Anthony Payne

The ballroom scene has been infiltrated and most people are too scared to say it out loud.
If you really want to understand how we got here, go back to who started pushing femme queens out. Who was fighting to get rid of Butch Queen Up in Drag and Junior Femme Queen? That whole process that used to exist before you could even claim full Femme Queen status.
We didn’t grow up with femme queens who were pressed about “being real.” The tea was being super passable… then the shock when they found out you were still that n***a. That was the point. That was the culture.
Now femme queens aren’t even being raised the same way. Instead you got butch queens and men-presenting people saying “don’t call me girl” when “girl” is something we throw around every other sentence. And now they’re trying to police how people can even read in the ballroom.
This scene was created by and for gay men. We were all gay men. Now everything feels so dimensional and strange that it’s starting to water the whole thing down — the same way it did when they removed those categories.
Bring the real femme queens back. Reading was always part of the culture. A real read shouldn’t be able to destroy you. If it does, that means you need to go back to the drawing board and get more confident in yourself. Too many people walking around egotistical as hell but can’t take criticism

Long hair is a personal project. It’s not your hairstylist’s project, girl.

Long hair is TEDIOUS. And the average salon schedule was never really designed around someone whose priority is preserving and growing a LOT of hair.

Your stylist may have 45 minutes to get you in, cut you, style you, and get to the next person. That doesn’t automatically give them the time—or the experience—to carefully assess super long hair, preserve every inch, perfect the layers, perfect the framing, and understand how YOUR hair behaves over time.

And honestly? Most hairstylists simply don’t get enough experience working with extremely long hair to develop that level of precision.

So if you have long hair and you REALLY care about keeping it long, you have to take some responsibility for it.

Learn your hair. Learn how to detangle it. Learn how to preserve your ends. Learn what your hair needs between appointments. And don’t just sit in anybody’s chair and let them start cutting because they have a license.

If you need your stylist to spend half a day carefully working through your hair, then BOOK HALF A DAY. Pay accordingly. Tell them beforehand: “I’m not looking for a quick haircut. I need you to take your time, explain what you’re doing, and prioritize preserving my length.”

Because if you want luxury-level attention, you have to create the conditions for it.

Otherwise, take charge of your own hair.

That’s exactly why I created my Dimensional Hair concept.

I’m giving you the knowledge to understand your own hair, maintain it between appointments, and stop making your entire hair journey dependent on somebody else.

Launching September 15th on YouTube.

Go to a stylist for styling.

But don’t let just anybody cut your hair.

PleassseeeeeA stay down!!!!

Yall im joking im sure oil SHEIN is a great fertilizer!

Deadass, I consider hair the flower of the body.

And I think we need to start respecting the fact that the hair ecosystem is actively trying to survive.

Your hair is growing out of living tissue. Your follicle is living tissue. Your scalp is living tissue.

So why are we constantly restricting it, pulling it back, slicking it down, reducing its volume, layering product after product onto it, and manipulating it into submission just so it can look “clean”?

We’re learning more and more about what these practices can mean for the body.

Certain hair products contain chemicals that can interfere with hormones, and research has found associations between frequent chemical straightener/relaxer use and uterine cancer. Researchers have also investigated connections between certain hair products and breast-cancer risk. (NIH Intramural Research Program)

And we already know that repeatedly putting tension and weight on follicles can cause traction alopecia—and eventually, that damage can become permanent. (American Academy of Dermatology)

So this isn’t about being anti-hair.

It’s about being pro-hair.

It’s about asking:

What does this ecosystem actually need to thrive?

Maybe the future of hair isn’t finding better ways to control it.

Maybe it’s learning when to leave it the f**k alone.

That plant is dead yall!

Americans are so funny about HAIR. 😂

I can cut a piece of hair off somebody—Black, white, whatever—and the second that little piece hits the floor or lands on the cape, they look at it like it just crawled out of a sewer. 😭

Like… darling.

THAT WAS JUST ON YOUR HEAD.

You were literally petting it 30 seconds ago.

And I think this says a LOT about how Americans think about cleanliness.

We like CLEAN. Clean floors. Clean parts. Clean scalp. Clean everything. We are constantly checking, separating, cleansing, scrubbing, sanitizing, organizing…

So when it comes to locs, I KNOW some of y’all have to be fighting demons. 😂

Because you can’t just get in between every strand and inspect everything. You can’t create that perfectly separated, freshly-cleaned appearance that we’re so accustomed to.

And historically, we’ve even used words like “dookie locs” to shame people because of the assumption that locs = dirty, smelly, unclean.

But then look at how meticulously some people groom their locs.

The parts are CLEAN. The scalp is CLEAN. The locs are maintained. Everything is sectioned and controlled.

I’m telling you, some of y’all would deep-clean the INSIDE of your locs if you could. 😂

So be honest…

American loc wearers: do you ever get weirded out by your own locs?

Or are you completely comfortable with your hair existing in its natural, accumulated state?

I’m curious. 👀

I don’t look at hair through curl charts.

I look at how hair moves through dimensions.

I see:

Hair that RISES.
Hair that SPREADS WIDE.
Hair that FALLS around the oval of the head.

Those are three completely different hair structures—and they create completely different grooming experiences.

The people who actually have hair that falls, swings, and grows long are often in GROOMING PRISON.

That hair grows like weeds. It just keeps coming.

Hair in your face.
Hair behind your ear.
Hair under your chin.
Hair in a ponytail.
Hair tucked.
Hair retucked.
Hair falling forward again three seconds later.

And yes, it’s cute to fidget with your hair and play with it all day.

But I don’t think humans were meant to spend their entire day managing their hair.

I want us to start looking at hair beyond length and texture and start understanding its dimensions, movement, structure, and behavior.

Because hair that rises has different possibilities than hair that spreads wide.

And hair that spreads wide has different possibilities than hair that falls around the oval.

None of them are better.

They just require different grooming strategies.

And this is where my education comes in.

I’m teaching people how to understand the hair they already have, instead of constantly trying to make it behave like somebody else’s.

Because you might not need longer hair.

You might need to understand how your hair flows through dimensions—and learn how to groom it accordingly.

That’s what we can start working on through my virtual consultations.

They making you all bald so AI can start doing your hair hats.

My Dimensional Trim is the missing piece in the hair-health conversation. Dry-feeling hair, high porosity, constant tangling, fairy knots, excessive breakage, and struggling to retain length are not always problems that need another product—they can be problems with the condition of the hair itself. My Dimensional Trim was created to address that.

I remove split ends from the shortest hairs to the longest, targeting the damaged ends while preserving your overall length, density, and shape. Because if you only trim the longest hairs, you leave shorter split ends behind—and those splits can continue traveling back up the hair shaft. You’re essentially leaving the problem behind to keep moving.

This is why I call it the gold. And honestly, I think that’s part of why this information hasn’t been emphasized in a market built around selling you another bottle, another treatment, another product. But not in this community. Not while I’m here. We’re going to actually learn our hair, identify the problems, and solve them.

The Afro has been so victimized and misunderstood for generations—even in predominantly Black places—and we’ve spent so much time trying to control, alter, and make it “presentable” that we haven’t been given enough time or information to understand how it actually thrives. I’m here to change that. The goal isn’t more products. The goal is healthier hair.

Wash day used to be CINEMATIC. 😂

Fresh aloe, beautiful bathrooms, glycerin, oils, the fancy little serum droppers… everything was giving high-end, high fashion, couture, darling.

And now? Wash day feels like a prison. 😭

You went from going months without shampooing and being perfectly fine to being told you MUST wash every 7 days.

But what if you went to the gym every day? What if you barely sweat? What if you spent all day outside? What if you did absolutely nothing?

Your scalp lives in the real world.

That’s why I believe in wash cycles, not wash schedules.

Your lifestyle, environment, activity and scalp should help determine when you cleanse—not whatever day you circled on the calendar.

And honestly, I think product consumption has played a HUGE role in creating these rigid routines. The more we put on the hair, the more we feel like we have to wash, refresh, layer and start over.

I’m not saying don’t style your hair. I understand wanting the look, chasing a bag, navigating professionalism, etc. But I DO want you to know that there’s another way.

I’m here to help you escape the uncomfortable grooming cycles and learn how to understand your own hair—especially if you want to experience your hair naturally air-dried, healthy, and on YOUR schedule.

🎥 I’m breaking all of this down on my YouTube.

And if you want personal support figuring out what that looks like for YOUR hair, that’s what I’m here for.

Now that the men are finally talking about how certain hair practices can contribute to traction alopecia in women, let’s talk about US too.

Because fellas… y’all have been accelerating the appearance of balding in our community with these constant fades, tapers, razor lineups, and keeping the front hairline perfectly carved every damn week.

And somehow nobody questions why we keep cutting away the very hair that naturally covers and protects the scalp.

I know y’all haven’t heard much about the relationship between scalp exposure, sun, grooming practices, and hair health—but think about where hair naturally grows on the body. Eyebrows. Eyelashes. Head. Body hair. Hair has a FUNCTION. It isn’t just decoration.

Our hair helps shield the body and scalp from the environment, including sun exposure. So when we continuously remove that coverage and keep the scalp exposed, I think we need to start asking what that environment is doing to the ecosystem underneath.

And no, I’m not saying every fade is going to make you bald.

I’m saying we’ve normalized keeping our hair as short as humanly possible and then acting surprised when the hairline starts retreating.

Sometimes the answer is literally: LET IT GROW.

We have to stop treating our natural hair like something that needs to be constantly corrected, carved, stretched, contained, or removed.

And fellas, I’m not telling you to walk around looking unkempt. I’m telling you there’s a difference between grooming your hair and constantly styling your hair into submission.

The women have work to do.
And so do we.

One step at a time, we have to start standing in the truth of our own hair.