I just I just should own it.
I’m a locs girl.
Here’s my story briefly. I first got locs my first year of grad school. I’d been natural about four years. They were great. Palm rolled and no cares in the world. I did have an addiction to hair color that eventually turned them some kind of only-visible-to-me dark green and then jet black thanks to more hair color. I cut them off after my heart got broken and I was in such a state as I would’ve done anything “reckless” aside from harm myself.
And then I went back to braids. This was TERRIBLY convenient as Wudia, my braider, had a shop right below my apartment and I could literally roll out of bed and be there. No travel time!
And then I was with my buddy Schwellie at Jimmy’s Uptown when it first opened, before the stick ‘em ups and the disappearance of Jimmy, when I saw this older women with the most stunning hair. She had the loveliest little locs I’d ever seen. I HAD to know what she had. She told me they were Sisterlocks (I really hate the name and I don’t care if people chastise me for hating the name…I don’t hate anyone attached to it). I got the number to her stylist and I went to my consultation. Well, mine plus about four other women. We were all packed up in her upper Westside apartment to learn about SLs. I was misunderstood because I thought it would just be me and I had put some money away, not knowing how much it would be, in case she wanted to start then. Oh no. This was the opposite of what I thought. With all my hair, she said it would be 800 bills EASY…my breath left em. I was a just started working woman! Plus, even though I group up in Detroit with its 24 hour hair salons, I was not the one to put hair over rent.
I went back traditional. I went to the same woman who started them before. Roberta in Brooklyn who’s house smelled of all of her Aveda stuff. Heaven. She also died them the loveliest shade of bronze. I’m sure all around me were overjoyed given I let my hair rock a blowout afro for 1.5 days before it deflated and shrank.
The second loc exodus just happened November 2008. I took two days off and, with the help of Jamyla who’d done this before, I armed myself with a spritzer bottle of water and a rattail comb. I undid my locs.
I had dreams of I’m not sure what. I think I thought I’d get my hair pressed, I’d do braidouts, I’d do twistouts…I did no such things. I did buns. For a year. I realized something about myself. I’m not really a DIYer because that implies doing things. What I am is a “I don’t want to deal with it” er. The only hair thing I like doing myself is hair color and even sometimes I don’t mind somebody else doing it.
Through a series of life happenings, I was able to finally afford SLs though not at the 1998 price I was quoted (I guess that’s when they were like Howard Hughes…now they’re a bit more known). I have come to terms that I need to put my big girl pants on and get to know who I really am with my hair. I’m somebody who doesn’t like to do a lot and now I’m somebody who starting to put money aside to get my hair done. My mother used to INSIST she and I get our creamy cracked scalps tended to every two weeks and perhaps I was trying to run from what that felt like - being in the salon for HOURS (because we always had the stylist that EVERYONE went to), not scratching my head, fear of it turning out horrible. But now it doesn’t have to be that way. Now I can consider some necessary me grooming time and even make myself believe I’m a little girly for it.
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