Forum Activity for @nicole-binns

What are your reasons for not growing a beard?

General Questions

There are many men who grow their hair long, but continue to shave their beard, or shave off parts of the beard while growing other parts, or trim the beard to keep it short. Can anyone explain their reasons for this? (for instance, you don't like the way beards look, the beard is too itchy, you feel that the image doesn't fit you, etc.)
updated by @nicole-binns: 02/14/15 05:53:16PM

Misguided racism (well isn't it always?) towards caucasian dreadies...

General Talk

This article assumes that locks are something that people can only grow deliberately. They assume you can only grow locks 'on purpose' and so it's a sign of your 'culture.' While it's true that you can view locks as a part of a particular culture, locks are also just something that happen automatically by themselves regardless of what culture you belong to. The author of that article is ignorant of how natural locks work. She must be assuming that all locks have to take hours and hours of work and constant maintenance, because they couldn't possibly happen all by themselves!Dreadlocks belong to the whole human race.

balding

General Questions

Oh, and oops, when I say I kept my hair braided, I mean, I kept it in one big braid. I don't mean I had it in lots of little braids. Anyway...

balding

General Questions

I looked at your pictures on the other discussion. I'm not sure how old you are, but I have heard stories of people going bald at an early age (like around 20 years old) and I've heard of people starting to go bald around 30 years old. I think if you haven't lost any hair by age 30, you probably won't go bald... but I could be totally, totally wrong about that - I haven't talked to a lot of balding people (although I would like to) about the process of going bald.I will tell you something about my own feelings. This is just my personal opinion. There are some women (such as, myself) who love long hair on men so much, and are so desperate to see more of it, that we even enjoy the sight of a bald man with long hair (and a beard - I always have to mention that too). There will be people who tell you exactly the opposite of that - they will tell you that going bald, and having long hair at the same time, looks horrible. I know lots of people say that. But there are some people who feel exactly the opposite. Anything is better than short hair! Men don't understand how it feels to be a woman who LOVES long-haired men, but can't find many of them anywhere. It's very frustrating. So I am very pushy: grow the hair long even if you go bald... just keep going with it. I have to be pushy about it, because I'm like, begging, for lots more guys to grow long hair, even if it's bald.That's my personal opinion and my big long rant for this evening.As for whether your hair will dread easily, I can only tell you about my personal experience. I am using a 'no shampoo' neglect method, and it was the easiest thing I ever did. A lot of people think it's disgusting to totally quit shampoo, and they can't stand the way it makes their hair and scalp feel. But based on my own experience, if you shampoo your hair one last time, and then quit all types of shampoo forever, your hair will lock all by itself as it sticks to your own natural grease. (I know... most people are horrified by this idea.) That is how mine worked. I did NOTHING to it - no twisting, nothing at all. It looked like greasy strings for a couple of months and I kept it braided because yeah, I was embarrassed to be seen that way. Then after a couple of months, there were mature locks developing at the roots all by themselves - I didn't do anything, just rinse them with plain water in the shower, and nothing else at all.So that is the 'no shampoo' method which is too disgusting for most people, but I have gotten used to it and it worked great for me. I think humans always had effortless natural locks before soap and shampoo were invented, and nobody had to do any backcombing or any twisting. Like the animals that have locks - donkeys and dogs and any other animals that grow them. They're not twisting or backcombing.Would your hair be easy to lock? I think you would be able to do it if I am able to do it. I'm sure that everyone else on this forum would have faith that you are able to do them somehow, even if you don't choose the particular 'gross' method that I am using.Sorry, I can never just answer in ten words or less, lol.

errol said:

looked him up he has pretty cool dreads and if you just wear a bandana to hide the baldness then your good to go could you tell me what you think of my hair on my other discussion how long b4 balding you think my hair would be easy to lock up or ?
Nicole Binns said:

I would like to see more men growing long hair and locks even after going bald. I don't know what you could do to stop yourself from going bald. But you can view dreads as a spiritual commitment, instead of an image, and so they'll be something you continue to do, no matter what happens.

This is actually a big issue to me. I think that if men could accept the idea of growing the remaining hair (and beard) while they're bald, then more men might lose their fear of growing long hair.

You could look at images of Devin Townsend. He was a musician (I think? I can't remember if that's what he was) who grew locks while bald.

I probably can't say anything to make you feel better about it though.

balding

General Questions

I would like to see more men growing long hair and locks even after going bald. I don't know what you could do to stop yourself from going bald. But you can view dreads as a spiritual commitment, instead of an image, and so they'll be something you continue to do, no matter what happens.This is actually a big issue to me. I think that if men could accept the idea of growing the remaining hair (and beard) while they're bald, then more men might lose their fear of growing long hair.You could look at images of Devin Townsend. He was a musician (I think? I can't remember if that's what he was) who grew locks while bald.I probably can't say anything to make you feel better about it though.

Shampoos and Soaps ~ Maybe get a list started

Dread Maintenance

I recently did some maintenance for the first time on the huge monster lock on the right side. Below the mature part of the lock, the loose ends had gotten tangled and looped in a way that was annoying because it created a huge thick ball at the end of the hair. So I started untangling it with conditioner and a comb. This is the first time I have tried to work on any of my locks in any way.

At first, I was using 'Dove Damage Therapy Shine Boost.' It was cheap and it was something I grabbed at random because I was shopping at a store that didn't have my favorite conditioner that I used to use before I had dreadlocks. The Dove conditioner made the hair all waxy and it stuck together so badly that it was still almost impossible to untangle the loops that I was working on. The 'shine boost' actually worked, though - the hair that I put conditioner on had a very bright reflective glossy shine (not that I care - I'm not aiming for 'shiny hair' right now).

I gave up on that kind of conditioner and bought my favorite kind, Finesse - I got the 'moisturizing' kind. It was so much easier to work on untangling the loops and I made a lot of progress on the big knot, although I'm not done yet and will have to work on it again. I always liked finesse because it didn't add waxy buildup to my hair.

this is not a neglect dreads site

General Talk

I agree with everything you said here. It looks like your goal is to accept all kinds of dreads, but at the same time, to show that there are better and worse ways of doing it, and some of the ways can cause terrible disasters, and other ways of doing it can give you dreads that are lightweight and comfortable and natural feeling.

People are taught to always wash and comb their hair a certain way, and when they see dreadlocks for the first time, they wonder, 'How did you do that to your hair?' People are just ignorant - they don't know any better. And everyone is ignorant. I don't mean it's bad to be ignorant, I just mean, you can't help it when you don't know something, and nobody ever taught you. So nobody knows how to get dreadlocks unless somebody teaches them.

Then they look it up on the internet and they see all these products and waxes and they think that's the only way to do it, because that's the only thing they see in the internet results (at first glance, unless they do a bit more research). So they think that's how everybody does it, and they think that's the ONLY way to do it.

Your goal is to make a site that shows a variety of ways to do it, and some of those methods are the neglect methods, and some of them involve making the dreadlocks manually, but you are showing a variety of methods that don't involve spending a lot of money on waxy products and other products that will make your hair stiff or damage it so it falls out. You are trying to show that there's more than one way of doing it, and to bring together a lot of different people with different experiences and different knowledge.

Is That A Penis In My Dreads?!!!

Life Issues Facing Dreads

It's possible that she sees herself as 'unique,' and that she has to be different from everyone else around her in order to feel special. If someone else looks like her, that is threatening. She doesn't want to be part of a group of people, she wants to be an outsider. She might be thinking, whatever her reasons for dreading are, they must be different from your reasons, and everything about her is different from you. This is just my theory.

I'm Back just have a couple questions!

General Questions

I have tried to see how locks work by looking closely at my own. It looks like the hairs wrap around each other in both directions, clockwise and counterclockwise, and they crisscross over each other. This happens during the movement of the hairs, and while showering.Then if only a couple of hairs get tangled into a knot, it keeps them all together in a strand. It doesn't take very many hairs to cause a strand to tangle and stay that way. Maybe only two or three hairs tangled around the strand are enough to hold that strand together.Once you have a strand wrapped with a tangle, then the hairs underneath those hairs have nowhere to go. As they grow underneath the tangle, they wad up into a messy, crumpled, mat of hair. I'm trying to understand how the process happens over time, and this is what I imagine it looks like inside the dreadlock, hairs trying to grow up underneath an existing twist that is blocking them.That's how I would describe the process, if you are wondering how it happens by itself.

Amadu Jalloh said:

but how would they lock without me doing that......

Cutting by force.

Life Issues Facing Dreads

OMG, I have two stories to tell about this. The first one happened to someone else. I had a co-worker who said that she had very long hair, down below her waist, I think it was actually to her knees. It was extremely long. She went to the hospital for a serious illness, and spent some time unconscious and on drugs.When she woke up, (I know, you know what I'm about to say), her hair was all gone. The nurses said that they cut the hair off because they 'couldn't brush it' or something because it was 'too long.' It was up to like chin length. It was totally gone. I am not f*****g kidding you. Gone.There is NO REASON why they had to even TRY to brush her hair while she was unconscious for a couple days. A person will survive a couple days without washing or brushing their hair in the hospital. They could have tied it back somehow.This lady DID NOT sue them. I don't like the idea of randomly suing people for every little hangnail or stubbed toe that I get, but if somebody cut off all of my hair while I was unconscious, you cannot imagine the hell they would pay. I don't know why she didn't sue them. She never bothered to grow it back - she said she likes it short now.The second story happened to me. I was with the guy who was my boyfriend at the time, and his daughter who was young, like 8 years old I think. She was just a hyper little kid. One day I was sitting down while she played with my long hair. I didn't notice when she picked up the scissors off the table and cut off a long, thin piece of it. It wasn't much, just a thin strand.But I was furious. I turned around, saw her holding the scissors and the strand of hair, and said, in shock and horror, 'Did you CUT that?' She was terrified and she said 'No,' even though I could see the hair and the scissors in her hand - you know how it is when they're a little kid and they're scared and the only thing she could do was deny it. She was just fooling around and she didn't know that I would be that upset about it.Instead of yelling and screaming, I got up quickly, went outside, and took a long walk by myself. I walked and walked until I cooled down. I didn't scream or anything.When I came back, we apologized to each other, and she cried a little bit, and I told her how I felt and we were okay with each other after that. She understood that she had made a mistake and she never tried anything like that again. It was an accident. She felt terrible.Nothing else like that has ever happened to me and I'm glad of it.