trendpreneur

I often get asked about my dreadlocks and since today’s been the semi-regular Dreadlock Aftercare Day, here’s a post devoted to them.

People who aren’t that familiar with dreads often get quite curious about various aspects of the hairstyle, and of course the personal reasons behind choosing and maintaining it. First off is age, of course — I’ve had mine for what’s approaching three years now, and although dreads in their early months are easy to spot, mine haven’t drastically changed much beyond the first year (other than length and losing fluffiness).

Starting dreadlocks is a lot easier than people I’ve spoken to seem to think. You can start them simply by not brushing your hair, but a faster and neater approach is to section hair into pencil-sized ponytails and then furiously backcomb them. Wear a hat for three to six months (no, really) and voila – dreads!

Other dread-wearers seem to run into people asking fairly personal questions about their hygiene, such as ‘do you wash?’ (for some reason the fact that dreads don’t need washing more than about once a week implies the wearer doesn’t see water more frequently than that either). I suppose people just aren’t that rude to me so I’ve not had to deal with those questions, but yes, it’s quite easy to wash dreadlocks — just don’t use softening/conditioning shampoo that’s designed to make hair nice and smooth and shiny, the exact opposite of dreads!

The general daily life of having dreads is awesome. No brushing, no styling, no straightening, no serum, no fuss. However, they do tend to convey an interesting first impression; from being detained longer at Customs to seeming out-of-place at suit-and-tie affairs, I often forget I have this hairstyle but others don’t. It’s easy enough to make them look neat and less obviously ‘hippy’, and it’s easy to boho it up with added beads, string and wraps, but there’s still no real getting away from the general dreadiness of them.

Plus, they do require some looking after if you want them to stay in a condition where they can look neat in a pinch. Dyeing them is somewhat tedious and expensive (as they soak up the dye horrendously) and trimming, rounding the ends, felting in stray hairs and other such techniques can take an entire day of labour if you do the entire head. I tend to just do one or two at a time over a long period.

Some further reading on the joys and problems with dreadlocks is over on Livejournal, where the plethora of things people manage to do with their hair often makes me wish I had the time and money to follow suit.