One year ago my hair hung well below my shoulders. Now it’s a half an inch. I’m not entirely sure what drove me to want to shave my head. One friend said it is a natural reaction to a time of crisis in one’s life and a want to start anew. Other friends attest it to my girl-crush on Natalie Portman who rocked a shaved head in V for Vendetta. I can’t remember when I got serious about wanting to shave my head, but my freshman year roommate told me that I’ve been talking about it since I met her, though I suspect that those conversations were a reaction to the constant shedding of six females in our shower.
I’ve gone through different styles of hair in the past year. I’ve had straight bangs, side bands, a layered bob, and a pixie cut most recently. I also had a blue section in the back before that. I guess I get bored easily. It’s interesting that I don’t see new hair as changing my identity, but others do. When I first got a pixie cut, I was suddenly categorized as “alternative” by guys I met and a prospective lesbian by girls I met. Unexpectedly I was hit on by girls AND guys more than I had been in the past.
When I first took the short hair plunge I wrote, “Not to overanalyze dead skin cells, but chopping off most of my hair has been one of the most liberating things I have ever done. Though I think that I’ve lookedbetter with other haircuts, I feel more beautiful than I ever have and it is wonderful.” No matter how great I was feeling, I had no illusions that I would look as good as Natalie Portman or Sinead O’Connor with a shaved head–I actually feared people would think I was sick or a neo-Nazi. I even touched my head constantly to assure that I had no major bumps or an oddly shaped skull. I made my roommate and my friend Justin watch an extraneous amount of YouTube videos entitled “Hot girl shaves head” and “Boyfriend shaves girls head.”
Despite my fears of coming off as a crazy neo-Nazi, I bid my hair “au revoir” in a West Village G bathroom while Don, a member of the crew team who I hadn’t met until about an hour earlier, slowly buzzed my head and my hair fell off in piles into the sink.
I had planned to shave my head that week as a final task in an expedited bucket list of 40 challenges I had made for myself. However, during RSA’s Sex Week photo shoot I decided that posing naked wasn’t enough, I also wanted to be bald. (The shaved head was conducive to the theme of the picture.) My friends Veronica and Nick videotaped me and luckily didn’t shrink away in horror after it was done.
Looking into the mirror was one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had–not because being almost bald was shockingly different, but because I couldn’t remember what I had looked like before. I’ve had a lot of people say the same thing and even more say that they actually like my hair better this way since it makes my “eyes pop.”
Do I feel less feminine? Quite the contrary. My confidence has actually shot up. I feel like if I can walk around with an inch of hair and feel good, I must be pretty okay. Like everyone else I have “bad hair days” but instead of my hair looking bad (since it really doesn’t change much) those are just days that I wish I had longer hair for a certain outfit or event.
My hair is now in the awkward growing–out stages where there are some tufts growing more quickly than others, but Justin allows me to use his buzzers to deal with those. I still use entirely too much shampoo and conditioner (which I still am not sure I even need), unnecessarily wrap a towel on my head post-shower and I am still surprised when people rub my head without asking. I’m getting used to having to wear hats inside cold classrooms. The benefits of having hair-tie free wrists, bobby pin free bathroom floors and hairspray free mornings are worth the cold draft.
It’s funny when other girls hear that I shaved my hair off because I chose to. They often tell me that I’m “bold” or “ballsy” and that they wish they had my confidence. Some even confess that they’ve always wanted to shave their head but insist, “ I could never pull that off.”
I tell them that if that’s completely false and once you do it, and do it with confidence, you can absolutely pull off a short haircut. And as cliché as it sounds, I think the same is true for everything you want to do but are afraid to try–take the plunge, do it with confidence and you will rock it.