Things I Learned From Going Bold And Bald As A 16 year Old Girl In The 21st Century

Pictured here is me and my dad in January 2016

Looking at past pictures of myself from the summer of 2015, I see a full figured girl with vibrant red hair that nearly reaches her butt in length. Looking at pictures of myself from last week (now 2016), I see a girl who is 20 pounds thinner, with significantly less hair on her head than before. Wow, the things that can change in a year’s time! Yet some things are still the same: I still identify as an intersectional feminist and I still love to shamelessly write articles about the current thoughts swirling in my mind. Going on this freeing journey of hair loss has made me come to many realizations on so many issues dealing with feminism and life itself. Here are some things I learned from going bold and bald as a 16 year old girl in the 21st century.

Pictured here is me during the fall of 2015

Having no hair brings up conversations nearly every time I’m in public. This gives me the perfect opportunity to raise awareness on both cancer and alopecia, two diseases that genetically run abundantly in my own family and even worldwide. Cancer is a disease defined by uncontrollable divisions of abnormal cells that can occur in nearly any part of the body. Cancer itself usually isn’t the cause of the telling hair loss that plagues so many of its victims, it’s actually the chemotherapy (medical drugs, commonly referred to as literal poisons, used to fight the cancer) that causes the hair loss. Alopecia is an autoimmune disease that many people don’t know about at all, which really bugs me. Autoimmune diseases begin when a malfunction occurs in your immune system. Your body begins to fight against your own healthy cells, quite literally your body is attacking itself from the inside out. Autoimmune diseases can affect nearly any part of the body also. Autoimmune diseases can run rampage in your body and family tree, they can be passed down generations and once you develop one autoimmune disease, you are at a high risk of also developing one or more other autoimmune diseases. Alopecia specifically attacks your healthy hair follicles, which causes significant amounts of hair loss. There are varying degrees of alopecia, some sufferers only lose hair on a small portion of their body. On the other hand, some people’s (my dad included – he is diagnosed with alopecia universalis) alopecia is so severe and damaging that it causes hair loss all over the body, even eyelashes, eyebrows, and nose hairs aren’t safe from the devastating effects of alopecia universalis. I was able to donate most of my hair to Children With Hair Loss, which supplies wigs to children who lose their hair. Being able to openly start intelligent conversations about diseases like cancer and alopecia is one of the most fulfilling things I’ve been able to achieve because of my lack of hair.

 Femininity is often (and wrongly) closely linked to hair length and style. A “boy haircut” is short and a “girl haircut” is long. Personally, I identify as female, but having such short hair has opened up my mind to discovering more fluid ways to express my gender. My short, buzzed hair goes great with makeup, dresses, and high heels, but it also goes great with men’s cologne and basketball shorts. I do notice a difference in how people treat me now that I can appear less feminine in their eyes. When I had long hair, I was constantly sexualized and felt pressured to have my hair styled in a way that reflected that. Think of the stereotypical perfect example of “femininity” society gives us: a white woman with long styled hair. Straighteners, hair dyes, and more hair products than I could count were just some of the parts of my previous hair routine. Since I’ve been able to drop all of that, people now describe me as “boyish” (I actually don’t mind being called that though) and at times, less desirable than I used to be with long hair. Ugh, as if something as simple as hair length has anything to do with sexual liberation and level of attraction.

I’ve had people look at me with judgmentalism (probably coming from a place of misunderstanding), assume I had a mental breakdown and “shaved my head for stress relief”, or that I was on my death bed. The attention, while rightfully given and not outright bad, I received for going bald was a little too much for my taste; social media ate it up and people wanted to take pictures of/with “the bald girl” and talk to her. Who knew not having hair would spike so many random people’s interest? It’s funny how much of a statement having no hair is to the teenage mind. “I could never pull off having no hair” “Just thinking about ever losing my hair makes me scared” “I’m way too attached to my hair to ever shave my head” are just some of the types of comments I’ve received from other people. Having something as trivial as your hair length so closely tied with your self esteem, gender expression, and sense of beauty is not healthy for self love. Think about all of the underlying self esteem issues and general fragility that are hiding behind those comments, no doubtedly placed there because of the ridiculous pressure from societal standards.

I’m actually really happy I got the amount of attention I did because it allowed me to spread awareness about the issues discussed in this article. Even something as trivial as hair length can become something meaningful if you let it. Of course, I’ve had many positive comments that outweigh the negative ones. The amount of awesome compliments from strangers and friends helped push me to be able to, at times, feel better about myself than I ever did with long hair. I was able to make something out of having no hair. While it is rather bold to embrace baldness like I did, it isn’t something negative, ugly, or undesirable in any way. Being a feminine person (16 years old at that) with super short hair makes me feel badass and as if I’m cheating the system – take that patriarchy! Making a statement in support of feminism with something as simple as my hair is beyond powerful and empowering. Yeah, I’m a girl with next to no hair and I’m still hot, desirable, and capable of self love. Don’t they say that bald is beautiful? How about that for a lesson on femininity and self esteem.