I can't...I have to wash my hair

I washed my hair last night. It is, of course, still damp.

People have been in the habit of asking me "How long did it take you to get your hair like that?" for quite some time. I've always answered with another "How long..." based question: "Oh, I've had it this way for about 5 years."

Both of us usually walk away a bit unsatisfied with the exchange.

Last week, a woman stopped me in the supplements section of the grocery store to ask: "How long did it take you..." The lightbulb went on--they're assuming I just let these happen. As if I were lucky enough to be Jamaican and these 6 winters in Olympia have just bleached me out.

I answered her, "Well, I got them in in about a day and it took around six months for them to tighten."

"You mean," she said, "that you didn't just let them happen?"

I laughed a little. "No. I'd look like a filthy hippy if I did that."

She looked a little relieved. "My daughter, she wants those. She thinks she can just let them happen."

"Well, yes. Lots of people think that. Unless you have increadibly thick, coarse and textured hair, you cannot just let dreadlocks happen. You'll look like you have hairballs glued to your scalp."

That made her laugh. We talked about the websites that help we melanin-challenged folks to acheive evenly sized, healthy dreadlocks--we even talked about which cultures, historically, have worn dreadlocks and why. We walked all the way to the checkout lanes and then parted ways.

I'd ask where this myth came from, but I suspect it has something to do with the feel-good PC dogma of color blindness, the equality of all people and the New Age desire to "get back to [our] roots." Not that I haven't been accused of stealing African heritage--as though I were The Grinch That Stole Kwanza--but as someone with several times the hair of the average white woman, I feel I have a right to do what I can with it. I agree that a less than pure motivation is no doubt at the root of some cauco-pasty desires to wear dreads or mumus or hiratchi sandals and shell necklaces. The kids out here want to piss off their parents, bathe a little less often and feel like a Stevie Nicks groupie. Carefully grooming in well-shaped dreads is not part of that mystique.

So I wash my hair every week or so, oil my scalp, tighten, powder and wax. My hair is still damp. Thankfully, it's Monday and my day off, so I can stay in and let it dry.

Now, I have a logo to design for The City of Tacoma's Bike Month. My life as an artist-for-hire begins!