How I got natural dreadlocks

I have natural dreadlocks, which are sometimes called neglect dreadlocks.

Some people believe that dreadlocks damage the hair. I used to believe this too. I thought that people created dreadlocks artificially by teasing the hair or burning it or gluing it together somehow.

Some people do create dreadlocks that way. If someone had loose hair one day, and then a couple days later they had dreadlocks, that means they made them artificially and they did use a harsh technique like backcombing or glue or wax or some other substance to stick the hair together.

Not all locks are made that way.

Dreadlocks are the inevitable natural result of not washing your hair with any kind of soap or shampoo. (There is a 'no shampoo' movement on the internet, but many of those people are still washing their hair with something. Many people doing this want to avoid the chemicals in shampoo.) I am not sure that locks are always inevitable, because there are photographs of Native Americans who have braided hair, and their hair is not dreadlocked. I don't know if they washed their hair with some kind of soap. I don't know if they had soap.

I have wondered if maybe the grease from the scalp changes when you eat a different diet, and maybe the Native Americans were eating a diet that gave them less greasy hair. That may or may not be true, I don't know. I can't test it because I don't know anyone who eats the Native American diet and who doesn't use shampoo.

But dreadlocks will happen by themselves if you stop using shampoo and if you live a normal modern life and eat modern foods.

I created my locks by giving my hair one final wash in only shampoo with no conditioner. I tried to clean it well and get rid of residues. Then I stopped washing it. I only rinsed it with water in the shower and I let it become greasy.

For many weeks, my hair got greasier and greasier and it looked stringy. The greasy strings stuck together at the roots, near the scalp, where the oils come from. The loose ends far away from the scalp were less greasy. When it stuck together this much, I could not even comb it anymore with a wide toothed comb, and I stopped trying. The sticky grease felt like chewing gum in my hair.

The dreadlocks began at the roots. Strings started sticking together and forming larger strings. The small short hairs wrapped around those large strings. Those short hairs are probably new hairs regrowing. After hair has grown for many years, it stops growing, sits there a while, and then falls out. Then it starts growing again at the root, and you will see a new short hair. I used to assume that all of those short hairs were 'broken hairs' until I learned about hair regrowing from the roots. As the new hairs grow longer, they become more and more likely to wrap around and tangle with one of the existing hair strings.

After a few months, the roots of my hair began to look like 'real' dreadlocks. I could see densely matted hair. The loose ends of my hair did not lock that way. Instead, they gradually tangled. For a while I kept them less tangled and I still sometimes combed out the loose ends of my hair, while leaving the matted locks at the top. The loose hair formed 'dreadloops' as I called them (and I found out that other people call them that too, because it's on google), where a few strands of hair tangle with other strands and then get pulled so that one part of the hair is tight and the other part is slack, and a loop sticks out the side of the strand of hair. That happened after I wore staticky polyester coats in the winter.

About dandruff: I was surprised that I did not have as much dandruff as I thought I would. There is a little bit sometimes, but surprisingly little. I can see clothing lint tangled in the locks, and I started using towels that made less lint. I am now drying my hair with 'flour sack towels,' thin woven towels that don't have the loops of terrycloth on them, because the terrycloth towels always left wads of lint in my hair.

So I did not do anything harsh to create my dreadlocks. I didn't stick them together with gum, I didn't burn them, I didn't damage the hair in any way, or do any other thing that people sometimes do to create dreadlocks quickly. If you want to create dreadlocks overnight and have them ready by tomorrow, then you will have to sit there for hours and hours while somebody painstakingly teases your hair and sticks it together with something. I didn't do that. I waited months and saw gradual progress as the hair changed from greasy strings to partially locked hair with tangled loops down on the loose ends of the hair. That is where I am now.

One time a guy walked up to me in the parking lot outside of Papa John's Pizza one evening when I had gone there on a whim craving pizza. He told me he loved my dreadlocks and then he said that he had a roommate who had locks, and they took hours and hours of work. He spoke of the time and dedication it took to create and maintain the locks. I tried to explain to him that it didn't have to be that way and that hair would lock by itself if you didn't wash it. That was hard for him to imagine. It is hard to understand how hair could form these tangled mats all by itself, and stay that way.

So I don't know if Native Americans were using soap, or if there is something about the texture of their hair, or the grease of their scalp, that caused their hair to be combable, but I know that many old photos show them with combed, braided hair.

The next thing that I am concerned about is traction alopecia. If you pull your hair at the roots for a very long time, the roots will get ripped out and leave scars. It's the same thing that happens when you pluck your eyebrows. The scarred roots never grow hair again, or else they grow a short, fine piece of hair that won't get long.

So I am being careful not to pull my locks too tightly when I braid them and wrap my hair up when I go to work. The hat that I wear has been pulling on them lately and I need to adjust it somehow. You have to make sure that your braid, ponytail, bun, or whatever doesn't pull your roots too hard.

And I would say, never get cornrows or small tight braids, because those can cause traction alopecia too.

I read about this while researching the Sikh religion. Sikh men don't cut their hair, and they sometimes get traction alopecia because of the tight topknot pulling on the roots. So I want to avoid doing that.

I am waiting to see if my hair will grow longer now that it's in locks. My hair stopped getting longer when it reached classic length, hip length. That means that the hairs were programmed to stop growing, fall out, and grow again from the roots after reaching that length. But now that the hair is locked, the disconnected hairs will remain tangled in the lock, and the locks should grow longer than classic length. I have to wait a while before I can see whether this happens. My hair doesn't look like it's getting longer right now. The loops actually shortened my hair.

That's how I got dreadlocks. No damage. If I ever changed my mind about them, I would wash them and comb them out, carefully and gently, even if it took a very long time to do. I would not cut my locks off. It took over a decade to grow my hair that long, so I should be patient enough to take several days, or even weeks, to painstakingly comb out each dreadlock to save the hair. In comparison to ten years, a few days of combing is nothing.