I

n May of 2019, I sat staring at my 
reflection in a small rectangular 
mirror. I pulled my hair back 
tightly, entangling my fingers within locks 
of hair. Staring at my complexion I saw 
a round, egg-shaped face and pale pink 
lips that were cracked from unseasonably 
cold weather. I ran my hands through my 
hair, letting it fall to my shoulders. Some 
intertwined pieces coiled around one 
another forming knots. I laughed at the 
knots. It was a tangle of time — or it would 
be the last tangle for some time. Again, I 
pulled my hair back, asking myself “Will I 
like it? Why does that really matter?” 
The material security of a full head of 
hair blocked my ability to fully interrogate 
my relationship with it. It was a weight 
that shackled me into a performance of 
failed conformity. I wanted to rid myself of 
this performance — who am I rehearsing 
for? A week of heavy risk assessment left 
me embracing potential repercussions 
of shaving my head — which included 
frustrating 
my 
conservative 
family, 
accepting a new mirror image and being 
more vulnerable in public. 
Three friends came into the room and 
placed a pair of crafting scissors on the 
table in front of me. My untrained hands 
hacked away ropes of black hair, which 
swiftly entered freefall and landed in 
their ultimate resting place on the wooden 
floor. In one minute, I saw my face in an 
uneven set of bangs, an unnerving mullet 
and an asymmetrical pixie cut. With the 
haphazard smock left sitting on my head, 
the buzz of hair clippers began to drown 
out all sounds. 
The buzz stimulated a brief moment 
of regret. It was a buzz that represented 
both an aesthetic and a desire to be free 
of an aesthetic. It sounded through my 
self-destructive construction, adhered to 
my adolescent reflection and battled with 
my blemished foundation of femininity. 
The buzz oscillated in the room, vibrating 
through my hands, drumming in my ears 
and filling my eyes with curiosity — what 
a fragile form of finery hair is. 
I sat there looking at myself, not feeling 
as though the motions of my arms swiping 
the clippers back and forth were my own. 
I was looking at the mirror, but felt like 
I was sitting front row at a hazy film 
showing, in which I was the protagonist.
My head felt like soft carpet. 
Hot tears leapt from my cheeks in the 
overwhelming moment of instantaneous 
change, of complex austerity. I was 
reintroduced to myself in the small 
rectangular mirror. 

In the last decade, more women and 
non-binary 
folks 
have 
shaved 
their 
heads in an effort to subvert mainstream 
heteronormative 
and 
patriarchal 
beauty standards. At the same time, 
the mainstream media focus on this 
trend has consistently highlighted those 
who meet Eurocentric and/or feminine 
beauty standards. In January 2018, the 
pages of beauty magazine Allure were 
adorned with glamorous pictures of high-
fashion models for a feature about women 
who shaved their heads as a sartorial 
statement. Similarly, the New York Times 
shared stories of female models who 
shaved their heads — again perpetuating 
the idea that a buzzcut is only a fashionable 
hairstyle if you have a femme face or “the 
right head shape.” 
LSA senior Taylor Luthe (she/her) 
decided to shave her head twice in the 
summer of 2019. She agreed that many 
of the bald women that are perceived 
as beautiful had features that were 
stereotypically female. During that time, 
she noticed parts of herself that made her 
sometimes insecure about the decision.
“It was hard seeing little parts and 
pieces of your body, like in pictures, in 
the mirror, and not having ever seen those 
before. And then really over-analyzing 
those. Like ‘Oh, is that what the back of my 
neck looks like? Is there a roll?’ ” 
Even as a radical feminist, Taylor 
acknowledged that she held deep-rooted 
ideas of gendered beauty. She asked herself, 
“Who do I need to feel feminine for? Why 
do I need to embody these characteristics 
if I already feel okay within myself about 
who I am and how I act in the world?”
A shaved head has not, and will never 
be, reserved for those with “suitable” 
features. Promoting this narrative over 
others excludes those who shave for 
gender expression, sexual orientation or 
freedom from gendered beauty. Though 
it is perfectly acceptable to buzz for a 
fashion look, media outlets that fail to 
include varying perspectives, identities 
and experiences beyond runway trends 
continue to silence individuals who have 
been harmed by a binary promotion of 
beauty. 
The physical action of shaving one’s 
head is the same for everyone, but the 
reasons behind the decision are beautifully 
dissimilar. For LSA sophomore Aldo Pando 
Girard (he/they), hair has been something 
that has always separated them from their 
peers. “It was a big thing for me to be like 
no white people are going to touch my 
hair, ever, period, at all,” Aldo said. 

Aldo is Cuban and Black, and has 
experimented with a variety of hairstyles 
throughout their college career. From 
box braids to waves, changes in their hair 
have often left friends initially disoriented 
upon seeing them.
“It’s been weird making big changes to 
my hair and people not recognizing me, 
that has been very surreal,” they said. “My 
hair is just pretty closely tied to how I view 
myself and how I can express myself.” 
As someone who is gender fluid and 
likes to stretch and surpass traditional 
masculine 
beauty 
ideals, shaving their 
head made Aldo feel 
as though they had 
less control over their 
outward perception. 
It made them feel 
more masculine and 
publicly 
perceived 
as masculine, even 
when 
they 
had 
the 
desire 
to 
be 
androgynous.
LSA senior Leena 
Ghannam 
(they/
them) shaved for a 
more 
androgynous 
look. 
Their 
relationship 
with 
their hair has been 
“antagonistic” 
partly due to their 
hometown. 
“To 
have 
curly 
hair or kinky hair, 
especially 
because 
I grew up in a town 
that 
was 
majority 
white, I did not feel 
comfortable with the 
texture of my hair, 
and the quantity of it 
also,” Leena said.
They are from a 
Palestinian 
family 
that holds traditional ideals about the 
female appearance. When shaving their 
head, the “fear of family reaction” was a 
pressing thought. But the action ultimately 
aided 
in 
healing 
that 
“tumultuous” 
relationship they had with their hair, 
making the threat of family backlash a 
worthy fight. “It felt like a weird worship 
of hair, or an appreciation of it, but also 
a castration of it. It helped me develop a 
much better relationship with my hair,” 
they said. 
In 
addition 
to 
looking 
more 
androgynous, Leena also shaved to help 

prevent the symptoms of trichotillomania 
— a somatic symptom of anxiety and OCD 
that causes an uncontrollable urge to 
pluck hair.
My desire to shave my head was similar 
to Leena’s. At age thirteen, I started losing 
the hair on my head from trichotillomania. 
The idiomatic expression “I want to 
pull my hair out” exposes a real and 
diagnosable disorder. 
A 
2002 
University 
of 
Wisconsin–
Madison study found at least 13 percent 
of adults in the United States engage 

in 
body-focused 
repetitive 
behaviors 
(BFRBs). Of the 13 percent, an estimated 
one to two percent of the population has 
trichotillomania. I didn’t meet someone 
with this disorder until I was 20 years old. 
We cried, hand-in-hand, understanding 
one another without words. 
Hair-pulling triggered my first head-
shaving fantasies. The only place where 
it was socially acceptable for women to 
be hairy was your head, and my scalp 
was being picked clean. The strands that 
sprouted from my head were of varying 
lengths after years of plucking in high 

school. A healthy mane only seemed 
attainable if I buzzed it down to the root, 
but the thought of being a teenage girl 
with a shaved head in a religious and 
conservative 
community 
deterred 
all 
plans of execution. My body only became 
a vehicle for expression once I entered 
college. 
My parents were not happy the first time 
I came home with a buzzcut. My mom’s 
first questions were: “What’s wrong? Are 
you gay? Why did you do this?” Though I 
knew the reasons behind my decision, it 

was hard to come home to a place where 
my appearance was not only unacceptable 
but also immediately and constantly 
questioned.
The history of shaved heads is one that 
is full of freedom — but also deviance. 
It’s been used to physically display an 
entrance into a group or an obliteration 
of individuality — a social tariff on social 
interactions. The common associations of 
shaved heads are of religious conformity, 
military admission or a chemotherapy 
patient. Throughout history and in most 
places, women and men have parted 

with their hair for reasons of religious 
purification, 
public 
humiliation 
or 
cultural erasure. 
For instance, after World War II, French 
women accused of sleeping with German 
soldiers were publicly humiliated by 
having their heads shaved. “The shorn 
women” were forced to walk through the 
streets bald, with swastikas painted on 
their bodies. Some 20,000 women were 
shamed in the streets. 
During 
the 
Atlantic 
Slave 
Trade, 
Africans were captured by colonizers and 
their hair was cut 
off. 
This 
signified 
an 
eradication 
of 
personality 
and 
culture, as head and 
hair adornment was 
a fundamental part of 
one’s wardrobe.
These 
dark 
histories still inform 
perceptions 
of 
shaved heads, even 
though 
practicality, 
convenience, 
androgyny 
and 
style are now the 
predominant factors. 
LSA junior Hannah 
Meyers 
(she/they) 
has shaved their head 
three times in their 
life. The last time 
they 
shaved 
their 
head, it was because 
of a bad bleach and 
hair-coloring 
job. 
Even in the messy 
moment, 
shaving 
their head was saving 
their hair. 
“I feel like the 
Britney 
moment 
came before the head 
shaving, and the head 
shaving was like the 
reclaiming of the moment,” they said. “It 
was starting over.”
Recently, she entered the workforce 
as a middle school student teacher. 
Hair is used as a uniform for students 
and 
teachers 
alike. 
Students 
with 
nonconforming hairstyles can be subject 
to expulsion. Teachers can be fired for not 
setting appropriate examples. But Hannah 
believes that their choices regarding body 
and head hair will be a model for younger 
children.
“I am questioning what it means to be 
hairy or not hairy in the workforce. I want 

to be a public school teacher, I’m getting 
certified for middle or high school. I’m 
not sure which one I would prefer yet,” 
Hannah said. “Working with young kids 
who are just forming their opinions, I 
think it’s important to have people who 
they look up to who they see different 
options of what to do with their hair.” 
At the first extended family gathering 
since my buzzcut, my grandmother came 
up to me, smiled and said I looked like 
“an Italian opera singer.” I was incredibly 
surprised. I had already put up defenses, 
practicing half-true explanations for the 
buzzcut. When my grandmother was 
growing up in Italy in the 1930s and 40s, 
the common hairstyle for women was a 
short cut. The disparity between how my 
mother and grandmother reacted to my 
hair must have been due to the fluctuating 
ideals of femininity and hair. 
In 2016, Time magazine talked to 
historians who track the social and 
gendered history of hair. Long hair was 
a status symbol as complex hairstyles 
require the help of another person 
demonstrating wealth and power. In the 
U.S., though, women began cutting their 
hair into bobs during World War I, a trend 
attributed to military nurses adopting 
shorter cuts for convenience and hygiene. 
In the 1920s, many American schools 
and churches rallied against flappers 
for “acting like men.” A shaved head has 
never formally been an accepted style for 
women. A woman’s hair has long been 
regarded as the key to her femininity and 
a persuasive symbol of her sexuality. 
Zoe Cutler (she/her) is a graduate 
student at the School of Music, Theatre 
& Dance. As a trans woman, Zoe’s chosen 
hairstyle has much more to do with her 
identity as a lesbian. She never actually 
shaved her hair, but keeps a short hairstyle 
to “lean into the butch aesthetic,” and to 
“establish a specific genre of womanhood.”
“I think originally, I was trying to lean 
into some more classic model or like a 
mainstream model of womanhood that 
wasn’t really working for me in various 
ways. And so that was something that I 
could latch onto,” Zoe said. 
Femininity 
has 
invariably 
been 
synonymous with long hair, but the regular 
removal of body hair is a relatively recent 
phenomenon, gaining steam in the 1970s 
during Second Wave Feminism. Former 
Atlantic writer Nadine Ajaka traces the 
original campaign against women’s hair to 
Darwin’s evolutionary theory in the mid-
nineteenth century where scientists were 
determined to show hairiness in women as 

“indicative of deviance” from femininity 
and the white race. 
Heavy-handed marketing techniques 
from companies, like Gillette, convinced 
adolescent girls that a women’s right of 
passage included shaving your legs. Those 
girls became our mothers’ mothers, and 
our mothers brought the idea into this 
generation — an oral tradition. 
Recently, Gillette was criticized for 
the “pink tax” they placed on female hair 
removal products. The “pink tax” refers 
to the price disparity between men and 
women’s commercial hygiene products. 
I can’t remember the exact day I 
started attaching abstract ideas to the 
presence of natural hairs growing from 
my body, but once my classmates could 
label me in one word — hairy — my 
reflection was no longer an impression 
of my appearance, but instead a place of 
personal scrutiny. All my features were 
up for reevaluation. My Mediterranean 
and Arabic genealogy was not forgiving 
in an era that idolized and still idolizes 
hairlessness. 
With leftover lunch money in my 
pocket, I would bike to CVS half a mile 
from my house and buy Sally Hansen Body 
Hair Bleach Cream – Extra Strength. In 
those impatient 13 minutes, my arm hair 
was lightening and my skin was faintly 
burning, but my excitement was rising. 
From ages nine to 19 I tried plucking, 
shaving, waxing, threading, chemically-
removing, lasering and bleaching most 
of the hair on my body. These removal-
rituals began prior to my understanding 
that the male gaze was the origin of the 
assault on women’s body hair. 
The regrowth of my shaved head 
has been a space for me to interrogate 
gendered beauty ideals. A shaved head does 
eventually grow back, but the experience 
has left me with a permanent introspection 
of my reflection’s foundation. There was a 
time when I ran around with a dark brown 
bob and a set of bangs that would tickle my 
eyelids in the weeks my mother forgot to 
trim them. And that’s all hair was to me. 
The unlearning process is slow, but I am 
confident knowing that the presence of 
hair on my head or body — or lack thereof 
— will not play a role in defining my 
femininity.

Catherine Nouhan is a senior studying 
English and Philosophy. She is the former 
Podcast Managing Editor at the Michigan 
Daily and can be reached at cnouhan@
umich.edu.

Wednesday, January 29, 2020 // The Statement
4B
5B
Wednesday, January 29, 2020 // The Statement

ILLUSTRATION BY JONATHAN WALSH

BY CATHERINE NOUHAN, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
A shaved head will grow back

COURTESY OF CATHERINE NOUHAN

