The Before Shots

The hair I left behind is shown here on a definite good day, probably the best I could get it to look. If it could have been guaranteed to behave like this all day every day without fail, then I possibly wouldn’t have dreads now. But the hair shown here represented a frustratingly small proportion of my total hair-time. My hair was the vaguely wavey, potentially quite curly if left to dry completely naturally, extremely moisture-sensitive type, that could not be worn un-tied outdoors unless there was no chance of humidity, including dawn/dusk levels, unless I wanted an unflattering and annoying collection of frizz clinging to my head.

With a history of about 9 years’ regular peroxide treatment, and dyes on top of that for about 5 years, this wasn’t the strongest or healthiest hair either. That didn’t really bother me though. I still managed to keep it feeling fairly nice with plenty of conditioner, and avoidance of any heated styling tools. In terms of dreading, all the abuse will have worked in my favour anyway because crappy dry rough hair has more natural friction and bending/breaking/knotting tendencies than lustrous Pantene hair.