Chunky Knotty Lock Tips

Hi all...

I figured my hair is long enough and I needed to do something different. So I popped a few curlers on the head and here we are...

The curl didn't stay too well at all...(as you can see) since I had to take the curlers out really early in the morning. But I rocked it anyway.

The next day I curled it again and it was waaay tighter...and looked a little funny, so I pinned it up and was very flattered with the outcome.

So I washed my hair two days ago. And after washing with the shampoo and oiling it up, I am always very pleased with how soft and conditioned my hair feels, but several days later, it's back to dry and stiff (no matter how much I oil). And I oil a lot kids. So this time after washing and retwisting and drying, I oiled it down one last time and wrapped it in my favorite satin scarf. When I woke up the next morning and removed the scarf my hair felt really nice and conditioned. So I've decided that I am going to keep a scarf on my head for the rest of my life...joking. :-) But I will try to cover my head a little more than usual, to lock in the moisture. I don't do that enough.

Anywho...I have been getting these locs that bunch up at the ends. It's horrible. My loc will be a nice size all the way around, but the tip will be fat and round. Almost like the tip has rolled up and locked into itself. It's frustrating. I have found myself combing out the loc and retwisting, which leaves the tip looking completely different. I'm trying to figure out whether I should leave it like this or continue to take a comb and get to combing the knots off until I have a head full of half way done locs. I've even considered cutting the tip off altogether. My family says it's not noticeable, and they're right, but it still bothers me. Maybe I should just let it grow and hope it straightens out.

Has anyone experienced this? If so, what did you do?

It's not easy being naturally me...

So I woke up this morning, took off the headwrap and rustled my locks around in my fingers the way I always do. After brushing the teeth and washing the face, I checked myself out for a little bit and really liked what I saw. Not that I don't usually, but most mornings I have what I like to call "bad morning face." Not this morning, however. The face was not swollen; the eyes were not puffy and the hair looked ESPECIALLY on point. Every lock was going in the right direction. It even looked a lil bit longer. I checked out the back of my head with a mirror. The kitchen was on point too. Well alll riiiighht! I thought to myself in the most Jay-Jay Walker, dy-no-mite, casanova of the ghetto voice. I decided to wear my hair down at work, which I never do. Most times, I pin it up in an up-do or stick on a ponytail because I have nosey coworkers that I like to keep guessing.

So anywho, I put on the designer shades, a black neck scarf and my favorite pair of skinny jeans and mozied off to the job. And let me tell you, my coworker gave me the most back handed compliment. "Your hair is..." (long pause) "...growing!"
My hair was not nice. My hair was not cute. It was just
 growing. Like a tumor. Then she says, "Don't worry girl, my hair was in that stage too." For those who don't get what that stage means...she's referring to the infamous, "ugly stage" of dreadlocs. (My coworker has long, beautiful locks. Just to give you some back story.)

Now, I did not stop her gibberish (as my best friend would call it, lol). I let her continue to hear her own voice and when she finished eating her foot, I went to the bathroom to double check. Maybe at some point, my hair decided to do something strange that I was not aware of. Maybe it was sticking up on the top of my head, like in my beginner days. Maybe I was mistaken this morning, because the last time I checked, I could have sworn I looked fabulous. But in a moment of doubt...I had to check myself, cause Lawd knows I've had some days where I thought I had it going on and I didn't.

So when I glanced in the mirror, this gorgeous looking diva was staring back at me. 

Phew! I thought to myself. She was just hatin' on a sistah! I thought it was me for a second.

Dy-no-miiiiite!!!

Yeah, she was trippin!

I don't have the face for that!

One of the statements that I hear the most from Black women when they see my hair is, "Your hair is sooo nice" followed by, "I wish I could do that!" And my reply is always, "you can." To which they say, "I can't pull that off" or "I don't have the face for that." Now there is a pattern with this comment because these women are almost always one of these things...

#1- very attractive


#2- very intelligent


#3- very permed up




These are strong, confident Black women that hold management positions at their jobs. Women that make important decisions for their companies every day. These women make fashionable wardrobe choices with a self awareness that allows them to mix and match colors and styles to accentuate the right curves and hide the wrong ones. These women are (as the over-used Tyra Banks expression goes) fierce! And they're telling lil' ole eccentric, neurotic, nerdy, goofy, peon me that they're not bold enough to wear their own hair the way it grows out of their scalp.


Now I talked to the beau about it this morning and we got into a heavy discussion. We talked about dealing with peer pressure as children and the negative images of natural hair and how this causes us to hold negative images of ourselves as adults and so on and so forth.

But I guess the conundrum for me is why women in their thirties and forties who "got it going on" think that they would suddenly look like a gorilla if they decided to wear their hair natural. Now I have seen some rough looking ladies in my day, and let me tell you...a perm, a weave, or a dye job is not going to change how many teeth you have. A bump n' curl is not going to eliminate a weak eye or a slumping forehead. In other words, you don't have to have a certain face to wear a perm so why do people think that you have to have a certain face to wear natural hair?

It makes me think that they are seeing natural hair as a bold fashion move, like a gorgeous runway model striding down the catwalk in a trendy yet slightly bizarre outfit. It's a little extreme, but only someone like her could pull that off. First off, it's not extreme. And second, I'm far from a runway model (and I'm rockin this look, damnit! ;-)

Now I take it as a compliment when people say that I have "the face" to pull off natural hair, but it also saddens me a little bit. It helps me to understand that the person who made the comment doesn't think that they have the right face for their own God given hair.

And when I think about it, I've NEVER in my life seen a woman that wore her hair natural who "didn't have the face" for it. It always seems to suit that person. I've seen some women who are not suited well by relaxers, however. Women with awkward bangs or brittle, slicked down ponytails that don't compliment their beautiful features. And sometimes, I think to myself, "That woman would look really nice with a twist out or braided french roll." The idea would be preposterous to these women, I'm sure.

"I don't have the face for that," they'd probably say.