"Build a better Afro and others will follow your lead"

I remember during my early days posting reading this quote, "Build a better afro and others will follow your lead".  This quote revealed a truth to me.  Although I loved my wet-set twists ( I wore them 95% of the time), I still received negative comments from those who didn't understand my natural journey.  Again, it was "why did you go from straight to nappy" or "why are you wearing your hair like that"?  My twists weren't ugly (at least not to me), but they were still not perfect.  I had some gap issues I had to correct, so now I was on a mission to create the perfect twists.

I decided to blow-out my hair for a change as during my early days twisting my hair took me a little over two hours to do.  Slowing things down a bit to "see" what I was doing wrong was going to take longer than my usual time to twists.  I didn't want to experiment on wet hair that would dry before I was finished then having to re-wet it as I went along.  With it already dry, I could really take my time to see what I was doing wrong.

My first Blow Out! Preparing to dry twist.

Now, I've tried a few techniques to twisting my hair.  I've tried the parting approach (diagonal) and this didn't work for me.  It took me TOO long to get with this method!  So, I parted my hair from the bottom up horizontally to twists my hair. Upon completing my twists, I still had gaps so I just lived with it and rolled out.

Notice the pic on the left.  There was a gap in my top mid back.

The twists above were not bad, but you can see in the image to the left that I had a gap in the top
middle section of my head.  Trying to camouflage it, I grabbed two individual twists and pinned them together to "cover" the gap. What I should have done, was remove those twists to re-do them.  You live, you learn.  Also, because my front twists weren't as long as my back I would pin them to the back.  Again, I should have just let them be.

Wearing my dry twists OUT! Year 2003.

I was loving my new "style"

A renewing of the mind was needed.

I was loving my new "dry" twists.  I was missing my longer "looking" hair (shrinkage is so deceiving to me and definitely to others).  With the dry twists my hair didn't seem as short.  I still had the problem with having gaps, but I was determined to combat this issue.  I also still experienced others still not understanding my natural journey. 

"Build a better afro and others will follow your lead".  Hmm, I soon realized that this wasn't going to be enough. No matter how I styled my twists, everyone outside the "natural community" wasn't feeling it.  I believed that a renewing of the mind was also in need.  The ideal beauty has long, straight hair.  Yes, a renewing of the mind was definitely needed, but in the meantime, building a better "fro" was still on the top on my "to do list".