I, too, am a recent inductee to the
no hair club for women, and let me tell you I had no idea what a strange trip of inquiries it would invoke.
So, is it cancer?
This one's always a joke. Sometimes I almost say yes, almost almost almost, until I remember how disturbingly serious cancer is.
You look like... um... stammer...
My building maintenance guy, a sweet fellow, fumbled for a few minutes to try to find the right phrase. "A girl who... doesn't like boys..." "You mean like, a killer dyke?" Hee, hee. I get this, and the occasional considering look that signals it, more and more... I've stopped even trying to deny it - why bother? - and just take to gleefully informing my boyfriend from time to time that he's dating a lesbian who'll break his heart.
Why o why?
Everyone just has to know. Any other haircut gets me "oh, did you cut your hair? it looks nice.", but everyone neeeeeeds to know why I cut it really really short. Well, fair enough, I suppose. Head-shaving is representative of some big dramatic and quasi-religious catharsis, at least in popular culture, and I guess it's a little stunning to find in an otherwise mundane social relationship. Still, after the 27th time, it's hard to smile and say I just felt like it. I've fallen back to a few stand-bys:
I was just feeling a little light-headed.
It's cooler for the summer.
Oh, just time for a change.
Well, gee, it'd been two weeks, so it was time for a new hairstyle...
Oh, well, ever since I joined this cult...
oh, but it's not all bad:
...silence...
This is the reaction I like the most. The guys on the bus just don't LOOK! Yay! Perhaps a wistful glance now and then - maybe mourning the fact that god gave hairless lesbians breasts? Who knows! Who knows why they used to look! Who knows! Who knows! Boys are weird. But it's nice.
It looks nice. It brings out your face.
Thank you.
It's a strange, strange little play of reactions, both from the outside and the inside. Now that I'm used to a shorn head, now that I think of it when I conjure up the mental collage of "What do I look like?" I find I feel a little different. More confident walking down the street and more assertive at work towards the male bosses. It's like I'm Samsonella and the raw power and fact of my femininity was contained in my hair. Not my inner femaleness certainly, but certain gross aspects of the social fact of it - the absent-minded consideration of the possibilities of attack and harassment in public, the urge to be meek and subservient at work - have been drawn aside by the short hair. Bizarre and overdramatic. Yes. But so it goes. The profound catharsis and mind-altering effects associated with shaved hair in buddhist monks and the army and skinheads and dykes and on and on - maybe there's some truth to it. I feel a lot more tapped in to the whole hairless zeitgeist, anyhow.
So. Why did I shave my head? Well, it's cooler for the summer, and boy is it easy to take care of now. That's it.