I type “dreadlocks or dreads” into Google search and the majority of the results are this:
I type “locs” into Google search and the majority of the results are this:
When I’m on tumblr or instagram and see tagged photos of (mainly) white people with “dreadlocks” their hair looks like what’s shown in the first photos: usually messy, hair sticking out all over the place, knotty looking, and sometimes even the faux dreads they install look like this?! And when I’m on tumblr or instagram I see tagged photos of black people with locs in their hair, and theirs look clean, styled, professional looking, and yes the faux locs they will install will appear in the same manner too. I went on youtube and typed in “locs tutorial”, and the majority of the videos shown were of black women (and sometimes men) with loc care videos, faux loc installation tutorials, etc. and they look how the second set of photos appear. Then I type in “dreadlocks tutorial” and a lot of tutorials are shown with white people either installing faux dreads (or synthetic dreads) made from wool that look like this:
or they are damaging their hair with this “twist and rip” method or “backcombing”, where they just tease their hair a lot and use some kind of hair gel, like gorilla snot or glue or got2b to make it stay . And they look very tangled and messy, because their hair type does not allow for the natural locking of the hair. (I actually watched these videos when i was younger because I wanted my hair to look like theirs, and I ended up damaging and losing so much of my hair!)
I know there is a lot of controversy over white people wearing their hair in “dreadlocks”, attempting to emulate the hair worn by these beauties (and so many others):
And I agree with and understand the frustration when black people know and believe that white people are culturally appropriating this hairstyle. Especially when “dreadlocks” worn by them are deemed “beautiful”, “earthy”, and “bohemian”, but black people could lose their jobs, be suspended from school, forced to cut them off, or are said to look as if they “smell like patchouli oil. Or, weed”.
However, I believe it is only cultural appropriation when they attempt to copy the dreadlock/locs style by backcombing or twist and ripping, and then calling their tangled hair dreadlocks, or dreads, or locs. (Even when they install those synthetic/faux dreads). They have taken a natural and cultural hairstyle traditionally found in the black/African-American community, rooting in ancient Egyptian civilization for their own “fun and edgy style”, completely ignoring the history and culture behind it, and benefitting from looking “cute” by it or creating a “new meaning” for it.
If white people backcombed/twist and ripped their hair and call it “elf-knots” (for instance), I would not call that cultural appropriation. Because dreadlocks/locs are suppose to look how it appears in the photos shown of black people.
The way their hair looks after they finish tangling and damaging their hair, v.s the way it naturally looks on black people are two totally different things. Tangling hair and calling it dreadlocks/locs is not correct.
And making the argument that dreadlocks could be found in ancient Greek, Celtic, German or other European civilizations, etc., or that the Vikings wore them doesn’t really hold up, being as their hair wasn’t even in dreads at all, it was just knotted, tangled hair (similar to how white people wear them today).
I also came across a website called barefoot five.com, where Brooke Hampton, a white woman, writes this:
“I had never even heard the term ‘cultural appropriation’ until I stopped brushing my hair. I didn’t even know that was a thing, how sad is that? I was defensive at first, due to the intense and hateful way in which it was presented to me. With time I have begun to better understand why people could find offense upon seeing my unbrushed hair. Especially if I was calling my hairstyle dreadlocks…I really shouldn’t be calling my knotty hair ‘dreadlocks’ because technically I don’t actually have dreadlocks. I have messy, wild, knotty, matted hair. I am okay with that. I’m not attached to the dreadlock name and I’m truly sorry if my past use of the word ‘dreadlocks’ offended you…While digging into the history of knotty hair, I found that almost all of us have ancestors have rocked the untamed, wild hair at some point in history. But, regardless, I have renamed my hairstyle based on my own bloodline.The Celts called knotted hair faerie locks or elf-locks When their young children would wake from an evening’s slumber with tangles and snarls in their hair, mothers with a tradition of faerie folklore might whisper to their children that they had caught faerie locks or elf-locks. Faeries, they say, tangled and knotted the hairs of the sleeping children as they played in and out of their hair at night. It was considered bad luck to brush them out.So, we don’t have dreadlocks. I have faerie knots and my son has elf-knots.”
And Jenny van Klinken on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Why-my-dreadlocks-arent-cultural-appropriation-658499214252259/?fref=nf) writes this:
“The Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) defines the word elflock as: ‘hair matted or twisted into a knot as if by elves’…William Shakespeare writes of elflocks in his world renowned play Romeo and Juliet, written in 1592, where he talks of the mischeivious fairy, Queen Mab, who tangles people’s hair at night:
"She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone…….
That plaits the manes of horses in the night
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes.”
She goes on to include European literature from the 18th and 19th centuries (even dating back to 1606!) referencing “elf-locks” or “elf-knots”:
-She wore no hat, and her grizzled black hair streamed in elf locks over her shoulders’ - The Golden Road by Lucy Maud Montgomery, published 1913
- 'His jet-black hair hung in elf-locks over his savage-looking features’ Windsor Castle by William Harrison Ainsworth, published 1842
- 'ELF-LOCK, tangled hair, supposed to be the work of elves’ Volpone; Or, The Fox by Ben Jonson, first performed 1606
- ’But my fingers still grasped my friend’s kind elf-locks, and her goose-nose brooded beside mine upon that water of undivulged delight’ Henry Brocken by Walter J. de la Mare, written 1904.
So.. these are DREADLOCKS or LOCS:
And these are ELF-KNOTS or ELF-LOCKS:
jbbartram-illu
gummygunk
baratheonpilled
kianamaiart
origamiaround
ellievsbear
