Locken for Freedom – a tribute to my curls and to David Hasselhoff

When I was born in the winter of 1977, with a fuzz of curly carrot-blond hairs on my baby head, my father asked: “It’s not staying like that, is it?” By that he meant, my psychologist and I agreed, the conspicuous beginnings of a Struwwelpeter-esque hairdo on my baby head.

What was totally sweeeeeeet as a child degenerated into a crisis zone as a teen, and was a thing that hairdressers were always hard-pressed to tame. After all, instead of giving way to a cool “curly” frizz like Justin Timberlake had, letting it grow on me led to a nasty hairdo that would have gone over well at best in the heavy metal fan corner of the schoolyard. That’s not my scene, and so my battle of the curls began.

From then on, my unruly mop of hair was regularly trimmed, tamed with straightening irons, shaved as if I was looking to join a monastic sect, dyed nicotine yellow or black, or adorned with stripes shaved into the sides.

During the pandemic, I kept shaving it almost down to the scalp at first to keep the natural frizz more or less webcam-compatible. But then I grew tired of that, which was when I remembered my dad’s comment: “Is it staying like that?” Yes, I thought 43 years later, it’s staying. Just like that. From one moment to the next – cue drum roll and Hollywood violins – I made my peace with the hair my genes had intended for me. More than that, I celebrated it. I let it grow for months, and after washing it, instead of using sticky wax, I merely kneaded a leave-in conditioner into it and let my handiwork air-dry. All of a sudden, my curls curled exactly the way I had always wanted them to before. Perhaps they just needed a few decades to get used to me.

Today, when I think of all the time and energy I invested in their oppression, I sing (with the window closed) a hit song from my youth: “I’ve been Locken for freedom, I’ve been Locken so looooong …” Of course, this play on words only really works in German. But just imagine me doing the Hasselhoff in front of the mirror.

Siems Luckwaldt is in charge of the luxury and lifestyle sections of the “Capital” and “Business Punk” magazines. For the past five years, Siems, who was born in Hamburg, has been enjoying rural life in Schleswig-Holstein. He remains true to his rediscovered curly hair.

This column has first been published in the printed version of 30 Grad in spring 2021.