For those considering a full shave of their own, and to those questioning my mental stability or degree of boredom, here are ten intentional reasons to grab that razor and get depilated.

To read about my real-time emotions and the immediate aftermath of shaving my head, see my related post Bald and Balder.

 

10 Reasons To Go Bald This Summer

1. Non-attachment

That’s all Marcela said when I asked her why she wanted to shave off her thick brunette locks of wavy, Venezuelan, waist-length hair.

“Unattachment.”

I could see her point, I could respect her decision, I could even love the idea of it. But it wasn’t for me. I could never do that. It’s too extreme.

How could one carry on through life, bald?

Never say never.

Three years later, I’d fully warmed up to the idea of taking on life with the hairstyle equivalent to that of an egg. The challenge enticed me. I wanted that thrill.

I could feel 2020 was the year before it even started. The year of non-attachment. My year of non-attachment.

I’m no Buddhist, but when I minimize my attachment to possessions and ideas, I am happier. This means distancing my emotions and identity from my personal finances, my strongest food cravings, the fantasy of the next country I wish to experience, the results of an important interview…

…and my hair.

My hair had always meant so much to me. It was naturally thick, black, and on most days, straight. It grew fast and there was heaps of it.

As a girl I was territorial over it. Long hair was a part of me and my identity. The steady inflow of compliments were mine for keeping, and made me adore my hair more than ever.

The notion of ever not having long hair, of someone cutting off more than I consented to (as my father once instructed the hairdresser to do when I was about nine years old, behind my back, after I clearly indicated to her how much to cut), terrorized me.

But why?

Why do I, and most societies, invest so much meaning into dead protein?

By university, I was still incredibly attached to my long hair, but I put less and less effort into its maintenance. I never brushed it. The only product I used was shampoo.

I let my hair do whatever it wanted to, and on sunny days with a crispy Autumn chill, what it wanted to do was to plunge past my shoulders, pin straight.

After a sweaty workout or days of trekking, I’d let my hair out of a bun and it’d fall into tresses of loose curls that framed my face.

It felt like the less I tried, the more attention my hair got.

I stayed humble, keeping my habit of giving little thought to the opinions of others. But I know that deep down, on some minute level, my ex-boyfriend worshipping my hair and the consistent envy from others were feeding my ego.

And killing my ego is one of my recently acquired hobbies.

There’s nothing quite like hacking off a full head of hair and buzzing it to zero to destroy a good chunk of ego and replace it with humility.

If everything we need is already within us, then hair does not truly serve us. It does not make us fundamentally happier or healthier individuals.

It’s just hair.

And shaving my head is just one big non-attachment exercise.

2. Beauty Standards

I kept my hair long because I loved it. It was beautiful. It made me attractive. It suited me far more than shorter cuts.

Thanks to social conditioning, I find bald less sexy than a head full of flowing hair.

But bald is beautiful. I know this because bald is who we are underneath all the hair, and we are all perfect, in this moment,

right here,

right now.

I’ve encountered communities where bald was the norm for women and girls. Examples that come to mind include the Buddhist nuns of Myanmar, the Kenyan villagers I volunteered with in 2015, and the women of the Maasai Tribe living in The Mara, a national game reserve also located in Kenya.

Every one of the bald ladies was beautiful.

So I join them. No more hiding. No more veiling my face, neck, chest, and shoulders. No more masking my scalp under ponytails and buns.

So much of true beauty lies in one’s confidence. Shaving my head was an ambitious test to my self-confidence.

Knowing that I am wholly comfortable in my own skin brings an abundance of positive energy into my life.

Believe me, I still prefer long hair to be a part of my physical appearance. I’ll grow it back out again because I love it like that.

But at the moment I don’t miss my hair. Right now, that all just needs to wait.

This new chapter of my appearance is not only a personal journey, but also a social experiment. I am eager to see how people react differently to me when they form their first impressions.

Will vendors sell me fruit in a detectably different way?

Will attraction and attention from the opposite sex drastically change?

Aside from repeatedly getting compared to a nun, I have received a flood of compliments and approval on my new look and on the shape of my head from around the world. Some prefer my new look say I look even more beautiful now.

Wait. I thought this was an attempt to deflate, not magnify the ego?

Let me clarify I am not seeking or attached to this positive feedback, but that I am simply reporting it here in the transparency and safe haven of my blog.

After shaving my head, Rabie admitted,

“When a friend shaves her head, it normally takes me a time to adjust. When you did it, I instantly felt that I always knew you like this.”

3. Empowerment

Without realizing it, letting go of all my hair was an act that fueled a movement. Women shaving their heads is currently trending in the realm of travelers, feminists, and spiritual seekers.

In the weeks following my shave, female friends and strangers have reached out to me, confessing that they too wanted to experience bald-ism. They admired me for being “so strong” and “so beautiful.”

Most of them would then add that they are just too scared, that the shape of their head is too unflattering (fuck that, beauty exits in all forms), or that they could never actually do it.

But trust me, we all can.

We can all do anything we can dream, when we naturally arrive at the right moment for it in our respective lives.

Only after my head was bald did I understand that me just going for it, made anyone out there contemplating it, just a nudge closer to going for it too.

Because to hell with gender roles.

To hell with the patriarchy.

4. Appreciation

Full appreciation of something can only occur during its absence. I cannot truly grasp the privilege of being able to run my fingers through my hair if I am doing it every day.

As I have little to no hair, there will be so many small things that I will miss. I just don’t know what yet, because the bald experience has only begun, and I spent the last 24 years taking my hair for granted.

When my hair returns to its former length, I know I will see and feel it as even more beautiful than before.

Even hairstyles will carry a new coat of gratitude the next time I am able to do them. I was already appreciating the variety of styling I could manipulate my long locks into, during the final days before I shaved it off. I was braiding and twisting that dead protein in ways I hadn’t bothered to in years.

I am also excited to appreciate the precise speed at which my hair grows, since I’m starting from zero. It’s gonna be so excruciatingly slow yet so staggeringly fast at the same time.

I think that irony makes sense. My hair has never been so short, but two weeks after shaving I was less hard-boiled egg and more egg covered in bristly fur. Myself, and the people around me, kept saying,

“IT’S GOTTEN SO LONG!”

Just like all things of the physical realm, my lack of hair abides to the law of impermanence.

It’ll come back.

It already is.

It always is.

5. Awareness

I’m lucky that my hair grows back. Crazy lucky.

Bald people are not necessarily bald by choice. Perhaps genetics, religion, community values, or disease treatment mandated them to shave.

Just as fasting helps me hold space for the starving, and allows me to sample just a drop of their daily deprivation, going bald helps me hold space and better experience how society treats those who are unable to have hair.

6. Minimalism

In the days leading up to April 11th, I was increasingly irritated by the amount of time and effort my hair was robbing out of my day.

Varanasi, the city hosting me through this pandemic, is no exception to the 40°C kiss of summer. I can’t be bothered to groom a freaking mane.

Why did I purchase another bottle of shampoo? Why did lathering my hair require so much shampoo? It’s coming all off in two days anyway.

Why am I letting my shower drain get clogged with even more fallen strands? Why am I waiting for wet hair to dry? Why am I pulling it back into a bun to do yoga? It’s all coming off!

While vagabonding around for the last two years, a bottle of shampoo has always occupied precious space in my backpack. I was constantly searching for find misplaced hair ties.

My hair was always threatening to dip into my soup, into my ice cream (how dare it), into the fire of the gas stove I was igniting, onto the toilet seat if I leaned too far (ick).

Life just got so much easier.

7. Closer to the Divine

Another unforeseen opportunity of this bald summer was bringing myself closer to the divine (God, Shiva, Krishna, Allah, Buddha, the Universe—pick one or your favorite combo) by exposing my Sahasrara chakra, or crown chakra. I’m told this can be a big motivation for residents of spiritual communities and ashrams to shave their heads.

The Sahasrara chakra wasn’t a main interest of mine, yet I welcome the concept. Since India’s lockdown restrictions on foreigners differ little from a house arrest mandate, I happen to be sitting lotus pose for unprecedented amounts of time. This dedication has indeed led me to breakthrough experiences of release and achieving a higher level of consciousness via meditation.

Of course, having no hair (and the previous attachment of the ego to the hair) certainly benefits my focus and my sense of humility as I sit before God and receive with an open heart.

Coincidentally, the yoga mat I meditate on is violet, the color of the Sahasrara chakra. So is my phone, which serves as a meditation timer and as a speaker for playing tunes of Tibetan bowls and Om jaaps.

Perhaps I should look into incorporating more eggplant into my diet.

Perhaps I should start stashing purple crystals in my bra.

 

 

8. Scalp Health

Shaving my head was undeniably purifying.

Never had I witnessed dandruff like I did on April 11th. Excuse the TMI, but parts of my scalp were peeling off in tiny sheets like I had a sunburn.

Before going bald, I was nice and clueless about its health benefits. I at most suspected that I was giving my hairline a much needed break. It had spent decades supporting a heavy load of black keratin pulled back into a bun or ponytail that got violently jerked over the years during countless runs, tennis lessons, and volleyball matches.

After showers, I would twist all my locks into a tight towel turban, leaving it bundled for hours. The damp towel-hair monument would yank itself so far back along my skull that I was unconsciously hunching my shoulders to prevent it from toppling off my head, before painful tugs finally reminded me of its presence.

Then came my backpacking, multi-day trekking, hitchhiking days. It wasn’t uncommon for me to sleep in a bun, sometimes for several nights in a row. I’m lucky to have hair growing near my ears at all.

In the days following the big shave, a friend here told me that he once shaved to stop hair loss. He did five rounds, each shave spaced a few months apart, and it worked. He also explained how each shave really cleans off all that grime and dead skin hiding amongst our hair roots, as I had already discovered. He now sports a head of dark, luscious, Indian hair.

I think I’ll go for a few more rounds myself. I’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

9. Environment

Having Chinese hair is like living with a ShamWow attached to the skull.

I now save that shower water.

Lockdown in India leaves me with no air conditioning, hours of yoga, searing sunshine, the looming threat of bed bugs, and streets swirling with pandemic germs. The ability to take multiple speedy showers every day is guilt-free, and real nice.

Then there’s that thing that brings me even more grief than wasting water: plastic.

Unless you have a LUSH shop in your neighborhood with those famous dry shampoo bars that last forever (which sorry, the places I go just don’t), shampoo invariably comes in plastic. Travel-sized bottles are the scourge of environmental sustainability.

As my hair returns, I’m using just a small dab of shampoo. Less chemicals and less plastic in our oceans.

A small unnoticeable difference, but enough of a difference to me.

Feels right.

10. Life is Short

Shaving my head is freaking fun.

Buzzing off all my hair and watching it fall around my feet was unforgettable. I laughed so much throughout the whole process, from shaving with my friends to revealing my new look over video calls.

Feeling the breeze on a naked scalp for the first time ever, is fun.

Dancing bald is a good time.

Walking around the world with no hair is a pleasure.

I would never know if I’d never tried.

Floral artwork and most photos by @i_am_rabie_.