Ras, Woman and Child?

Ras, Woman and Child?


I love the look of well tended locs on men. There is nothing like a man, in shiny . cultivated locs, well fitted jeans, a crisp white shirt and an ounce of swag in his walk. Kees Diefenthaller springs to mind, so does Shurwayne Winchester. I use the phrase well tended because I am not attracted to locs that have let themselves go on a brother’s head, literally finding themselves in a tangled mess, developing muffin tops, distorted bellies and thin edges. Anyway I digress. Men with locs usually spell glorious and Nubian. Proud brothers who are walking in their kingly characters, sporting hair that shouts pride in one’s roots. Locs-men are usually non-meat eaters, or lets not get carried away, non-pork eaters. They claim righteousness and wholesomeness and the casting away of the old order. They are the first to grasp their lighters when genuine old skool reggae erupts in a dancehall setting. Men who wear locs are hot.

I have, however, noted and tested a hypothesis about locs-men: why is it that so few of them seem to go out with locs-women? When I was a card carrying member of the weave-a diva club, men with locs seemed to love a bit of the old kanekalon or 100% human hair, it did not seem to matter. chicks with relaxed hair or weave definitely got more play than the Nubian loc-sporting women in the club.

Having said that, I really am not bothered: the chances of meeting and sustaining a relationship from a nightclub encounter is probably less likely than Bob Marley issuing a hit song from the grave, but I am always very intrigued about perceptions of beauty and the prejudices and stereotypes that are associated with locs.

Do men with locs think loc-wearing women are beautiful? Or conversely, is it that a loc-wearing woman exudes a “I don’t play” vibe that causes a man to take another step back. In a controversial video, Method Man admitted to not being attracted to women with natural hair. He says “I don’t like Peasy Afros. I don’t like dreads either. I like a woman to get her hair did”. And for her to get cancer as well I suppose. Is it that women with dreads don’t look “did”? I wondered whether in spite of men making fun of the weave, it is truly what their view of sexy and beautiful is. When I see a man with locs, I see someone who oozes confidence, who is not afraid to go with an unorthodox view of sexy, someone . When men see me, is this what they see? Or have they been conditioned for so long by their sisters’ Barbie dolls, by the video-hos in rnb videos, by the actresses that surround them, by the images in the media, that women who wear their hair in dreads almost become invisible, inadvertnently?

I make no criticism. Everyone has his or her own notion of beauty and it is not up to me to pass judgment, but it would be wonderful to see a few more be-dreaded men with be-dreaded women by their side- Rastaman, rastawoman and rastababy.

Why I choose Rasta

I have entered what some call the “ugly” phase in my journey to dread-dom. My hair is not short enough to lie flat against my head, and it is not yet long enough to be calmly assembled into a neat ponytail. It is a cross between funky and mad, and I am perpetually disturbed that there is that one stray hair that is longer than the other and has a mind of its own (it obstinately refuses to stay where I put it, even with a pin), like the one schizophrenic amidst a sea of bipolar patients at a clinic. I use the metaphor because my locs do not conform to the norm- they bend into funny shapes; they are distorted and need treatment. Some are fat at the bottom and thin at the top, others are miniature dwarves that spiral and curl around and stub like a giant full stop. They are still mostly soft but some parts are rock hard.

When I embarked on my journey to natural hair, I knew that this day would arrive. I was pre-warned that this stage was virtually the most difficult and the hardest. Catch me on a day without layers of MAC cream to powder foundation, No 7 kohl, Oh Baby lipgloss and large hoops and I don’t look cool, I just look rough and dirty. It’s hard to bring sexy back with curlicues that just don’t sit the right way behaving like naughty toddlers on a bus.

With this in mind, I decided to remind myself of the reason I decided to write this tonight to remind me of the reasons I chose Rasta. After all, dreads are only one genre of the natural movement. There are many other religions and schools. I could have chosen to sport the Afro- archetypal symbol of the black power movement, I could have gone with kinky twists, or I could have continued to sport a weave or braids. However I felt it was important that I made a choice that not only made me look good, but also made me feel good about myself and my culture and would reflect the message I wanted to be sending to my potential partner and offspring, should I be blessed enough to have any.

I love Rasta because it has always been linked with a message of resistance. I like resistance because I am Grenadian and we are a revolutionary people. I do not even speak of the recent 1979 People’s Revolutionary Goverment. We were notorious long before. King Ja Ja of Ghana was deported to Grenada after a fight in the Qua Ibo River of Benin- he was later fearfully removed to St. Vincent because of the long history of rebellion in Grenada.

Sam Sharpe in 1832 boldly stated “I would rather die upon yonder gallows than live in slavery” and I felt the same. I decided to stop attaching my economic exploitation on my head two years ago so I wanted my hair to make a statement as powerful as how I felt.

The history of Rasta has its genesis in Jamaica, in the Maroon communities in St. Ann’s and St. Catherine’s where the settlements of Nanny Town, Acompong Town, Moore Town, Charles Town and Scots Hall became the first communities that won their freedom through revolt. I can almost relive the feeling of the 220,000 Africans who fought for their freedom in the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865, as they shouted “Cleave to the black, colour for colour” as they fought to capture the parish of San Antonio. Later in the midst of the poverty of exploitation of the peasantry, Rasta began from the definitive movement to search for the glory of an African past. Slavery, colonialism, the partition of Africa and discrimination left our ancestors so disillusioned and displaced, that Ethiopia, the Kingdom of Abyssinia was so glorified after the victory over Italy at Adowa in 1896- it was the only truly surviving African state.

I love Rasta because every lock vibrates with the PanAfrican message of WEB Dubois. My roots reverberate with the message of Marcus Garvey, his conception of the Black Star Line, and the defiance of Claude McKay who wrote his epic poem

“If we must die, let it not be like hogs


Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot


While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs


Making their mock as our cursed lot


If we must die let us nobly die”

I wanted to have a little part of this big movement within me.

While I am firmly Christian, I love the fact that our people boldly decided to trace their roots to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and began to learn Amharic, and that they chose to entwine themselves with the Falashas, who carried the Ark of the Covenant back to Ethiopia. I am enamoured by the fact that the idea of wearing locks stemmed from witnessing the soldiers of the Land and Freedom Army in Kenya who wore their own hair long and matted. I love the fact that the central tenets of Rastafari stemmed from a belief in the non material world into a new world order that stressed “Peace and Love”.

I love the symbolism of the Rastaman as Lion. It was a strong demarcation between the Caribbean man as the docile “Quashie” whose character traits made him suitable for slavery, and the African lion- a man on a militant march forward towards maximum and ultimate self realisation and self discovery. At the time it reflected our symbolic yearning for wholesomeness and power to compensate for our powerlessness and alienated existence (Dennis Forsyte).

I do not deify neither do I glorify Haile Selassie but why should we be subjects of European kingdoms? Rastafarianism alone rejuvenated the cultural heritage of the slave. Long before the FDA and the Food Standards Agency denounced the use of sodium and long before the organic, home-grown movement took wings, Rastafarians grew and cooked “ital” meals that were nutritious and good for the spirit. Rastafarians were leaders in the sophistry of dialect, they were widely read and their intellectual discourses were formalised through the chants and paces of the drum to be channelled into what is now known commercially as reggae. Rastafari then moved from a fringe movement to the leading and foremost expression of black consciousness. Rasta became a symbol of defying the establishment and identifying with a counter culture, and articulating social to the power structure of the day.

I love that I am now part of the foremost Pan-African and Pan-Caribbean movement, a movement that makes the external reference point for black people Africa, and not Europe. Rasta is one of the leading institutions for democratic socialism, for a new grassroots politics, for earnest Caribbean integration- “Rastaman vibration is positive!”

(Pic from http://www.holisticlocs.com/)

Does Kinky Hair Bring the Boys to the Yard?

My early hair memories are painful. I recall hair washing days that were tinged with distress. I have memories from the age of 4 or 5 wearing a Mothercare apparatus so that soap wouldn’t tear my eyes but nonetheless, tearfully shrieking that washing my hair was not a good idea because I knew it would become brittle, dry and knotted. I feared the inevitable comb-out , which did not take place while my hair was still wet and soft, but occurred after all clothes had been hand-washed, the  Saturday meal of callaloo soup finished and the bread was in the oven by late evening. This meant that my curly hair shrunk and became an impenetrable mass of forest, that was hacked into with a pickaxe of a comb, the only other weapon being masses of petroleum jelly.


I was often told that my hair as a child, was the finest grade of “goo goo lamier”- a fruit that was tough and hard, rivalled only by the local “campeche” wood. My kinky coils broke Camel combs, combs that were especially made for tough, black hair- my combs always featured missing teeth like the old miserable  ladies who told me that my hair needed some “softening”. It did not help that my “douglah” cousin who lived with us had hair that was very long and soft, causing unfair comparison. It also did not help that I wanted my hair to form neat ringlets and bunches that my other cousin, who also had soft “mixed hair” had: my aunt always had to tactfully remind me that it was just not possible. My mother said she could not really manage my hair so many a Sunday evening was spent between the legs of aunts, neighbours and teachers, taming this wild hair into corn rows. At secondary school, I wore my hair natural but the hardness of my hair was notorious. I remember many a Friday spent getting my hair into an Afro puff or a bun- an ordinary brush just did not do the trick- my tools were hair grease and a scrubbing brush (used for getting stains out of heavy clothes like jeans and carpets).

I wore my natural hair until aged 16, and although I had my fair share of crushes and boys up until then, I was a book geek who was not really that interested. So, from the age of 17 onwards my formative men years so to speak, I wore my hair in a series of hairstyles that ranged from braids, weaves, and relaxers that led me to ask myself when I was transitioning to natural, would men find this hair that I find so free, attractive? My friend Makeda then floated the idea for this post, and I decided to do some preliminary research on the subject especially as many a time with a 16 inch Janet Collection weave, I would be propositioned by so many Rastafarian men with dreadlocs, which seemed almost akin to blasphemy. It’s amazing what some men will do when they encounter two packets of $59.99 Remy hair (another post).

A question posed on topix.com on whether men preferred hair either relaxed or kinky saw several men saying that they really did not mind, but they liked hair that was long. At least one man said he preferred natural hair but found that many black women did not choose to wear their hair natural. K is for Kinky’s blog actually had a post on how she found more and more white men (as opposed to black men) affirming her new look:

“I cannot tell you how often i catch white men looking at me when my hair is all out and about, blowing in the wind in all of it’s (sic) kinkiness. Actually, for every black man who tells me “I’m not into natural hair”, there are 2-3 white men who love it all”

Many African men seemed to encourage women with natural hair stating that “natural hair tells me that the sister is smart, prudent, and she believes in Afrikan aesthetics and consciousness”.

It was not all gravy though. A few people complained that men found that when they wore their natural hair, men instinctively judged them as pious, not up for a good time and definitely not a sex object (I wonder if that had something to do with the way they dressed cause trust me, I rock the hell outta my new hair with some gloss on my lips and a lil dress at my hips!). Other stories are truly heartbreaking. The Afrospear blog contains comments and stories of husbands and boyfriends who were so displeased with natural hair- they thought it was nappy and unkempt and unattractive and were displeased to the point of purchasing tubs of relaxers for their companions.

From my experience, kinky hair is a filter. Wearing your hair natural already means that you have a unwavering sense of self esteem and that you are confident enough to go against the grain. These qualities will exist in the kind of members of the opposite sex you will attract- persons who are confident, socially aware and more politicised. They appreciate depth and substance over veneer, and they are not afraid of a woman who is bold and proud with her own choices. Kinky hair has lots of personality and a sense of vah-vah-voom and I have rarely met weak, boring men since I started my locs. By contrast, my hair has now become a great talking point and an important way to affirm who I am and what I am about from the outset.

So no, kinky hair does not bring boys to the yard. It brings the men instead.

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).