Boldly bald

For as long as I can remember the second thoughts in my head became too overwhelming to handle, I'd dig out a piece of my hair and hold onto it for dear life. I would take a strand like it was a flotation device thrown out to me at sea and aggressively start twirling. This type of self soothing was something that happened subconsciously and I never seemed to take notice until a classmate of mine pointed it out to me. We were in seventh grade and she asked me ‘why I twirled my hair like that’. I distinctly remember telling her I do it when I'm thinking. From that point on when she saw me twirling she'd ask me what I was thinking about more as a rhetorical question to point out that I was ridiculously twirling my hair again.

I had been considering shaving my head clean for a while before biting the bullet and finally doing it. Reading Gloria Steinman’s 'Revolution From Within' with the backdrop of Latin America’s strict gender roles only strengthened my conviction and fury towards this long hair trope I'd been figuratively and literally clinging onto. Even with this fury I still did not have the courage needed to walk into the local barbershop in Socorro, Columbia swarmed with men hanging out and blasting reggae-ton music. I bopped to the music every time I walked by but couldn’t possibly enter this male-dominated space and start spewing about a head shave in my broken Spanish. Besides, I had a wedding coming up and I had convinced myself that a shaved head would throw off the symmetry of the bridal party photos. But really I hadn't yet mustered up the strength I needed to dwarf other’s and possibly my own inevitable judgement.

The day I finally did it was in big part due to the support of a great friend. At this point I was back in Brooklyn after the wedding. We had walked into two different women's hair salons, one that didn’t cut, only braided and another that didn’t have clippers, before eventually settling for the local men's barber shop. It was wildly intimidating to enter an all male space as a female and ask for a buzz, especially after the looks stylists in the women’s spaces gave me.

After sitting outside of the barbershop and shooting the shit with my friend, I finally swung open the door and simply stared at the stylists as he was working away on another customer. He looked up at me and I decided the first thing I needed to clarify was 'it’s for me, it's not for him.' My male friend was standing right next to me. He refused to ask for me and jokingly claimed it would sound like a punishment coming out of his mouth. The stylist stared back at me in silence with his chin slightly bent down towards his current customer.

'I’m looking to get my hair buzzed,' I tentatively stated.

'All of it?' he seemed fully perplexed.

'Yes.'

'For you?' He needed to clarify.

'Yes.'

'All sides cut?'

'Yes.' There was no backing out now.

The lady in the chair quietly giggled to herself.

'Alright take a seat' he stated monotonically. It was finally happening.

As I sat in the styling chair I couldn’t help but nervously laugh. I was profusely sweating the whole time which didn’t help with the slight embarrassment that came from being completely out of my comfort zone. The barber started immediately with the clippers and skipped scissors all together. It felt kind of odd having something cutting my hair so close to my head. About five minutes later I had a mean 70’s mullet and about twenty minutes after that, my security blanket was gone. All the compliments over the years I’d gotten on my hair, all the styles I played around with to try and step into slightly altered identities and all the days I felt ugly but figured ‘at least my hair looks good’ were now behind me. I would have to find it within myself to be striking and sexy but most of all still feel feminine without my head hair.

I'm not as well versed in women’s history or feminist history as I would like to be to know when exactly we as a race switched from revering women as Gods to demanding they wane on their rights and take care of the children and men at home all the while looking stunning. In my opinion, it all gets to be too much! So my unsolicited advice to any woman out there, is take a seat and take a load off, that load being all of your head hair of course.