So I washed my hair this evening. I’m a little amazed. The locs on the back half of my head is almost down to small of my back. If I lean my head back, they actually brush the top of my ass.
Now for a once picky haired, almost bald, perpetual afro-d child, this is a revelation.
My hair is the longest it has ever been.
Now that we’re on the subject of hair, I must say I’m getting a little annoyed with the people in Kent. Or at least, the people I meet who think it’s cool to make off colour jokes about my hair.
Yesterday, I went to the grocery to get some stuff. I needed stuff, this house was almost empty and my cousin hasn’t been to the grocery. (It’s like I’m not here and don’t need to eat. They (meaning the girlfriend and his two unmannerly kids) have been eating stuff, his stuff and my stuff, but somehow it doesn’t need to be replaced, right? Right?
Anyway, the bags were seriously heavy. Even though they were only two bags, and all I bought was £13 in food, it was heavy. I could only walk a for a bit, then I had to put them down, because although they were double-bagged, the handles were cutting into my skin.
So after four or five of these stops to allow the blood to circulate in my hands, I was on the home stretch, oui? So as I stopped for the last time, a teenaged girl and boy were coming towards me.
I remembered the girl. She had told me she loved my hair about six or seven weeks ago. Well when I stopped, wincing and moaning from the pain in my fingers, they passed by, we all said hi, and the guys said, “Those bags are heavy, huh?”
I said, “Yeah..”
The girl, says “It’s all those dreadlocks on your head.”
I mean, what the fuckety fuck is wrong with these people? Tell me what heavy grocery bags has to do with my FUCKING hair?!
It’s the comments, the comments. I swear blind I am going to explode and cuss someone the fuck out just now.
Some weeks back, when I had redyed my roots, I was so proud because the colour had come out so pretty and so bright, and I was beginning to realise just how long my locs were getting. My cousin was home during the afternoon and after I had whipped off the towel, and had a look in the mirror, I walked into the ‘reception room’, I turned to him smiling and asked, “Don’t you love it?”
He says, “No I don’t like dreadlocks.”
“Okay, forget the locs, don’t you love the colour?”
“No I don’t like dyed hair,” he said in that sullen, sour way of his.
It’s moments like this people really show their prejudices.
What’s not to love about my hair. I love it. I love the length, the colour and there are actual individual locs I just adore. I revel in my hair’s beauty. I didn’t grow locs to gain anyone’s approval, or for people to compliment me on it, I grew it because my spirit spoke and told me that was what my hair wanted to be.
Some people love it, some people hate it; that’s their problem not mine and well, I could care less either way. But when people’s prejudices seep out and makes them thoughtless and insensitive, then OFFENSIVE well then THAT I care about.
People ’round here are starting to piss me off.
It’s like this girl Tina from a week or so back, who thought ‘talking black’ was cool, and their incessant curiosity about how I got my hair to look like that.
It’s these two little sons of my cousin’s old friend, who were making fun of my hair until I pointed out to them gently, that making fun of someone who’s different to you is not cool. They wanted to know if it was my real hair.
In fact, that’s the most consistent question, I get from people around these parts is “Is that your real hair?” To which I always reply, “Yes it is, growing right out of my head.”
They always want to know if it’s extensions. Or comment that it’s so stiff and so hard, “Like straw”. I have to field some version of this question or comments like these at least once or twice a week, as long as I am out in public, since I’ve gotten to England, and it’s only ever a white person that asks. They want to put their hands in my head. Anyone in the Caribbean will tell you that unless you’re that person’s lover, hair oiler or mother, YOU CANNOT TOUCH SOMEONE’S DREADS! It’s just not fucking done!
The straw comments, and the ‘hard’ comments kind of annoy me too, because it’s not that my hair is hard or stiff, but that it’s not ‘Caucasian’ and that annoys the shit out of me. I always like, “Dude, I mean really, fuck off!”
Surely these fucking people have seen a dreadlocked person before? Surely they don’t like in sure a racially purified bubble that dreadlocks aren’t a mystery any more? I mean, it is 2004 isn’t it? Almost 2005, right?
What exactly is so mysterious about dreads? Everybody knows who Bob Marley is, right? Don’t they remember the long luscious ropes of hair swinging when he flung his head back, forward and side to side in time with the impossibly fine music he had made and was full on engaged it?
Is it just me, or are these people being racist?
I mean, if a seven year old white boy and a nine year old white boy can make fun of someone because of the texture of their hair, in 2004, isn’t it something we should worry about?
I love my hair. I love the colour, I love the length and the texture. Tonight, it’s fluffy and bouncy and tomorrow I’m going to roll it so I have some bouncy curls for my interview on Monday.
Fuck these people and their motherfucking ignorance. Bitch Goddess Avatar is on.
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