How do people get their hair like this?
http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/51598/angry-beaver-2/ (safe for work)
Their hair is like one giant, mashy dreadlock. How do they get it like that?
I went to high school with a fellow who had one of those going on (not quite that long). He achieved it by having curly hair which he quit brushing or washing. It smelled as bad as you would imagine.
When be graduated he had to shave his head to get rid of it.
Yep - no washing, no brushing - just let it get matted up - although I hear you can help it along by tangling it yourself. Also the occasional rinse with water is OK - but no soap.
And when you finally realize what you got there on your head is disgusting and ridiculous - you need to shave it off. And keep it stuffed in a pillow case at the back of your closet to show your next girl/boy friend.
If you are my cat, you get it by scratching yourself up against the pitchy pine tree next door every day.
It’s just so hideous.
I met a couple with hair starting to look like this, but not as extreme, and I asked why and how about the style.
They claimed it was part of a spiritual belief to wear their hair this way.
That took years to get their hair like that, and it required much effort.
It was started out with small twisted, ratted and rubbed locks; the fingers work one lock at a time,
repeatedly toward the root, until it packs and matts up tight.
Also wax is applied.
I have no idea how this must feel, but it is probably not healthy for the scalp.
I love this sentence from the beginning of the Wikipedia article: “It can be viewed as a hairstyle, or as a hair disease.”
Individual dreadlocks *can *be cultivated to be clean. It involves kind of a lot of work. To form them, you can either backcomb with a fine-toothed comb (best because you can make the size of the dreads uniform), or rub your head with wool (not as good because you have no control over dread size). To care for them, you wash and wring out the dreads every 3ish days, get them COMPLETELY dry (otherwise they might mildew), and wax them every day.
However, I’m not sure if *this *hairstyle is capable of being tended to, as such. The plait is so freaking big, it doesn’t seem it would ever dry out completely. And applying wax to that much hair would be impossible without assistance, *and *a large time investment.
Dreds don’t have to be dirty.
When I’d go camping for a couple weeks (or on tour) I’d end up with nasty, spiteful mats and proto-dreds. Washing with shampoo did nothing to take them out–a lot of time and patience with conditioner was needed to untangle them. I’ve let one or two go for a while considering dreds, but bailed before they were fully there (cue a several combined hours in a shower/conditioner trying to get rid of them). I’ve also had friends with no hygiene-related issues with perfectly normal dreds.
The dred=no washing is a myth.
Dreds don’t have to be dirty, but that dred is nasty as hell.
I have seen some really beautiful, neat, and clean dreds in my life. I think they’re pretty, and I admire people who can take that sort of time and effort to cultivate an “alternative” and often denigrated hairstyle and make it beautiful and classy.
That shit in the link is just gross.