If you follow me on social media you may have noticed I look a little different. That’s because I made a rather drastic change to my hair style a month or so ago. Where many people have been taking the pandemic as a chance to grow out their hair and experiment with new hairstyles, I ended up doing the opposite and chopping mine all off!
I loved my locs so much and it was a style I’d always wanted to rock, since I was a teenager. So many things stopped me along the way. Mostly other people’s negative opinions on what locs represented. It made me scared that I wouldn’t get the jobs I wanted or be taken seriously in professions, not because a hairstyle would change my ability to be productive in a role, but because people wouldn’t be able to see past their own ignorance regarding a Black woman wearing her hair in its most natural of forms.
Now, I should probably make it clear right now that it wasn’t down to any negative comments that made me cut off my locs. I’ve had nothing but nice things said (to my face) about my hairstyle and those who were ignorant as to what locs where normally felt comfortable enough to ask questions in respectful ways. My cutting off of my hair was as much down to practicality as it was a s symbolic gesture, both personal to me and void of any outside intervention.
What's in this post
The toll of lockdown
Being on lockdown meant that in the space of a year and a half, I probably managed to get a professional retwist once. I didn’t maintain my hair well enough in between and it started to take its toll. My hair is a combination of textures as it is, with some parts in the middle being much straighter and stubborn to loc from the very beginning. I spent a lot of time lazily wearing my hair in a high ponytail, putting a lot of stress on an already thin part of my hair, which resulted in my hair falling out! One minute I’d be removing my hairband and the next I’d see a loc lying forlornly on the floor!
It was getting to the point where it felt like there was a massive bald patch at the back of my head as so many locs had died a death. Everyone else said they couldn’t see it, but I feel like they were trying to be kind, rather than juts being totally honest and saying “yeah girl, I can literally see scalp”.
Diet and nutrition
I can’t blame it all on lockdown though. As well as not maintaining my hair well enough myself, I also wasn’t eating well. The link between nutrition and hair health is often overlooked until it’s too late. I waited until my hair was thinning to remember that I was in fact iron and vitamin D deficient. Like honestly, I’ve had tests and have known this for years, but I tend to go in peaks and troughs about how much care I put into managing both of these. Both complaints can lead to thinning and weakening of the hair so it’s really no surprise my hair was weak. I was eating trash and hardly ever going outside. And vitamins? What vitamins? I definitely wasn’t taking any of those!
The big chop
I’d planned to do a whole Tik Tok video or a Reel on me chopping off my gorgeous shoulder length locs. But this is a key example as to why I’ll never be an influencer. I’m rubbish and didn’t even attempt to film it! In fact, I didn’t even take any shock faced photos of me half way through my cut. I know right? Tin.
The actual big chop was pretty uneventful. I was sat at my desk in my home office. I’d been picking some lint out of the bottom of one of my locs at the time. I’d been slowly trying to undo each loc and it was proving to be an agonisingly slow process with me losing more hair than I was saving. Then it hit me, why not use the paper scissors that were sat next to me to just ‘cut’ the lint out…..? Well, I’m sure you can see where this led.
To me in the bathrooom mirror with a pair of stationery scissors.
Lobbing off the locs I’d been nurturing and neglecting in equal measure for three years.
The teeny weeny afro
I love my new hair. It felt so liberating to go back to such a short style. I basically spray it with water, rub some hair oil through it and I’m on my way. My family were all in a bit of shock as to why and how I managed to cut off my lovely locs. Personally, I feel it was something that needed to be done. There’d been so much crap in my life and it felt like all the negativity was trapped in my hair, in the same way it maps drug use, diet etc, it felt like it was mapping my emotions and it was a lot of weight to carry.
I’m not sure if I’ll keep it this length in the long run. Maybe I’ll be rocking another set of starter locs in 6 months time. For now though, this TWA is my new best friend.
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