I happen to see Melissa on Tumblr, and as always, I had to find out who she is. I couldn't find a ton of information on Melissa, but what I did find out was interesting enough to share with you guys. Her Sisterlocks are to die for and her makeup is always on point.

Melissa seems to goes by the name of Katana Malone, and she is an aspiring actress, and a model who reside in sunny South Florida. She   was born in Jamaican, and was pretty much raised in a strong military household. She has been called a nerd all her life, which I can totally related ^_^. Her mission is to encourage young black girls to be themselves and not to conform to what society thing is beautiful. I also found out she can sings which is where her love of music comes from. You can check out her voice here.

She enjoys writing poetry and loves to partake in the fine arts. So far she had movie roles in Uncommon Crusader (2010), The Caribbean Heist (2013) and Charlie's Angels (2011). Right now she works at a Law firm and is a full time parent to a beautiful little girl. You can visit her blog here and if you want to admire her sisterlocks and fashion sense, you can checkout her facebook here.

If you have visited any Blogs, Forum, or even Tumblr that are tag with natural hair, you have run into to some type of picture that shows off Eva's Sisterlocks. She is another face with no name, and I wanted to find out more information about her, and I was pleasantly surprise at what I did find. Finding information about this talented young lady was hard, and I’m not sure if the information here is completely correct. She has different alias, but she goes by the name of Eva Badon and her stage name is E.V. Baby.

Eva Badon is a singer/songwriter who has been amazing her friends and family since the age of two with her talent. She started writing her own song at the age of six, and with the help of her parents and music teacher, E.V. Baby started performing at several events throughout the community in Racine WI where she lived until the age of nine.

While she was preforming at her High Idol competition, Tizone who is a Platinum Producer that has worked with artists such as R. Kelly, Mary J. Blige, Keith Sweat, Twista, etc., discovered her.  At the young age of 17, she was finally able to release a mini-album and later a full album title “Joyride”. She has since been performing at every show that she can get her hands on and is currently getting vocal training, as well as dancing lesson from Millennium Dance Complex.

She will be turning 18 soon and is currently resign in Los Angeles, California. Her songs are mostly comprised of Hip-Hop, R&B, and Pop, but what I also found to be fascinating about this young lady is that she can also sing in Japanese (check her singing in Japanese here). I would love to know if she speaks Japanese fluently, since she is into Japanese fashion as well as classy street-style. I wish her the very best in her journey and hope she achieve all of her dreams. You can find some of her videos on YouTube and her Facebook fan page here.

© Gavin Hellier

On the right you will notice a beautiful woman from the eastern side of the Omo Valley in Southern Ethiopia. They are called Hamer, and they have wonderful looking locks that are usually coated with ochre mud and animal fat. It is not unusual to see a man braiding another man's hair. These people are well known for they colored tresses known as "goscha", which is a sign of health and welfare in their tribe.

They cultivate wild honey, sorghum, vegetables, millet, tobacco and cotton as well as rearing cattle and goats. They will stay for a few months wherever there is enough grass for grazing, putting up their round huts. Their huts are constructed with flexible poles set in the ground in a circular pattern. The structures are then covered with thatch during the dry season and canvas mats during the rainy season. When the land is exhausted or overwhelmed by weeds, they will move on to new pasture grounds.

Before a man can be declared a man or get married, he must pass a test the westerner called "the bull jumping ceremony" which is basically the man running over the back of castrated male cattle four times. These cattle are always held by young men, and since these cattle are castrated, the risks are very minimal. Even when the men do pass the test of manhood, they don't automatically get married, since the price to get married is very high. So usually you see many woman married to men that are quite older than them.

Though these tribe used to be isolated form the world, these pastoral warrior tribe are being increasing open to tourists, which can prove fetal to their ago-old traditions by bringing to much exposed to the westerner way of life.


© Marcello Scotti - All rights reserved


© Marcello Scotti - All rights reserved

 ©Michael Poliza







If sisterlocks weren't around, I would have been very tempted to get something very similar to this style minus the mud and animal fat ^_-. This post is leading to a super helpful post in the future, so please keep a look out.

Visit Sisterlocks.com

I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Cornwell personally and I thought she was a very nice and soft spoken in person. Meeting her after I got my sisterlocks install helped me better understand my sisterlocks, since I was wondering if my sisterlocks was unhealthy small.

JoAnne Cornwell lives in San Diego, California and is from Detroit, Michigan. She is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies and French at San Diego State University. She has researched African descended cultures worldwide, and understands how deeply hair issues relate to cultural identity. This understanding was the driving force behind her decision to found her trademark company, Sisterlocks™. Today Dr. Cornwell is an active member of the American Hairbraiders and Natural Haircare Association. She lectures widely on topics related to cultural expression in Africa and in the African Diaspora, as well as Sisterlocks.

While researching JoAnne Cornwell, I stumble across the lawsuit that happen between her company and nappyloc.com, and it was a bit of unnerving read. I know I only talk to her briefly, but she honestly seem like a nice person. Anyway...she end up losing the case against nappyloc.com, and I wanted to understand why.

I read that she did not patent her tools or her technique (which is properly why she lost the case) but I still thought that was very strange and can't possibly be true??  So I went on a hunt and started to search the patent database to see if her tools can be brought up and it didn't (Example: I was able to find lock loop & nappy locs tool easily). Since I was not able to get the patent information from the database, I went to sisterlocks.com site to see if she reference anywhere about a patent on her tools or technique, and all I was able to come up with was "Sisterlocks is a trademark company founded in 1993." I was able to verify her trademark here.

Now don't get me wrong, her tools are unique, and if you tried to make your own and sell it, she may be able to sue you because she has prior usage. It's just interesting that her tools and technique may not be truly "patent." I will modify my "What Does The Sisterlocks Tool Like" post until someone can verify for sure that she has those tools patent (I don't like misinforming people). If sisterlocks doesn't own a patent for the technique or the tools, how are so many of us so misinformed??
Not many information are available about her personal life, which has me assuming that she is a very private person. I will always admire her for being the business woman she is and wish her the very best in whatever plans she wants to undertake. I do hope one day she listens to the feedbacks and complaints that are geared toward her company, and takes those as a positive feedback to grow her business even more.


Who would have taught it was be so hard to find professional looking pictures of the creator of Sisterlocks by herself. Above is the only picture that I could find that fit this blog template, and look nice.

Please note that all pictures are copyright by Joanne Cornwell. You can visit her company website at Sisterlocks.com.

When I first saw Tayarisha picture (don't know if it was on tumbler or pinterest), her sisterlocks look so lovely, yet I had no idea who she was. This is seemed to be a common occurrence when you are a blogger, and you are blogging about your experience etc. I really do like knowing where certain pictures come from, and reading the stories behind them, and I was hoping to find hers. Well I was finally able to track the person with the amazing sisterlocks, and below is a brief intro about her.

Her name is Tayarisha Poe and she was born in Philadelphia, and is currently attending Swarthmore College located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (which is very impressive). She loves telling stories, making movies, and taking photos. She is majoring in Visual Ethnography, which I think rock, since I love seeing sisters in the creative field. She also happens to be another young woman who was lucky enough to be natural all her life due to her mother influence. She has been sisterlocks since she was 15 years old and doesn't regret it for a min.

Her favorite product she uses to maintain her hair is as followed: She uses the Organix Shampoos lines to wash her locks (she has used more then one of their products). To condition, she uses Shea Moisture Raw Shea Butter Conditioning Milk (as a leave in conditioner). Her go to style is the braid out, which she does while it wet, and often used Shea Moisture’s Curl & Style Milk to maintain the hold. For her scalp, she uses coconut & castor oil. She highly believes that drinking plenty of water contributes to long healthy looking sisterlocks.







I love photography, and so admire her style of photos. She is a very talented young woman, and her photos are sooo expressive. You can find out more about her on her blog here. If you want to check out her awesome talent check out her photography here & her videos here.

Famous Sisterlocks Photo ^_^

Tuere is well known on the internet for her sisterlocks. Not many people know she is an artist as well. When I first started researching sisterlocks, her pictures was one of many that inspired me to lock. I always hoped that one day my locks would eventually turn out like hers. With that in mind, it has proved very difficult to find information about Tuere, and it took me a while to gather the information below, so I really hope you guys enjoy this post.

Tuere is an independent artist who writes, arranges, produces, and performs her music. At a young age, Tuere was destined for musical success by playing instruments ranging from the violin to the piano at the mere age of 3, and at the age of 8, she began songwriting. She released her debut album in 2005 title Tueraium, which included numerous tracks displaying her diverse musical talent from French-spoken vocals to funky soulful sounds. Right now she still works out of her home studio in Atlanta, and spend time with her husband and two children. You can listen to her music here and visit her blog/site here.

She hasn't updated her site for a while now, but her last post talk about cutting her sisterlocks, and I can't find her online via Facebook or any social media venue beside MySpace & Twitter. So if any of my viewers knows her or have seen her recently, please share what you can about her in the comments section below. From her MySpace & Twitter page, she appears to still has her sisterlocks, so for now I will assume she still have her sisterlocks.

VeryFunnyLady.com

When I first started researching sisterlocks, one of the blogs I ran into was Leighann's Sisterlocks. She had some amazing long sisterlocks that she maintains herself. I followed her for years, and when I started doing the twitter bit, I started to follow her there as well. She later launches her main site, and didn't update her blog as much, but I still would visit her blog form time to time for inspiration. Below is brief information about Leighann.

Her name is Leighann Lord....and that name itself is amazing. She is a stand-up comedian (Comedy Central, HBO, The View, Si TV), writer (The Huffington Post, Stagetime Magazine), a culture commentator (Fox News.com, MSNBC, CNN), and natural hair enthusiast. You can visit her on the following site VeryFunnyLady.com to find out more about her upcoming shows, watch her videos, and much more. She graduated from Baruch College, City University of New York, with a BA degree in journalism and creative writing. She was accepted into the City College MFA Creative Writing Program, but deferred admission to pursue a career in stand-up comedy.

I think she is hilariously funny, and her sisterlocks look amazing as usually. You can visit her sisterlocks blog here.

Caramel a la mode (www.caramelalamode.com)

I swear every time I visit her blog, I want to color my sisterlocks so bad. Her coloring is always on point, and her sisterlocks are so beautiful. Looking through her post, and reading a couple post about her, made me able to briefly summarize how she became sisterlocked. That is what I love about following people on blog, you find out about others that you wouldn't even know about on an average day.

Please check out her blog to see more of her lovely sisterlocks, and her wonderful sense of fashion.

About Tynette
Tynette (Caramel a la mode) is a 22 year old college grad that has always been natural. Growing up, her mother never believed in perm (relaxer), and was very strongly against it. Tynette wasn’t too happy about her mom decision as far as perms were concern in the beginning, since she always wanted to wear her own hair as the girls that are commonly portray in the media.

The summer she turned 10, she was introduce to a woman named Ms. Gwen by her mom, who really explain to her why perm were such a damaging route to go. After that visit, she never asks her mom for a perm again. Ms. Gwen then became her natural hair stylist, by doing two strand twists, braid outs, blow outs, etc.

For the first time, she really started to appreciate her natural hair. Near the end of that same summer, Tynette was introduced to the locking system of Sisterlocks. She instantly fell in love, and wanted to have sisterlocks install immediately. After asking her mom, and having to write an essay about why she wanted sisterlocks, she had her sisterlocks install on December 18, 2000. She had her sisterlocks for about 13 years now and still doesn’t regret that decision.

She love the Taliah Waajid line of products, and use Crinkles & Curls & Lock it Up to do her crinkles (result from braid outs), bantu knots for her curls or waves. She uses the Protective Mist Bodifier to keep her sisterlocks nice and moisturized. As for her hair color, she uses Naturtint 10N to color her hair, and does a color refresh about 2-3 times a year. Below are my favorite pictures of her sisterlocks.








Her story will no doubt match my daughter story as well. Right now I refuse to perm her hair. I do blow outs for her, and I also do different styles so she doesn’t get bored with her hair, but she already asking me for sisterlocks. When she gets a little older, I will ask her to do an essay, and do her research about sisterlocks before having them install on her. Sisterlocks for her thick, and long hair will be a major investment for me, and I want to be sure she really wants it.