Going Feral

I would grow dreads if I could. But there's a caveat with that.

I would let them form as a result of inaction. And lack of attention. And willful arrogance. Growing something implies a deliberate action. I propose no action at all.

I think that our original hipster forebearers let their hair go feral as a response to the strict and tidy norms of their era. For them it was another outward sign of rebellion against conformity - the conformity that bounded their appearance and actions.

Some thirty-five years later, I knew people with manicured dreads, who spent just as much time rolling and primping nice evenly-sized and rounded plaits as any sorority sister did curling and coifing. The style had been normalized, but the social message had been obliterated. Not just obliterated, but sodomized and napalmed. Dreads were now kind of cool and a "look" one achieved with time and an assortment of products.

Fashion, IMO, is meant to serve a narrow purpose. It is meant to make funny looking people more attractive. Do you have a horse face? Head square and blocky? There's probably a trick for that too.

It's the same for clothing. Fashion can teach people how to advertise their best features (and hide some defects). But it's meant to be done with a light touch. If you're already smokin' hot, nice hair and trendy shoes are just icing on the cake: likewise, they're not going to make you a foot taller or fifty pounds lighter.

And it's precisely this sort of misplaced energy that irritates me. I think that fashion has morphed from an individual concept to an exercise in crushing one's soul. It officially happened when trendy neo-hippies decided to start rolling their dreads twice a day with special conditioner. When the nonconformists of our era buy into the consumer-oriented fashion and style industry, hope is thin indeed.

But how do I take my own game to the next level? How I can I further my personal agenda of disaffection? Obviously, no more shampoo. There are probably some other general rules I need to live with. For starters, my conquest of apathy-induced dreads, by definition, cannot make my life more complicated or expensive. As a barely take notice now (haven't combed my hair in a week, and switched to a 2 in 1 shampoo/conditioner), that's a low bar already set.

My hippie predecessors were tired of societal norms about how they should dress and wear their hair and live their lives. Along the way that message was bastardized, and all get-ups were subsequently included in gross-scale commercialization of style. To me this isn't about rebelling or unconforming. It's about not caring enough to make an effort anymore.

Going feral also needs to remain practical. If I have problems keeping my helmet on and start taking direct tree limb shots to the head, I have become a hypocrite. And if the project irritates my wife enough that she refuses to sleep with me, well, there's a saying about cutting your nose to spite your face.

Past flirtations with hair apathy make me believe that maybe it just won't dread. But after all, maybe that's the point. Leave it alone, and see what it does.

And maybe, just maybe, that's the defining aspect of my personal brand.

So, let the lack of action begin.