How My Locs Journey Taught Me To Treat My Hair (And Myself) Better

As a little Dominican girl, I envied long, flowing hair — my mother’s and aunt’s beautiful soft wavy hair as well as  my sister’s thick curls. I had kinkier, tighter coils that I wished were more manageable to untangle and style. At 9, I got my first relaxer for school pictures. As the white creamy mixture sat atop my virgin hair, the tingling sensation of my scalp signified the end of my childhood with kinky hair and the beginning of my life’s insecurities with my hair’s appearance.

Through years of chemical relaxers and hair straightening, I found that two things were happening: I felt ugly whenever my hair was not perfectly straight from the salon, and my hair was falling out from all those visits. Around 2010, 15 years after that milestone picture day, I flirted with the idea of going natural to give my hair a much-needed break from relaxers. I finally felt the push to do it while living in Washington, D.C., because there weren’t many Dominican hair salons to continue the regimen. This was my moment to let my hair breathe and see what my hair texture was really like.

In 2012, I moved back to New York after a bad breakup and excitedly went to see my old hairdresser for a fresh blow dry just to give my self-esteem a boost. My hairdresser hadn’t seen me in a while since I had ditched the chemicals. I proudly told her I had decided to go natural but just wanted a temporary straight hairstyle to change things up. As I sat down in her chair, I could see her eyes examine my pajón with slight disgust. “Te vez mas bella con el pelo lacio,” she said before noting that a light relaxer would help me achieve a better blowout.

The confidence I had built to grow my natural hair out had burst like a bubble. Did I look more “beautiful” with straight hair than with the actual hair that grows out of my head? Her words wore me down. I decided to relax my hair for the sake of a “better blowout.” I received many compliments that week, but deep down inside I felt ashamed that I allowed someone else’s definition of beauty affect my appearance. That was my final relaxer and the last time I’d ever go to that hairdresser. 

For the last decade, I have played around with my kinky hair in all styles. I’ve had braids, silk presses, faux locs, short blond hair, and a big afro. I have chopped it off multiple times. I have watched hundreds of hours of natural hair tutorials on YouTube and tried pretty much every product out there. I felt like I was a part of a movement that was changing the way women think about themselves. The only problem I continually saw was the lack of Afro-Latinas front and center with hair texture similar to mine. Hair influencers who worked with natural hair brands all seemed to have the same hair type — no kinkier than 3C. They promised the hair products would work on all hair textures, even ones as kinky and coarse as mine. 

What I quickly noticed within the natural hair community was the rise of texturism, discrimination based on kinkier, tighter-curled hair. Hair care models rarely had hair that looked like mine. The kinkier the hair, the closer one is to their Blackness. As an Afro-Latina who proudly embraces my Blackness, I often found myself othered within the Latine community so much so that they automatically assumed I was African American until I started speaking Spanish. As the fast-speaking Spanish rolled off my tongue, I could see the look on the person’s face change. My nonconforming pajón opened up new avenues of racism that I hadn’t encountered before, which made me proclaim my Blackness more loudly.

Despite loving my hair and having made lots of progress, I dreaded whenever I had to wash and style it. I’d spend nearly a whole day on my hair. Washing and detangling was never less than an hour's work and braiding or twisting it into submission was another two hours. Sometimes when I’d undo the twists the next day, my hair would just become a huge frizzy puff and not resemble the style I had originally intended. Dealing with hair with a mind of its own was taxing on my soul. I started to consider chopping it completely off for what seemed like the millionth time.

Tempted by the scissors in my medicine cabinet, I turned to YouTube for hair inspiration once again. What I ended up finding were women with locs living their best lives. It gave me hope that maybe I might, too. I researched every single thing about locs from the installation, to the maintenance, to the horror and success stories. There was no rock left unturned when I was gathering information about dreadlocks. I had probably devoured days' worth of content when all of a sudden I saw my old college roommate announce on Instagram that she had taken the plunge and gotten locs. Her hair looked beautiful, and she seemed exceptionally happy with her choice. Could I be equally happy with locs? 

Since I had an old middle school friend who had long locs, I proceeded to ask her every question under the sun. With her reassuring answers, I decided to move forward. On September 5 2023, I had starter locs installed. As I walked out into the sun-filled day, I could already feel a weight being lifted from my shoulders. My pajón had disappeared and would be no more. 

Locs are not a common hairstyle in the Latine community. As an Afro-Latina embarking on this journey, it has been a bit lonely. As a person who straddles two identities — Blackness and Latinidad — my locs have allowed me to explore depths of my Blackness that I don’t think I was afforded before. I don’t have to worry about how my hair texture presents to the Latine community or the rest of the world.

There are certain stigmas and negative stereotypes associated with dreadlocks. If I’ve learned anything in the last six months it’s how much my perspective on self-love has changed. Rubbing oils on my scalp and nurturing each loc has made me love my hair on a deeper level. So much of the loc process is hands-off and just letting the hair do its thing. When I wake up in the morning, I give my locs a shake and I’m ready to go. Some days they’re frizzy, and sometimes I need to pin them down with a bobby pin if I sleep on them weirdly. Instead of wallowing, I remind myself that my hair is doing exactly what I want it to do. It requires minimal intervention on my part.

Now when I look in the mirror, I marvel at the length of my hair. From time to time, I still remember my old hairdresser and think to myself that my beauty was never in my hair; it was in the love I have for myself no matter what I look like in the mirror.