By Christy Hyman

I was a loose natural for 4 years and I enjoyed that journey from start to finish. I enjoyed the twist-outs, braid-outs and occasional faux pas’ I had from time to time with my natural hair. Between looks of astonishment from passers-by to catcalls of “Soul Sista!” and “Erykah! Jill! Or Angela!” the loose natural I donned was rocked with the utmost pride and confidence.

Contemplating the Change

As my life goes, new experiences breed new worldviews and levels of inquiry for me. I was in my second semester of graduate school in history, and as I pored over primary sources of runaway slave ads, I could not help but notice the graphic references to enslaved runaway’s appearance, “She was bacon colored with a lip inclined to curl”, or he was “pop-eyed” and had a “downcast “ look about him. Oh how could I forget Harriet, who was “rawboned, light and moved like a cat”. It astounded me how, the most idiosyncratic features could prove an unwelcome circumstance for an enslaved person trying to secure an escape. As usual this information would affect me greatly and I thought of my own appearance. I wondered how I would be described. I then thought about the contemporary lense that many people look through with regards to the gaze of black men and women today. How having locs sometimes is enough to get handcuffs thrown around your wrists and your person or vehicle searched.

Locs themselves in some locales are enough to “fit the description of a perpetrator” sadly. As I pondered this, I decided I would embark on yet another iconoclastic journey. I wanted to break this image that many people have that locs somehow represent criminality or deviant behaviors.

Now before anyone thinks that I believe all people attribute locs to negativity, I will share with you about a time I met an elderly European American gentlemen who, after admiring my cornrows proclaimed that “many blacks have dreadlocks and most of them are either drug dealers or drug users”. I informed him politely that, many blacks in academia also overwhelmingly sport locs and they most certainly are not inclined to criminal behaviors nor drug use within their social milieu. He studied me briefly afterward and the conversation tarried to another course. And then there was also the unpleasant time my ex-husband was detained while walking down the streets only because he had long locs…..he had not committed any crime, but he apparently “fit the description”. He was released from the police car but forced to walk back to my house as the officer followed him in the policecar. He never did get those black-n-milds.

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Getting Started

These thoughts and memories all in the back of my mind, I resolved to set about starting a set of locs. I did not want them too cultivated or manicured. In fact I knew I wanted them slightly thick. My reason for wanting thick, not uniform, unruly type locs was simply a matter of personal taste. I am rather edgy, with a penchant for ribald humor, a lover of classic rock and cool jazz, so thick locs for some reason or another seemed to translate this visually in my mind. For suggestions on what products to start them I consulted a classmate of mine who had long thick locs. She warned me not to use beeswax and she also warned against too much washing in the beginning. Now my hair is very, very thick. The back is rather kinky whereas the front has a slightly wavy, curlier texture. Erroneously I thought that because my hair was thick it would lock quickly. In fact the twists at the nape of the neck locked at about four months where the front is still in the early stages of loc maturity. Those in front may be characterized as “teenagers”.

I started my locs without a loctician. The products that I used to start my locs were aloe vera juice and aloe vera gel. I used tar shampoo to remove all residue from my loose hair. I would find myself washing my hair about every two weeks.

Like many loc newbies I would go through the period of over-manipulation. And I would obsess over the appearance of my twists. I started with two-strand twists that were kind of thick and decided to “divorce” 10 or 11 twists in the front. The coils that resulted would revert to a wavy like texture and I wondered if the curly ends could ever form a base. Then at about the fifth month in, after a vigorous washing with baking soda and vinegar, those pesky curls at the end made a miraculous transformation! During the course of the washing the ends tangled into thick knots that would eventually form the base of my locs in the front where my hair was wavier. At first it was a bittersweet reception in my own mind, as the knots that resulted actually took off maybe 1.5 inches of length. Despite the shrinkage, it was one of the finest moments of my loc journey to see how the hair could morph like that right before my eyes.

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Locs Maturing

As time passed from the birth date of my locs (May 5, 2011) my life would become so hectic and harried that fooling with them too much was no longer a problem. I took a job with the National Park Service in the Midwest and experienced the transition of moving from the Southeast to a completely different region of the United States with much less diversity and different local customs. I would find myself being seemingly one of four blacks in an entire town. In this I found I could continue my iconoclastic mission. For a place where so many blacks are few it is quite a wonderful cultural exchange for me to represent my ethnicity in a positive manner all the while donning the sometimes controversial style of locs. As a public servant I have even more of an opportunity to don the loc style with pride and integrity.

Currently my locs are not yet completely matured. In fact I am on my eighth month of locdom. It is my hope that I may keep this set of locs for as long as I can. Locs, I must say best fit my personality and style.

Ladies, are any of you in the midst of a transition from loose strands to locs? Are any of you considering it?

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