Get your hands away from hair, fascination with Black hair

In living in Maine for the past 6 years, there is still one thing that pisses me off and while I know it may seem petty and small of me but the fact is it just pisses me off. I hate when people attempt to touch my hair, when I first landed here I had about 4 inches of hair on my head, in my years here I have grown out my hair and 4 years ago decided to loc my hair aka dreadlocks.

My decision to dread/loc my hair was prompted by the untimely death of my beloved Mama, I pretty much had a JOB moment and well, locing my hair to mark my true transition to womanhood seemed timely. Initially when I started the process I was going into Boston for maintenance/retwisting every 6 weeks but after 6-7 months of going over 4 hours rountrip to maintain the locs decided to give it up and start freeforming and I have been freeforming for about 3.5 years.

I won’t wax poetic about my loc journey but I will say its been a journey to self, I have been natural 8 years and loced half that time and its been a time of deep and personal growth. I have often marveled at how each stage in the loc journey seemed to remind me of the stages of my grief, early on the locs looked at times ugly and unstable which pretty much for the first year after my Mom’s death was how I felt.

Anyway over the past year as my locs have gotten longer and I have started wearing them uncovered more often, I find myself often accosted by well meaning but annoying white folks who ply me with questions, “How do you do that to your hair?” being the most common question. However one day when wearing my hair up in a sloppy ponytail, I had a woman reach for my hair and ask how did I get my hair up like that? Well I guess the look on my face must have seemed a bit slow because she then proceeded to ask me if my hair was my hair??? Come again? Duh, yes this is my hair and I grew it.

Now I know a white reader may be thinking but “Black girl you do live in Maine?” Yes, I do, but damn that does not give you the right to just walk up to me and ask stupid ass questions, hello I don’t even know you… Plus I want to know in what universe is it ok to ask a stranger if their hair is real or not, shit back in Chicago I would never dare to ask another sista if that was fine Yak she was wearing unless I wanted a foot up my ass.

No, I know there are not a Black folks in Maine but please for the love of all that is good, stop asking dumb ass questions about my hair. We cannot ever achieve racial harmony if you don’t even exercise common sense.