I promised you pictures!

I promised pictures and so here they are (I apologize in advance for the extreme close-ups):






Usually I do my twists smaller than this, however, the increased in length has caused a scraggly look I cannot abide. It's all 'eye of the beholder' stuff but by my eye, my current length looks better with thicker twists. With that first one (as I snapped the picture) I thought, only a bajillion more to go! Now that I think on it, it took me a full day less to "twistify" my whole head of hair which is fan-friggin'-tastic since the last few months has seen it take upwards to two days. Huh. Anyway, those are my pics. Of me. Terrifying. LOL

Oh, just so there are no illusions as to how far my happy nappy self has come, let me remind my gentle readers of my last length check <--- click cleverly "hidden" link. Brandon, you've seen my teeny-weeny, tiny-whiny 'fro so you really know.

This entire process has really opened me up to my sisters in the community. It made me so happy some nerd created and open sourced the internet so many decades ago. The amount of information and sharing that goes on about Black hair, its care, its meaning within and without the community has been affirming, eye-opening, confirming, bewildering, enraging and joyful. It's amazing the equal amounts of hatred and devotion our hair inspires. Like, take for instance the word 'nappy'; the connotations within the community are varied. In my household 'nappy' is simply another way of saying 'kinky' which is the state of our hair particularly the 4a/4b range; it is not derogatory. However that seems to be a cultural/West Indian (maybe also African) thing, though that varies place to place and by age groups. Among generationally American Blacks 'nappy' is tantamount to saying 'ugly'. I find that weird but it is this nation's inheritance to us and I was only inoculated from it by growing up in my immigrant household. For that I am grateful -- I cannot imagine hating my hair the way some Blacks do. The things some say if given enough rope to hang themselves are just staggering. It makes me cling to what I'm doing more and more. What I'm trying to write is this is not wholly vanity -- there is a lot of cultural, division, sadness and joy in our locks. This may also be true of other cultures but I'm not chronicling their journey, I'm chronicling my own. /preaching