Recently I decided to stop twisting or maintaining my hair. I can hear some of you gasping with disbelief. Yes, it's true. My soul's desire is the be a freeformer. I have shared some of this with clients to "warn" them of my decision so that they don't start to ask me if I am okay. Why did I decide to do this you ask? Well, it started in kind of a strange way. I used to latch my hair. I fell in love with Bob Marley and loved the freedom that was expressed through untamed locks. I liked it because I seemed to be an expression of letting God do His work. I decided that I would start palmrolling to allow myself the freedom to have the maintained look if I wanted it or to have a freeform look if I wanted that. When I wore them palmrolled, I still felt really restricted. I decided to just leave it alone. That didn't last long, because I felt very comfortable at home, but self conscious in public because of what "they" were saying. I hated the feeling of leading two different lives. I want to say this. My locks are part of a spiritual awakening for me. It's not a hairstyle. I don't fully understand the fullness of the purpose, but I love the not knowing and allowing my hair to just do it's thing. So anyway, this journey is uncomfortable for me in one way because I don't know what my hair is going to do. In another way, I know that I have to grasp this lesson in it's completeness. I see myself with locks that are full, wild, and free. Just like me. It just seems more appropriate for my personality to be freeform.
Since locks have become mainstream and legally untouchable in the work place, school, etc. everyone has an opinion of what they "should" look like. Well, I started doing this before they were an "in style" way of expressing yourself. When I moved back to Charlotte no one was really wearing them, except some people who seemed to appear from nowhere at the various Afrocentric festivals.I don't think that the people that are telling me that my hair needs to be neat don't have a deeply abiding love for locks. I have never seen locks that I couldn't see the beauty in. As long as they are clean, I'm good. They can be fat, skinny, short, long, or mohawked and they are beautiful. I didn't start locking for style, so I don't have to follow the rules of "fashion or acceptability". This is a lifestyle for me. I love my rebellious kinky hair. It doesn't like to lay down and be obedient just because somebody deemed it should be so. If you think that being neat is the only way for locks to look, then perhaps you should ask yourself a couple of questions. Are you just mimicking the Eurocentric ideal of beauty, while retaining your Afrocentric street credit? Did you simply lock, so that you could have long hair like the women on television? Nothing is wrong with your nice neat locks, but nothing is wrong with my untameable locks either. If I can't be tamed, then why should my hair be beat into submission? I guess I really am my hair. Oh by the way these pictures were taken pre-freeform.
