MY HAIR IS LOCKED FOR LIFE!!! - COSMETIC EMANCIPATION - 2/21/98

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September 18, 2010

MY HAIR IS LOCKED FOR LIFE!!! - COSMETIC EMANCIPATION - 2/21/98

{2010 - I am still deeply in love with my long, neat, soft, silky, lioness mane...I am eternally happy to be nappy!!!}

1998

I am 34 years old. Since I was a young girl, until today, I have worn eurocentric hairstyles. From hot combs to chemical perms to wigs, I have always oppressed my hair. Today, I liberated my hair from a lifetime of cosmetic bondage via internalized white supremacy. I paid a gifted sister to lock my hair.

It has been one of the most daring and exhilarating experiences of my life. It is invigorating to feel the sun and wind on my scalp. It is empowering to look as my African soul has always felt. It is thrilling to wear my ancient revolutionary politics in my new rebel hair.

I prefer to wear my hair long; so I am struggling to be patient with my tiny short locks as they slowly become my new lioness mane. I have begun compiling a photo scrapbook as my hair blooms into the look I desire. I will photograph that moment and post it to this site. I will rejoice when I look like rebel shero Assata Shakur.

I have longed to wear locks for years. I was urged to move beyond sincere desire to drastic change by several recent incidents in my life: I have survived a betrayal that has left me feeling invincible. I have mended a broken heart that has made me feel brand new. I have fallen in love with an independent film on locks that moves me deeply. It is entitled “Lockin Up” and it is directed by T. Nicole Atkinson. I have a dear new friend named Kim Dixon, who dons perfect locks, which make me proud to share her “do”. And, I have a new lover who is an African queen and I want to be equally regal in her queendom.

Collectively, these incidents make me feel strong enough to endure the stares, the ignorance, the rejection, the discrimination, the curiosity, the drama and everything else that comes with wearing locks.

Legendary reggae dub poet, gifted actor, and star of the classic rebel slave film "Sankofa", Mutabaruka, said it best, in his classic rebel song “Witeman country”: “It no good to stay in a witeman country too long”... It is common to be infected with the poison of white supremacy in a racist country like America. From cosmetic commercials to supermodels, from billboards to magazines, from TV screens to movie screens, and from center stages to centerfolds, straight hair rules. It is typical to emulate such bombardment with the epitome of eurocentric “womanhood” that haunts us everywhere, even on the arms of many of our “brothers”.

Renown author and sage Alice Walker is beautiful. And so are her locks. In “Oppressed Hair Puts A Ceiling on the Brain”, an essay in her classic collection of non-fiction titled "Living by The Word", Alice states:

“...It occurred to me that in my physical self there remained one last barrier to my spiritual liberation...my hair...It was the way I related to it that was the problem...I suddenly understood why nuns and monks shaved their heads...I remembered years of enduring hairdressers, from my mother onward, doing missionary work on my hair. They dominated, suppressed, controlled. Now, more or less free, [my hair] stood this way and that...It never thought of laying down. Flatness, the missionary position did not interest it. It sought more and more space, more light, more of itself. It loved to be washed; but that was it.

Eventually, I knew precisely what hair wanted. It wanted to grow, to be itself, to attract lint, but to be left alone by anyone, including me, who did not love it as it was...(I was now able, as an added bonus, to comprehend Bob Marley as the mystic his music has always indicated he was.) The ceiling at the top of my brain lifted; once again my mind (and spirit) could get outside myself...This was the gift of my growth during my fortieth year. This - the realization that as long as there is joy in creation, there will always be new creations to discover, or rediscover, and that a prime place to look is within and about the self. That even death, being part of life, must offer at least one moment of delight.”

My hair has become spiritual and political. I look at my hair and I feel like I have come home. I stayed away FAR too long...