dreadlocks - c/d?

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There was this artickle in yesterday's "guardian" magazine, the kultural meaning ov dreadlocks, bob marley, "swampy" blah blah blah. it wasn't a very good article, i thought, but after i read it i did contemplate, for the first time in my life, letting my hair lock. Then i thought about it some more, and decided not to. i don't think they'd suit me. I always have this idea that they are going to weigh heavily on yer scalp, and even tho i know this isn't going to be true, b/c it's just the same hair in a diff configuration, i can't quite shake this impression. I think they suit some people, but not many. to me they seem to suit people w/a round-shaped face, but not other people. there is some residual anti-levellers type feeling within me that would tend to set me against lox0rz, but i try not to feel it too much, coz it'a a load of rub, really. do you like dreadlocks? or not? would you have them? would/could you fancy someone who had/has them? (i do a few people) i am sure it will be more interesting that the guardian article.

(wow i just noticed there is a "hair" sub category ready made and waiting for my question!!)

x0x0x

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Sunday, 24 August 2003 12:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm sorry, I just don't like dreadlocks on white people (apologies to Ed). I can't help feeling the scuzziness of their development would be too unpleasant to bear. Also, a friend of mine lost all his hair phenomenally quickly after having dreads - he would literally have entire locks falling out, and this is when he was like 20 or so.

Saying that, I really wanted dreads when I was a teenager. Those of you who know me might find this amusing on many levels.

― Mark C (Mark C), Sunday, 24 August 2003 12:33 (twenty-two years ago)

I used to have dreads when I was 19. They were impossible to wash and parts of my scalp were exposed all the time (which looked extremely shitty IMO). I cut them off after a week. So : dud.

Some girls seemed to like em though. Mostly the ooh-you-dashing-rebel-rescue-me-and-kick-my-dad's-ass kind of girl. Bah.

― Sommermute (Wintermute), Sunday, 24 August 2003 14:13 (twenty-two years ago)

i dont like dreads either, the trustafarian thing aside, is not somethign i like aesthetically. but you are right about having to have a relatively round face if you are going to do this, otherwise you're going to be doing that ratty spiral23/levellers thing

― gareth (gareth), Sunday, 24 August 2003 14:52 (twenty-two years ago)

really a dud.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 24 August 2003 14:59 (twenty-two years ago)

on rastas=classic
on anyone else it seems like a contrivance. I would compare it to someone getting a Hindu-style dot on their forehead without, you know, being Hindu.
my girlfriend in HS got them after we broke up, but we were intimate a few times after that and not being able to run your fingers through a girl's hair=DUD

― oops (Oops), Sunday, 24 August 2003 15:12 (twenty-two years ago)

washing one's hair is good. dreadlocks, therefore: dud.

― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Sunday, 24 August 2003 15:18 (twenty-two years ago)

they wash it

― oops (Oops), Sunday, 24 August 2003 15:19 (twenty-two years ago)

the white woman dreads we sat near last night at dinner did not appear/smell to have been washed since the first Bush administration. Pew!

― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Sunday, 24 August 2003 15:23 (twenty-two years ago)

well yeah, you sorta have to not wash 'em if you're white. though I think if a white person just used soap on there hair, it'd still dread up.

― oops (Oops), Sunday, 24 August 2003 15:34 (twenty-two years ago)

for me it was never 'a contrivance' at all ! how can it be ?
u just let it grow that way.
my blonde vaguely curly hair naturally grew into dreads
from 1998-99 and i had them up until may 02 when i really had just
had enough. lopped them off, never looked back. only afterwards
did i realise why i always had headaches. they do genuinely give
you a headache all the time. dead hair that just sits waiting,
*begging* to be got rid of. dont do it kids.
no offence pro-dread heads.

and no you can't wash it. not *really* wash it.

― piscesboy, Sunday, 24 August 2003 17:04 (twenty-two years ago)

I had em my first year at Hampshire, I'm afraid. I could wash mine, but you had to sort of ... saturate them with a lot of shampoo. I went through a lot of shampoo. It took forever to wash out.

The odd thing was my last year of high school I'd gone to a salon and said, "Look, I want dreads. Make that happen for me?" and they said, "We can't do that. You don't have dreadlock hair. We can give you mousse to make fake dreads." Figured that was k-lame. Didn't do it. Let my thick-and-bushy hair (there is an old picture of me from when my hair was dyed Sunkist orange and bricks-on-fire red with a big fricking Afro) grow, it got thick enough that brushing it was an asspain that just took too long, and bam: dreads appeared, but only in the back.

Got sick of them not long after Christmas, and spent three or four hours using tweezers, chopsticks, a sturdy hairbrush, and scissors to cut them off with minimal hair sacrifice or bald patches.

― Tep (ktepi), Sunday, 24 August 2003 17:15 (twenty-two years ago)

'contrivance' meaning for most white people you have to work harder to get dreads than almost any other hair style; even if it comes 'naturally' there's a conscious decision there to let it happen and an appropriation of another culture. I don't think there's anything wrong with that--it's not my place to say, not my culture being appropriated, but it just seems a bit silly. (and i've done my fair share of silly things, style and grooming-wise)

― oops (Oops), Sunday, 24 August 2003 17:25 (twenty-two years ago)

All the white people I know with dreadlocks wash 'em nearly-as-often-if-not-more-often than the white people I know without dreads. Maybe there's something in the Lexington water supply, I dunno. Anway, I'm'a say screw you guys CLASSIC.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Sunday, 24 August 2003 18:13 (twenty-two years ago)

What made me think about getting locks was that there was this pic of this guy in his 30's who was a roof repairer or something, and he had dreadlocks, and they looked pretty good on him, i thought. The gist of the artickle ws that dreads have gone from being a signifier of some politickal or philosophickal thing - rastafarianism, proto-anticorporatism, stonerism (judging by most of the dread-headed folks i knew in the '80's) whereas now people just get them done b/c they like the look of them.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Sunday, 24 August 2003 18:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Emma would vaguelly like dreadlocks and I think it would really suit her; I love that pretty-white-girl-with-delicate-dark-dreadlocks-and-a-flimsy-white-vest-top look thang.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Sunday, 24 August 2003 18:45 (twenty-two years ago)

with the amount of coverage the anti-globalization movement gets, are you sure that dreadlocks have escaped those signifiers norman?

― gareth (gareth), Sunday, 24 August 2003 19:11 (twenty-two years ago)

well that's what the article said, so it must be true!!

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Sunday, 24 August 2003 19:17 (twenty-two years ago)

I've just had a couple of conversations this weekend about (and with) some trustafarians...I fell upon this thread and I don't think I could really rate dreadlocks classic without the following caveat:

Trustafarians: DUD DUD DUD.

― cybele (cybele), Monday, 25 August 2003 03:14 (twenty-two years ago)

DUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUD!

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 25 August 2003 12:27 (twenty-two years ago)

five years pass...

I met my first ever non-douchey white guy w/ dreads on the weekend!

― wilter, Sunday, 14 June 2009 23:33 (sixteen years ago)

i'll bet money this wasn't at work!

― The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall, Monday, 15 June 2009 01:47 (sixteen years ago)

Did "on the weekend" tip you off?

― brotherlovesdub, Monday, 15 June 2009 03:13 (sixteen years ago)

xpost, he's a high school english teacher! He's my gf's co-worker

― wilter, Monday, 15 June 2009 03:16 (sixteen years ago)

at an all-boys catholic school too.

― wilter, Monday, 15 June 2009 03:16 (sixteen years ago)

ten months pass...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100508/ap_on_re_us/us_rastafarian_segregation

― Guns, Computer, The Internet (harbl), Monday, 10 May 2010 19:46 (fifteen years ago)

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