
3. Use clockwise rubbing against the non-dominant hand, slowly moving that hand away from the scalp, along the length of the lock.
4. Hold the tip between thumb and forefinger, and rub your palm clockwise over it to encourage locking and blunting.

I might try using the Lock Peppa with that technique, since that's what it's for.

Lock maintenance party!

I was also fortunate enough to get an offer of working on my locks, by one master locker and one apprentice.  It's always more uncomfortable to have other people yanking and tugging at your hair, but I gratefully accepted.  It wasn't nearly as agonizing as the six hours of backcombing.

Crisp and clean, and no caffeine

I got a few more compliments on my wife's backcombing skills, and we were able to identify which locks are slower to tighten and which ones are coming along really quickly.  I am really excited about using the latch hook my wife brought home to tighten them all the more.  She didn't think we needed a lock-specific tool; it's great to have a skilled fiber artist in the house if you don't happen to live with someone who is already experienced with dreadlocks.

I also got feedback from some of my friends who hadn't seem me since this adventure began, and I was pleasantly surprised by the positive reactions of these largely traditional, professional people.  I think the fact that I didn't look like my head was exploding had something to do with it . . . I just can't imagine anyone who isn't living on the road thinking I looked remotely decent that day.

Next up:  I've worked out a timeline for what in the hell I'm doing with this hair of mine.  If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and all that, so I'm planning on not planning to fail by failing to plan to plan.

Oh, the craziness of me

This post's title is inspired by Peter Pan ("Oh, the cleverness of me!") because I've discovered that sleeping can be hazardous to your locks, or at least it can ruin any chances of keeping them tame.  If J.M. Barrie had thought of dreadlocks, he definitely would have put them on his young hero.

Not what I would call a professional look.

The three locks which were sticking straight out from the right side of my head when I awoke yesterday morning were particularly amazing.  As they've gotten longer, I thought at first that it was the rubber bands I still have at the base of each lock which was make those particular ones so . . . pointy.  But that's not the case, because I've moved the bands around, and removed them entirely, and yet I still often wake up in this amazing condition.

The only thing I found that brought them back in line with gravity was a good, long soak in the tub.  They stayed down when I dried them, and they were still down this morning when I woke up.  This is technically a "wax on" week, but wax didn't help me beat them into shape.  In fact, there's no detectable wax in the unruly locks right now, and yet they're behaving.

This brings to mind another reaction to my locks.  "When you go in the pool, you'll look like Predator," I was told.  I imagined he meant how my hair would float in the water, but . . . not quite.  "When you get out of the water, your hair is dry," he said, which is completely the opposite of my experience so far, but maybe it will turn out that way once they're tight enough to repel moisture.

If that happens, though, washing is going to be a real pain in the ass.

More advice? Really?

I keep getting more advice about how to maintain my locks.  That's all well and good, but invariably the tips are contradictory.  Two examples:

• I got introduced to the guy who, until last September, was probably the only Republican in the county with locks.  (He cut them off after twenty years, so I guess that mantle falls to me.)  That's a lot of years, so I figure he knows what he's talking about.  His wisdom:  " Be patient, it will take some time for them to grow in. DO NOT use shampoo or soap on them! DO try and find a gentle pomade -- not pure beeswax -- that will help them cosmetically and naturally."  I pressed for details about the washing, and he said he recommends "just plain ol hot water.  Summer swimming holes work great too.  Pools and salt water, not so much."
• A friend of mine is helping her elementary-school daughter with locks (it's apparently all the rage with the tween set these days), and it was suggested to her that ocean swimming will help a lot.  My wife agreed, saying that salt water always makes her hair tangle.

I will continue to gather info, but I'm sticking to my plan and seeing it through.  It seems to be working, and changing things could make things worse if I do get problems.  So far, I'm not so committed that I don't mind cutting them off if the experiment fails, but I'm otherwise committed to five years.  That should be enough for me to learn everything I need to from dreadlocks.

Lean clean dreadlock machine

Five weeks and two days

Do dreadlocks smell bad?  I had one friend of mine tell me that they do in his experience.  Every girl he's dated who wore locks had some kind of funky odor, he told me, at least if they were of any length.

I asked another friend, who'd dated a woman with five-year locks, and he said that he didn't notice any odd smell.  This is a guy that wants to puke if he even looks at food which has gone bad, so I trust his sensitivity.

So some dreadlocks smell and others don't.  I think it has to do with moisture and dirt.

A fellow in town here told me that the last time he cut off his dreads (he's on his second or third set) they had some kind of mysterious fluid inside that he likened to engine lubricant.  Yum.

Mind you, this is the same guy that told me his method for getting dreads was, "Have violent nightmares, lots of sex on your back on the dirt, don't wash your hair, and don't brush."

Dirt can help hair lock.  So can wax.  Either one, in abundance, can keep the dreads from fully drying.  That leads to mildew and odor.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it - dreadlocks are smelly and dirty if you're a smelly and dirty person - in fact, it amplifies those factors.

Only time will tell if I'm right, but if my wife kicks me out of bed these things are probably done.

28 days later

Dreeeeeeaaaaaaaaads . . .

Please forgive the zombie reference, but zombies are sweet.

"You're the last person I would have thought would get dreadlocks," said one friend last week.

"Can I touch them?" asked another yesterday.

"I have never understood why white people would want dreadlocks," commented a third on Facebook.

That last comment prompted me to start posting my reasons for dreadlocks, because for me it's not cut and dried.  In fact, some of the reasons are even a bit contradictory.  People are complicated that way.

Here's some bad news: I lost my bag yesterday (or it was stolen, haven't figured out which yet), and with it my camera.  I don't know how fully I will be able to document my hair's journey now.

That journey is going to start back into the world of fiber arts now.  I take a week off waxing and start taking the clockwise rubbing and the dread balling seriously.  Then I start back in with the wax to compress the new knots I've made.  Wax on, wax off.

Promises made, promises broken

Three weeks, three days in, and there are a couple of things that I've backpedaled on.

• Waxing.  I had been thinking about cutting out the wax in my locks, but I changed my mind.  There were a few factors that swayed me.
1. I started a program, so I should follow through.  The wax controversy gave me pause, but my hair's making progress.
2. I'm getting feedback suggesting that it's locking up fast, so apparently I'm doing something right.
3. I spoke to a local business owner who used to have locks, and he used wax as well.
• Outing.  I was consider giving a talk to my business networking group which would tie together my writing and my hair, but I didn't think my locks were quite ready for prime time, and I opted to talk about poison ivy instead. When I make the shift in their consciousness from "the business writer who always wears a hat" to "that guy with dreads," I don't want them to take away ideas like messy, wacky, or disheveled.  It's important that I project a professional appearance with dreadlocks, so I want to let them settle in a bit.

I think these are acceptable shifts in strategy. What's wonderful is that I can always change gears again . . . my hair's not going anywhere, and the process is slow enough that I can mold my coif like a bonsai kitten.  My hair is locking up fast enough that I have abandoned my stocking shower cap; although I've got plenty of loose hairs and a couple of locks which are kinda meh, there is definitely improvement every day.  The progress is enough to keep me on the program, but not so fast that I want to start dangling them in every face I encounter.

Of course, I live in a small, strange town.  I now know of not one, but two elected officials who have put a single lock into their hair.  The lock acceptance rate in the rest of the world may vary.

No pictures today.  Instead I will close with a fun little montage video of the day of backcombing.  Have fun!