This is not your normal journey. 28-year-old Marcus Smith is not on foot, in a car or on a plane; the journey is in his hair, inside?his dreadlocks.
"My struggles are locked inside dreads, so all my accomplishments, the struggles, just everything; my walks of life, the happy times, the sad times; they lock in," Smith said.
2007 was Smith's last haircut. He says it started off as a venture to see how long his hair could grow and then it turned into a personal and even spiritual quest.
"When I started growing it in '07, it was a down and out time. I didn't have a job, a car or a house. Then when I got a car, I was pretty much sleeping in my car and with that so I like for it to be locked it. I look at the tip of my dreads and see that year," Smith said.
Smith says he keeps them covered because it protects his journey, his dreams.
"That's the reason I cover them because people touch them all the time," Smith said.
He says it's hasn't been easy wearing his hair in an ethnic natural style that's not accepted in mainstream America.
"One particular job, they just told me they wouldn't hire me with dreads. They wouldn't hire me with dreads or braids and it's kind of discouraging. But that's one of the struggles I say, would be trying to adapt to society and them accepting me for who I am," Smith said.
Dreadlocks are associated most closely with the Rastafarian movement, but Smith says for him, it's not a fashion statement or just about being a dread head.
"With me it's not a religion, it's just more of my spiritual journey. It reminds me of where I come from. It let's me know I was at the bottom and now?I am making it and trying to do something for myself," Smith said.
Smith says his hair journey has pushed him to be his best self and an entrepreneur. He opened his own business "Totally Exposed" marketing group that helps small businesses research economic development.
Copyright 2012? WSFA 12 News.? All rights reserved.
Source: http://www.wsfa.com/story/19555649/auburn-mans-hair-journey
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