My five-year mission: to explore strange new hairstyles, to seek out ways to keep locks neat and clean, to boldly go where no man has gone before with dreadlocks.
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.
Summer has driven me to take the risk that I knew it would - I abandoned my favorite hat the other night. I had work to do in public, but it was time. It's a well-made knit cap, and it's not made for hot weather. I tried getting a hair net, but no matter what you make a hair net out of, it's still a hair net.
My tour of duty was a planning board meeting where I am known, and no one remarked on my hair. I doubt they're breathless readers of my blog here. I watched during the meeting and afterwards, when I asked some follow-up questions for my article, for any non-verbal cures, things like
eyes drifting upwards to look at the hair, or
a faint nasal twang to suggest not breathing through the nose, or
a closed body posture, arms folded and turned away.
I saw no reaction from planning board members, applicants, or other journalists. Well okay, the one applicant kept looking at me, but I couldn't tell if it was the hair or my journalist pad. I get the latter anyway.
The following day I spoke to a number of local officials including the county executive, and attended a political committee meeting where I participated in candidate interviews. My appearance doesn't seem to impact people who expect me to work in a professional manner.
Running for office has forced me to step up my look. My original premise, that writers are largely immune to judgments based on their appearance, is completely the opposite of politics, where votes can be won or lost based on looks alone.
When I attended the Ulster County Republican Convention, one gentleman, upon seeing me wearing my tam, asked if I were perhaps Jamaican. Now that I've worn the thing, I have to agree that they look a bit ridiculous . . . very poofy and visually distracting.
So I'm stepping up my game. I've taken off my Groucho glasses, so to speak, by shaving the mustache and replacing the glasses with contacts. I stepped into Blue Byrd's Haberdashery to get advice on a better hat and, together with a thoughtful customer who told me that the cocoanut weave fedora brings out my eyes, we found one that I think works quite well.
This political game isn't what I had in mind when I began to lock my hair, but I don't doubt that it will draw out the positive and negative perceptions about the style. I've had no less than three people suggest that I should get rid of them if I'm serious about running for office, but I have a prior commitment to my hair: five years unless I run into some kind of icky hygiene issue. I'm willing to serve, but I'm first and foremost a student of life, and I'm going to learn about campaigning in the context of learning about dreadlocks, and I'm just going to have to find ways to convince people to focus on my ideas, rather than my hair.
There's absolutely nothing to be lost by maintaining a professional and classy appearance, though.
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.
I started a program, so I should follow through. The wax controversy gave me pause, but my hair's making progress.
I'm getting feedback suggesting that it's locking up fast, so apparently I'm doing something right.
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!
I can't believe that one week ago today my scalp was in agony as we backcombed the hell out of it. Where are my locks now? They're in lots of different places:
One week in, professional and stylin' in one slick package
some are poofy with a wall of hair around a hollow inside
others are really narrow, closely-packed little spikes of hair
a couple of them, shorter ones, are really only sticking together because of the rubber bands
which I would call progress, all in all. There's a halo of loose hair around every lock, and combined with the sprinklings of salt in my pepper they lack visual definition. On the other hand, they're staying together better, and when I've worn my hat for awhile they're willing to stay down until I palmroll them.
I've been cautious about overwaxing my dreads, and I realized that what I thought was wax was actually the hair starting to lock up, which is a lot faster than I expected. (The flipside is that they'll probably take a lot longer to mature than I'm expecting, but we'll see about that.)
Waxing dreadlocks is very controversial, it turns out. I am waxing my locks, but I don't know enough to say that it's the right thing, or a good thing, or the best thing, or the dread thing.
I just don't have wax on lockdown.
Here's a good example of the argument against using wax:
Man, that screen shot is not flattering, is it?
So wax will cause problems like mildew, wax will slow the locking process, "you won't have dreads, you'll just have candles on your head." That last one's funny. But hey, I didn't know there was a controversy, and I'm learning by living. In fact I bought my wax from one of the companies named in that video, although I found my information about using wax elsewhere.
In truth, DreadHeadHQ recommends a very minimal amount of wax in dreads. I don't think I would need another container, because I'm supposed to use it less and less frequently. I'm cautious about not adding wax if there's any left, so worst case scenario I've been sold something I don't need, and something to remove it with.
The opposition seems to like videos:
It's passionate, but is it accurate? Some people believe that anything other than neglect isn't "natty" enough, but I'm going for a more controlled, cultured look; bonsai instead of banyan tree.
I'm going to follow the regimen I'm on, which calls for wax in the locks for the first month, reducing after that. I already own the wax, so it won't cost me money. If wax really slows down locking, well my hair likes to knot anyway, and it's been pretty well backcombed, so it's just going to take longer. If it works, though, I will have smooth, tight locks in two or three months under the best of circumstances.
Either way, one week in I'm continuing to take a laissez-hair attitude about my dreadlocks. At least when I'm home and no one can see them.
My plan all along has been to keep my dreads on the down-low, like a business-owner friend of mine who has three locks hidden in the back of her hair. Since I'm going for the full dread head, though, I'm finding that it's quickly becoming difficult.
Four days in (feels like forty), and a spike in temperatures has made me rethink my favorite hat. Yesterday saw the mercury pass 80 for the first time this year, and I found my head was incredibly hot after a walk into town with the took on. All winter I'd taken to wearing the hat at home (even while sleeping) as well as away, but I didn't see the point in that heat.
Today it's much cooler, in the 70s, and my head is on the warm side of comfortable. The day started out cool and clammy in the house, which I like to counteract with a hot tub soak. It felt great and completely energized me, so I wanted to run a few errands. Wet dreads covered become mildewed stinky dreads, so I couldn't wear the hat out unless I waited for the locks to dry.
I had three errands:
Unedited, people look at me like this
Deposit checks at the bank
Pick up gardening supplies at Agway
Pick up a check from a client
The bank's drive-through ATM would be a snap. I dismissed picking up the check until I could do so with a hat on, because even when I am seen in casual clothes I need to maintain a professional appearance. This translates into a simple, clean profile, which is something my locks dread doing. Locks are less flexible than strands of hair, so when they're short they tend to stick up. The hat is training them to stay down, but when I palmroll them they spring up to attention again. Nope, I was not picking up that check.
Agway was somewhere in the middle. I would be out in public, but the onus of professionalism would not be upon me. In fact, the employee I spoke to was very professional. I had the feeling that people were looking at me strangely, but it was just my imagination. Well, except in the parking lot, when the man getting out of the car next to mine allowed his eyes to drift slowly up to the crest at the top of my head. I made a mental note to remember that driving with dreads could be grounds for being pulled over (now that racial profiling is mostly illegal), and drove cautiously away.
