Corporate Locks

It was a long agonising decision to loc my hair. Long because I needed to grow out almost 10 inches of relaxed tresses (relaxing-by-the-way-being-a-euphemism-to-tell-you-that-potentially cancer-causing-lye-is-spread-onto-your-bare-scalp-to-make-it-lay-down-prostrate-instead-of-to naturally-and spritely-stand-up-at-attention) which took more than eighteen months of being stuck in that nowhere land of a thick and full bodied springy pelt below and thin wispy tufts on top, like pubic forestry before a wax. The ladies know what I am saying.

The decision was agonising because of the lack of support. From black people. My long-time friends from work and university were very supportive and were frankly quite curious about what my hair in its natural state was like. Apart from four of my black friends who were tuned in to where I was residing in my head at the time, the reactions from black people were mostly negative. My weaveologist- "Go an make yuhself look like a runaway slave from the bush, They (meaning the Man) done doh like us aready, why yuh want to make it hard for yuhself?" I wasn't too concerned about what she thought as this was a chick that would rock a 20 inch weave with red and baby blue accents and would think her hairstyle was conservative. I had a lot of "Why do you want to do that?" and "You are brave" , scattered with some random headshaking from a few of my other friends and colleagues.


However, even so called progressives asked me if I was crazy. Have I seen any black women on top in the corporate world with locs or natural hair for that matter? Michelle Obama wasn't rocking locs. Baroness Scotland wasn't rocking locs. Locs are threatening. Natural hair is funky and cool and erm, interesting. Not professional. Locs make people think you smoke weed. No successful lawyers have locs. Even my dear mummy, who started her loc journey a couple of years ago and who often said to me, "I wish I had started them sooner", was apprehensive. "I just don't want opportunities closed to you. Are you sure this is the right time? Leave it a couple of years. This is permanent". In an effort to encourage me, one of my close friends tried to show me a barrister in the UK who had locs. I logged onto the link to the website she sent me, he had cut them down! I tried to contact him. How did he find it wearing locs in court? Did he think they hampered his career? Why did he cut them? I had no response. Even less inspiring was what was unsaid. One of my friends from university whose locs I admired cut her locks off: "I tired with it- I wanted a change". Another friend, who I knew from primary school and who I refound on Facebook also cut her lengthy, nubian locs off to sport her fro "I needed the hair to be free" she said. I respected their decisions and admired their honesty but I was confused.

I seriously tried with the fro but we had a frictional relationship. It was kind of like a one night stand without the sex. I didn't want the accoutrements of it in my bed. I was tired of having to sleep with a doo-rag coated with cloying gel and sticky jam and quite frankly, tired of taming the mane at night so I would have a slicked back look in the morning. I found it counterintuitive. My hair did not even look like a picture perfect 1970's Michael Jackson fro- it was more like the effigy of a bonfire. It was an everyday process that required lots of patience, lots of perseverance, and lots of product. I even had the bright idea of going to New York to visit Miko at Ms Jessie's, the guru of curly hair, who made her products sound sweet and edible and promised you a bubble-gum curl finish. I coincided a business visit with a hair appointment but, as fate would have it, I missed my appointment. Was this some omen that I shouldn't embrace my natural hair? Frustrated, I started pressing my hair. However, it reminded me too much of my childhood: dragging a scorching hot comb and then an searing flat iron over my roots, feeling sizzling greasy steam fatally close to my ears, smelling my curls fry up and die.

I kept getting signs. Tense about visiting Buckingham Palace with my natural hair, I put in a weave. My weavelogist was home sick, but who came to the rescue? Tami. Tami was what we would call a bongo-natty rasta, she had thick fist-like locs. She encouraged me to loc but understood why I wanted a weave. At the Palace, who sat next to me? A petite cocoa coloured Jamaican girl with small, cultivated locs. I went to a Trini band launch a few months later and just as I was leaving, I traded words with a man with regal looking locs. He turned out to be Morris Roots, owner of specialist locking salon Morris Roots UK. I went to Grenada and my best friend's locs were elegant and blossoming. My close friend was sistalocking- they were spiralling and contorting, bending and twisting in acrobatic fashion and doing what our type of hair was meant to be doing, and they looked fantastic. I then went to Trinidad for Carnival (beweaved), and who did I admire most? Girls sporting caramel locs, multicoloured locs, locs twisted up and twisted in, short locs, stout locs, miniature locs, and thin locs (okay no, NOT thin locs- do locs shrivel up and die? I like to see fat, healthy locs).


I have always loved locs. There is now a loc movement in the Caribbean, a seismic shift in appreciation of black hair in its natural state; what was once frowned upon is whole heartedly embraced. There are locked up teachers, locked up professors, locked up bank workers, locked up academics. Pun intended. When I was 16, I remember being one of the few students in my secondary school whose parent(s) insisted on unprocessed hair. The "in" thing was to have hair as straight as possible, if it wasn't straight it hadn't "took" and the solution was to spend even more time under a dryer with more lye and more gel. My hair was tough and springy at the time, and I did not always appreciate it. Now it fascinates me, that even the girls at school who led the pack with their tumbly tresses, are now sporting natural dos. I have now reached the stage in my life when I simply cannot justify chemically processing my hair to fit into a view of what I think some people and what society dictates that I should look like. Hair extensions I get, because I am a born actor and I love dress-up for a day or a week (or a month!) but essentially, I truly have come to the stage where I love my own hair: my natural hair is so beautiful and full of life. My straightened hair feels dead.

In spite of all the above bravado, though, the idea of bringing locs into my workplace terrified me. This was not Grenada, the Caribbean. This was London. This was the Square Mile, possibly the most conservative area in London; this was my office where there are not too many black people in the first place. Was I making the right decision personally but a wrong one professionally? I have worn braids and cornrows in the office before- my thinking was- they need to get used to it- but am I possibly pushing the boundaries a little bit too far?

There is not much literature surrounding afro hairstyles in the workplace in Britain. As usual, we need to rely on our American friends. Last year, it made the news when a US Glamour Magazine editor advised that "ethnic" hairstyles such as "afros, cornrows and dreadlocks" should not be worn in the workplace. She lost her job, but is that just pos- facto rationalisation and a knee jerk reaction for the appearance of tolerance- do her views really how corporate America, and by extension, corporate Britain think?

DeeDee Smith of Suite 101 explains that this might be so, but also interjects that the corporate world has differing personalities. For example, in industries such as banking, insurance, accounting and law, very traditional and conservative dress is required as opposed to entertainment, media and technology where some personal latitude is often expected or required. She also explains that demographically, there might be a difference in views- cosmopolitan cities are more used to, and are more accepting of difference than backwood (read redneck) towns. She suggests the obvious: personal grooming can make a huge difference. What matters essentially for most companies are the bottom line and their corporate image. She concluded that it may be that a personal choice to wear locs might be deemed to affect a company's corporate image adversely. Diversity Inc, another think-thank asserts that traditionally conservative industries such as banking and law still may turn you down if you don't look like what they perceive as executive material- so a decision to wear locs might ultimately make the difference in whether you get hired or whether you get promoted.

Berlinda Fontenot-Jamerson, Director of diversity for Disney ABC Cable Networks Group., long-time employee of Sempra Energy, says it depends on the industry. May Snowden, former vice president of global diversity at Starbucks Coffee Co., and a long-time diversity leader at Eastman Kodak says that as long as hair looks neat, employers shouldn't have a problem with a black person wearing his or her hair in a variety of styles, whether it's braids or cornrows or I assume, locs. She then asks the leading question: Should you hide or change your hair to "fit in"? And the answer is poignant: it depends on the company, look at how top managers, especially blacks, wear their hair.

This led me to a dead end. What if your company has no black top managers? What then?

Prejudice against locs is real. I don't want to misrepresent myself with my hair. I don't smoke weed. My hair smells nice and is washed on the regular. I am not a Rastafarian- I am proudly Christian. I am not an anti-white, angry, black militant. I know that locking once had a neutral association- in old Egypt humans wore locs- Tutankhamen's mummy had locs. They are found in the Hinduisti Veda writings, The Celts are quoted as having "hair such as queues ". The Teutons, Wikinger, Greek and Naga also sported locs. William Hickling Prescott describes Azteki priests as with "long and felted curls flowed unordered over its dark robes". However in 1940, when the Rastafarians, who belonged to a sub socioeconomic grouping adopted this hair as their own to protest against imported culture and the prevailing Eurocentric idea of beauty, negative rumours of them as religious freaks and ghetto outsiders with repulsive hairstyles spread- dissenters put the "dread" into locs.

So why choose to wear locs with so much fear, so much uncertainty, so much risk? When you know for a fact that it might be that you may not be as mobile as some of your contemporaries, when you know for a fact that you may bounce your head against some ceilings? Because, I can keep trying and trying to fit in, and because I already stand out, I never will. True diversity means not making us monolithic and same-ey. It means embracing us in spite of our differences. If people wish to find a reason to find prejudice they will- I do not live in the right area, I do not speak the right way and I did not attend their public schools. In the end, I would like to know that I lived my life for me and based on the ideals to which I aspire and what I define as important. Corporate Britain- you will just have to catch up.

My solution so far is a halfway house. Whilst my baby locks are in that creative, bouncy and yes, dishevelled stage where they need to be left alone with as little grooming as possible so that they can lock in peace, I wear my full head hair extensions until I feel it has got to a stage where I can stand firmly and proud with Nubian tresses, inspiring the next generation of "us" along. Yet I know that these extensions are contradicting my spirit and are at odds with my voyage of self discovery. I cannot wait to rid myself of them (it is going to be hard because I realise that my ideas of beauty have also been distorted) but I love a challenge.

(Pic courtesy khamitkinks.com- All their rights reserved).