Why I Want to Shave My Head

1. Because my hair does not determine my femininity
2. Because I do not need to confine to normal gender roles
3. Because the longer my hair gets the more likely I am to hide behind it
4. Because I can

The last time I had my hair that short I felt the freest and most comfortable with myself and as it gets longer and longer my self confidence decreases and I find myself hiding within myself. Even though I hated the process of growing it out I think it’s worth it to have it shaved. There is something liberating in feeling the weightlessness of no hair.

One of the fears my mother instilled into me is that people will think I’m a boy if I cut my hair and that initially held me back for a while. I would look at pictures of girls with shaved heads and a lot of the time they would be wearing makeup (I don’t) so they would retain their societally defined femininity and it scared me to think I could loose mine. Yet now I realize that doesn’t matter. So what if people think I’m a boy, that literally does not matter nor does it impact my life in any negative way. I’m doing this so I can be happy and content with myself, not so I can please anybody else.

I wrote this first part before my head was shaved. Now it’s all gone and I’ve lived with it for months. This is what I’ve learned.

1. People will give their opinions on your hair. For me these have been nice, mostly supportive but there have been a few backhanded compliments or straight up distaste for it. My grandfather is the most opposed to it.
2. I have to shave it very often. At least once every week, but ideally every week. When I think it looks over grown though most people don’t see a difference.
3. I think people are scared of me. I kind of have resting bitch face and people seem nervous to work with me in class, but now that I’ve made friends they see how nice I am. For some reason no hair seems to equate to not nice.
4. No one thinks I look like a boy, but I’ve discovered that gender doesn’t really suit me. I’d rather not be a boy or a girl yet I’m still stuck in this binary that doesn’t feel quite right. It’s a weird feeling, but I don’t know how to really equate this into words.

It’s very nice to have no hair, it feels so freeing and invigorating. I can take on the world. But the word does not want me to take it. It’s not that I’m being discriminated against, but there are not the same opportunities I had when I had collar bone length hair. And that was not the same as when I had long blonde hair. It’s weird how society values hair, who decided that long hair is the standard for women?

Will society ever move forward to be inclusive of different ideas and gender identities? At this rate it feels like it will take literally forever. The Earth will probably be dead before people are truly accepted. We will be living on some other planet with a similar landscape and gravity level and everyone will feel loved. Unfortunately, I won’t be alive then. I hope the new planet is taken care of as well as the residents are. I hope we get to that point sooner, obviously, but with the current administration and the way human beings are being treated all around the world on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, skin color, etc. I don’t see that happening in my lifetime.