The natural hair business is booming. Our daily hair dish is saturated with talks of kink-smoothing gels, curl-fluffing crèmes and frizz-blasting serums. You’re practically a social leper if you haven’t been to a naturals meet-up group and will automatically receive a vicious side-eye if you dare utter ‘What’s Miss Jessie’s?’ Yes, having natural hair gives you access into the slightly exclusionary world of finger-styling, two-strand twisting, coiling and blow outs. But what about locs?

Seems like our bonded sistas don’t get as much shine because of the style supposedly lacks versatility. With a movement fascinated solely with kinks, curls and waves, locs don’t necessarily give Black women the texture and pattern pass needed to thrive as a natural gal. Requiring less maintenance and stricter ingredients has also given popular prodict lines an easy out to exclude the needs of loc’d women. 

Personally, I dig locs. But I’ll admit the thought of trading in my ten-years of curldom for a fixed look is out of the question. Just last week, I swooped, twisted, blew out and coiled my hair on a whim. These days, rocking a natural is centered around being a style chameleon.

Celebs have also done their part in making textured tresses all the rage. Tracee Ellis Ross, Chrisette Michele, Corrine Bailey Rae and Solange are natural royalty in the blogosphere. Though Ledisi's look is essence of the loc’d goddesses, she rarely get as much praise or cutesy “how-to” articles. Starlets most famous for their lovely loc'd tresses like Erykah Badu, Indie Arie, and Goapele chucked the deuces to the style, did this become a sign of a fading trend?

Locs are gorgeous and I highly doubt they’d ever get dumped in a retro category like thick 90’s braids, but are they simply not versatile enough for today's new natural?

Let's talk about it!