I’m a proud slob when it comes to most aspects of my life. Wearing the same shirt for three days now? No problem. Three weeks since I last shaved/waxed? Who cares. Somehow though, all my staunch ‘principles’ go straight out of the window when I’m confronted with the hair on my head. This one aspect of my physical appearance still receives my undivided attention. I could say it’s because I feel the added length lends proportion and balance to my height and shape; it would even be true. But only partly. On some level, I also have to acknowledge that, as someone who deals with plentiful greys and hair fall due to medication, I have a deep-seated fear about going bald. This despite vocally condemning anybody who correlates a woman’s beauty with the length of the hair. Let’s put it down to conditioning, then?
World over, women are resisting the razor when it comes to their underarms and are just as happy picking it up for their heads for very different reasons, but at least one undercurrent remains the same–it’s a stand against patriarchal thinking. In India, that thinking is on people’s lips and stronger than ever. Most of our role models in films, magazines, commercials and advertisements alike feature women with long, luscious locks. It’s the norm, and anybody who goes against it is noticed, to say the least. Just ask model Diandra Soares who created shockwaves when she walked the ramp adorning a shaved look, only to then be referred to as that ‘bald model’. Reading through her interviews, it seems that it is something she does quite a bit and perhaps didn’t realise the impact it would have on the ramp. If nothing it subverted who exactly we’ve been taught to expect trotting down the catwalk in sky-high heels.
Others such as Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das, Antara Mali and Lisa Ray too have walked down similar paths for movie roles, but that’s just what it has been, a role they’ve played, although the impact they had with such a hairstyle on the big screen is also undeniable. There has never been a normalisation of real women in real life taking their appearance into their own hands to make such a ‘drastic’ change.
Many women have a complicated relationship with hair, on their heads and their bodies, in India, a society where the idea of physical beauty has long been linked to thick, black, luscious locks. It has been so ingrained for some (myself included) that it is intertwined with their identity and self-image as well as how we perceive the physical beauty of others. For me, there is a sense of vulnerability that comes with a sheared scalp, where you have nothing left to hide behind. I also wonder that this step may be exactly what it would take to finally be able to look in the mirror with confidence and see my true self – baring it all. Could it really be that simple?
Curious about the lived reality for women who took the plunge and shaved it all off, I reached out to some. We wanted to know what led them to it and more importantly, how it made them feel. Reasons and post-shave sentiments varied drastically, of course. Think feminist protests, a new style just to shake things up, or a cancer patient taking control of her appearance before a disease could; reactions that reek of homophobic stereotyping (“oh, you must be a lesbian”) to ones that insist that mental health issues must be at play; feelings of instant empowerment and journeys towards self-acceptance.
Like it or not, going bald takes guts and those guts stand up to systems that are thousands of years old whether or not that was the intention. It’s a choice that warrants discourse (or at the very least, admiration) in a country like ours that has, for so many years, controlled women’s behaviour in whatever way it could. Read on for thoughts and perspectives from the women who shared their journeys with us.
I. Pallavi Sen, 28, Artist + Designer + Feminist
“I like shaving my head because I love style and I also love not spending too much time on my appearance - so it’s a way of thinking LESS about oneself, and not more. And now I can actually do that and get to work without obsessing.”
It was something that Pallavi Sen had wanted to do for a long time and she finally decided to pick up the clippers when she was 21 years old. “I’m a feminist and an obsession with beauty REALLY bothers me, and I never want to feel like I am only attractive as long as I have this, this, and this – plus the fear of losing whatever these attributes may be,” she shares.
Her first boyfriend commented that his love for her would be affected by such a style choice (in his defence, he was around 19/20 at the time), and Pallavi grew curious as so whether shaving her head would actually affect how she was perceived by men, and if it even really bothered her.
The answer? She didn’t care. “I’m not attracted to anyone who isn’t attracted to how I choose to be – and if that means that no one ever likes me and such, then that’s that,” she says. She adds that any fear she may have had were completely unfounded considering how much love and affection she has received in the past decade.
Hair has become a major part of many people’s identity, and for Pallavi shaving her head has become a thing so regular that she’s unable to differentiate between her appearance and who she is. “Something my hairstyle automatically filters out is the type of person who has set standards of beauty for women – there are not people I meet very often anyway,” says Pallavi. While others form misconceptions of who you are based on your physical appearance, she admits that she had her own regarding how her lack of hair would be received by those around her. “It was silly of me to think it was such a big deal - especially in India - because it actually isn’t, at least in cities. Whenever I’m perceived as being a ‘city-person’, my physicality is accommodated more easily (this is a huge privilege and a huge problem). One time, someone brushed past me and called me takli, but other than that, nothing really.”
Straight girls don’t shave their heads
“I’m an intelligent woman, and I seek intelligent partners, and so, I have never faced such a thing yet. When someone begins to suggest it, I find it ridiculous, and just stop them. I have a very low tolerance for sexist thought. I’m a feminine person, I identify strongly as a woman, I enjoy womanhood - and my appearance has helped me cultivate a style that is very specific to me. Sometimes, people assume my sexuality based on my hair - but again it’s so daft, that I don’t think too much about it. It’s like someone who thinks piercings are edgy or radical.”
Buzzcuts in the workplace
“Things are already skewed when it comes to being a professional and a woman, but I have a lot of privileges. I am an artist, and work as one. I have an MFA, I went to english-medium schools, and grew up in a comfortable environment. Plus, my family has received university education since the 19th century. So, I have around me a community that is mostly progressive and really accepting, and I’m not rebelling or doing anything so out of the ordinary. And the type of work I do, it’s so closely related to who I am, that I rarely have to endorse a view or lifestyle other than what is already happening (in my life).
If anything, it has affected my life positively. There are many positive assumptions, at least in the social groups I belong to, and I benefit from that. People automatically assume I have liberal views, that I am confident, strong. That makes it easier for me to become these things.”
II. Nikita Seth, 23, Entrepreneur
“Everyone around me made a big deal about it and that was annoying. Some hugged me, some watched me wide-eyed, some wondered if I was sick.”
23-year-old Niki Seth always had long, curly and unruly “awful, awful” hair, as she explains, that anyone who didn’t have to wash and comb it loved – to envy, play with or bully. For her, it was never a love-hate relationship, but one of just hate that led her to get it straightened before college until it eventually grew up, leaving behind a mix of curls and straight tresses. “I ended up with a half curly-half straight lioness mane. I just got tired of it all, curly or straight and just shaved it. I’d been talking about doing it for a while before I actually did, so it wasn’t exactly rash decision,” she says.
Niki is a Delhi-based entrepreneur with a clothing and jewellery label called Manjha – The Travelling Thread which she set up following a year off after college where she travelled across different states of India. Being a young entrepreneur she has experienced her gender and age to affect people’s impression and perception of who she is on countless times, but never really by her hairstyle.
Hair has become a key identifier when it comes to gender and womanhood/femininity. Niki faced the usual questions of whether she ‘swung the other way now’ because of her new hairdo – “they’ve clearly been watching too many movies” – and if she whether she had an illness. Though, what she did notice was that the inquisition came more from other women than men. “So many of the men get it – it’s hassle-free and amazing, you just roll outta bed,” she muses.
Changes in behaviour and personality
“Maybe initially, but it quickly became an everyday part of who I was. I saw it as a haircut, and it really wasn’t a big deal for me, but a lot of people made a bigger deal of it. I was called brave and courageous so many times but I never felt brave doing it, I felt relieved, happy and pleased and that’s because it was literally a weight off my head. I didn’t have to worry about pretending to tame my hair anymore and that was so liberating but I’ve always been a confident person and a change of hairstyle didn’t change that for me. But I can do a lot of things now which I thought twice about before – roll down the windows to feel the wind on my face, jump back into the ocean even if my hair just dried and taking a moment to enjoy the rain.”
Doing the deed
“To be completely honest, I felt pretty good. But everyone around me made a big deal about it and that was annoying. Some hugged me, some watched me wide-eyed, some wondered if I was sick – it was frustrating but after a while, it was only from strangers because the people around me got over it really quickly and that was super cool.”
III. Gouri Bhuyan, Soon-To-Be 20, Psychology Student + Actor
“It was extremely scary to visualise myself not having any hair...Even if I did hate it, it was just hair and it would grow back. And that made absolute sense to me!”
A student at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and theatre actor, Gouri Bhuyan tells us about her struggles with thinning hair and body image issues. It was her sister who suggested that she do away with it altogether if it had become so problematic, but Gouri laughed off the suggestion as absolutely incredulous. Over time her fears only grew and it was in July earlier this year that she reached a tipping point; the paranoia caused by the hair fall worsened and she felt her worst fears would become a reality. Constantly bothered by it, she finally decided to take the plunge. “I thought that even if it didn’t make my hair any better, I would at least get rid of the paranoia,” she shares.
She wasn’t particularly attached to her hair but agrees with the amount of importance that we often ascribe to it, she explains that especially so within the cultural context of India where it is considered a necessary accessory for femininity – “A hypocrisy I acknowledged even when I had hair, but one that I didn’t dare to outrage.” It was after the shears were put down that she realised the ludicrousy of it all, that hair is a criterion for when considering what beauty is. “Sure, people have beautiful hair, but hair isn’t the only thing that makes people beautiful. Beauty and beautiful hair can be mutually exclusive,” says Gouri.
Her sister was the one who shaved her head the first time, and the second time, she did it with assistance from her mother. Whenever questioned about her family’s response to her hairstyle she explains that people always tend to ask what her mother’s reaction to it was, assuming that she would have an issue with it. But contrary to what people would think, her mother was and still is extremely supportive of her decision.
More than the way people see her, she felt a change in how she perceives herself. The wonderful aspect of it she says is the inability for people to shy away and hide their true selves behind big curls and bouffants. “You can’t mask a double chin with your hair framing your face, or even use a fancy hairstyle to distract from your eyes that cried themselves red because you don’t like how you look. Once you’re bald, you don’t have a choice but to don it with grace. I think that’s what happened with me, and geez, I’m SO glad it did!” shares Gouri.
Being clean-shaved hasn’t magically shorn of her body image issues either. That, she says, is a very gradual and uphill endeavour, but there is a renewed sense of confidence she has gained about herself, not necessarily about the way she looks. “ In fact, I loved it so much the first time I went bald, that I actually willingly did it again a second time for a play I was performing in.”
She was initially advised by people against the shorter hairdo simply for the effect it can have on her career as a theatre actor, her ability to model and do photo-shoots. But while it was a cause for concern, for Gouri, her priority was her well-being above all. Strangely enough, the next lead role she was cast as was an androgynous character and her buzzed head fit perfectly!
Doing the deed
“As the tresses descended upon the bathroom floor, it was almost as though my heart was beginning to buckle under their weight, but there was also a sense of relief. The scariest part about decisions like this is taking the first step. So I was terrified when the first lock fell, but once that was done, I knew there was no going back. So there was also an inherent sense of relief that came with it. I was actually really worried I’d have a lopsided skull. Thankfully, my skull is quite shapely! When I looked at myself in the mirror for the first time after I shaved, I felt really….I don’t quite know how to put it…..naked?! But it was more like an exhilarating naked, not a vulnerable one. I actually felt pretty badass!”
Straight girls don’t shave their heads
“I’m so glad you’ve asked me this question because the gendered aspect of it is rather striking. So I got a lot of amazing, wonderful and supportive compliments from most people, at least in my college. In fact, I have been told that this hair suits me even by the guys at the ticket counter at Andheri station. While I love basking in the glory of this attention, I find it important to note that when a man goes bald, he doesn’t get to partake in any of this attention-seeking, regardless of whether this attention is positive or negative. It’s almost taken as a given when a man goes bald. I have had rickshaw drivers tell me, “Aapne baal kyun katvaaye? Achchha nahin lagta. Aapko baal lambe rakhne chahiye.” While I do understand the socio-economic disparities that elicit such a reaction, it is important to acknowledge that a gendered acceptance of baldness exists.
As for my sexual orientation and doubt about that, yes, I have been hit on by a significantly larger number of women than I was when I wasn’t bald. More people assume that I am either lesbian or bisexual because only that could explain how why I would do something so ‘rebellious’ or ‘edgy’.
So just to clarify, I did not do this because I wanted to outrage gender notions, or because I wanted to be cool, I did this because I had hair fall and because I thought this would add to my personal growth. But if it has collaterally resulted in women, men, cisgenders, transgenders and everyone in between, in realising that gender and hair have zero correlation, I as the feminist that I am, could only be proud!
That said, I would like to clarify that a lot of men too have concerns about baldness, regardless of whether or not they receive flak for it. And if me going bald, helps them own their baldness too, I think there will have been greater good done.”
IV. Manika Kaur*
An undergraduate student at Delhi University, Manika (name changed) had bouts of depression and anxiety since she was in her early teens. She didn’t know what it was at the time and would rarely speak about it with those around her. “I come from a pretty conservative Sikh family. My parents have always been supportive of me but mental health is something which we never really spoke about. I don’t think they knew what was going on with me any more than I did. They themselves had so little knowledge about it,” she says. Whenever she would get panic attacks (from mild to full-blown) she would lock herself in the bathroom while she calmed herself down, and one of the things that she would do – consciously and subconsciously – was scratch her head. “It’s strange to a lot of people. It was something I would just subconsciously start doing. I think it just became something to keep my hands occupied and my mind distracted,” she says.
“I had inherited the long, black and thick hair gene from my mother, the kind you see in advertisements for hair colour and shampoos. I never really thought much of it, I’d usually keep it in a braid that my grandmother would tie for me,” she says. As her anxiety grew so did her scratching habit, and soon she began to lose hair. “I was hardly eating at this point. The depression had gotten really bad too as had the anxiety. My parents kept asking me if I was being bullied or was in a secret relationship and was going through a break-up.”
As self-conscious as she was with her bald spots, bleeding and scabbed scalp, it was the only thing that helped her. But late one night Manika decided she had had enough. “I don’t know what came over me. I just picked up my brother’s trimmer and just became to swipe one panel of hair at a time. Before I knew it, it was all gone,” she shares.
Doing the deed
“My mind was pretty much blank when I was doing it, almost like an out of body experience with me just watching it happen. But once it was over, I felt… lighter. I could see the scabs and scratches on my head, but it didn’t make me freak out or cry. It was a strange feeling of calmness and just a recognition and acceptance of my situation in a way, it’s hard to put it properly in words.
As soon as it was down I walked out into my parent’s room and just stood there. I told them I want to see a doctor, and they agreed while giving me a hug. It was completely unexpected, maybe they saw me, their bald and mental patient-looking daughter and got scared or felt sad. We never spoke about that night again, but I’ve been going to therapy since then, got a proper diagnosis and have medication. I feel that shaving my head could just be the thing that saved my life.”
V. Tulsi C, 35, Product Manager
“There’s a difference between shaving your own head and letting chemotherapy take your hair from you.”
35-year-old Tulsi’s nimble frame and uplifting demeanour belies the challenges of her journey. She was diagnosed with a malignant tumor last December, and after going through surgery and Chemotherapy ever since, she is now still in recovery. In many ways, she is exactly the kind of person who challenges the stereotype of Breast Cancer being an ‘old woman’s disease.’ Though it’s true that younger women are diagnosed at a much lower rate (precisely because doctors and patients alike don’t believe it’s going to happen) the sheer lack of expectancy around it often leads to more aggressive outcomes because it goes unnoticed for so much longer.
“After the first time I shaved my head I was going to the doctor and I could suddenly feel the heat and Sun on the top of my head. I just couldn’t believe it! As it started growing back i’d keep running my hand through it, it was just so soft, it felt like a carpet!” she muses.
Tulsi’s had short hair most of her life, her interest lay more in experimenting and changing up the styles, and for her, at the end of the day, it was just hair that would grow back. “I remember when I was in school there was a play happening that required one of the characters to have a shaved head. I was probably the only one that was excited about it and I asked my father if I could do it and he said no. I never did care much for hair, and this is considering that I went to an all-girls school where everyone was pretty obsessed with their hair and how they looked. They’d always be styling their hair and straightening it, I never really understood that” she shares.
After her treatment started doctors recommended that she stay home and rest, not move too much. There was one day though, she tells us that she just needed to get out of the house and went out to get fruits and vegetables. There was one lady who just kept staring at her, completely awestruck. “She just kept looking and looking, and then I just turned around and ask her what she was looking at, my head? Yes, I shaved it! She was completely taken aback. Even when I would be going to the hospital for chemo and would get stuck in traffic jams people would actually turn around and wonder why this person is bald. People that shave their heads, women more so, aren’t conscious, it is the society that can’t handle it. So they stare, and they can’t handle it when you react, they don’t expect that,” says Tulsi.
Why the shave?
“I chose to shave my head simply because I was told I need to go through chemotherapy. Most women prefer to wait it out and see what the journey is going to be like when they start losing the hair but I chose to shave my head myself simply because I realized it was going to go anyway and I wanted to be in control of it. I shaved it between the first and second chemo session. I had shoulder length hair before that, after the first round of chemo I went and got a mohawk and post that it started falling out, and I knew it was only going to increase. So overnight I decided I was just going to do it myself. From 12 o’clock at night to 2 o’clock in the morning my husband and I were shaving my head. I wanted to do it myself because I wanted to have some kind of control over what was happening to me and my body, and I didn’t want chemo to do it for me – I didn’t want chemotherapy to control my life.”
Hair and femininity
“Initially, people always would assume I was a man; the watchman would say ‘hello sir’ and then correct himself to ma’am after looking at me. It took me a while to kind of deal with that, but I reminded myself just how happy I was with no hair and much shorter hair. I was literally a different, happier person after the shave. I don’t have to care about what it looks like or care for it. Whatever is on the outside, external attributes, you really shouldn’t and don’t need to think about it so much as long as you feel good about yourself.
It was the same thing for me with my breast when I chose a mastectomy. Your body is your temple, and you need to keep that clean and healthy. You need to look after is, this is what is important and what you should focus on. If I hadn’t shaved my head and let my hair fall out during chemo it would have hurt. It falls from the root and then when you stand under the shower it really hurts like hair, falling out in bunches. It becomes a constant reminder of what you’re going through, and to me, it just seems unnecessary.
You want to be in control of yourself and what’s happening to you, instead of watching it fall out bit by bit. In that way, I’m glad I did it. The first time I went to a salon, the lady asked me what she’s supposed to do with my hair, and I said give me a mohawk and she’s like really? I said, have you never done this to a cancer patient before? She said no and told me that most women keep it long and hold onto their hair as long as they can, so when they come in its all knotted and difficult to work with. Every woman that I’ve met in treatment, I’ve always advised that they should just shave it, it really is better.”
“Take off your hair, take off that wig, and just be free; you’ll soon realise just how happy you can be. Don’t be so attached to something that’s so impermanent. Eventually it’s going to go, as is your body. Instead be attached to your family and friends, spend valuable time with them rather than give attention the to material things around.”
You can read about Tulsi’s entire journey here.
VI. Shreeda Patel, 28, Assistant Director
“I remember my friends were home and it felt like a farewell party. I felt a tiny moment of sadness in my chest but that was it. After that, it was pure excitement and liberation – I felt like a badass.”
It was a culmination of things that led Shreeda to shave her head when she was 21 years old. When the time did come hairdressers at the salons she visited refused to do the deed, so she had to ask a friend to come home and do it for her. “Where I was in life, the situations around me and things in my own head, they all played a role in it. I was looking for a way out of it. I never believed in society’s beauty standards but I had felt a wave of superficiality take over me, I was constantly seeing flaws in the way I looked. I found myself losing myself to it. Due to stress, my scalp had started to erode and no medication was really helping. I had the flakiest scalp and I was getting sick of dealing with it and washing my hair every day,” she says. She thought that if she could learn to let go of her hair that she was so attached to, it would be a distraction from the issues at hand.
Now 28, Shreeda works in films and commercials as an Assistant Director. She recalls how a hair stylist friend had come over to her place and after cutting 12 inches off the length she started cut centimetre after centimetre of hair, giving Shreeda time to decide if she really did want it all gone. “My hair was long and curly, it had a mind of its own. My mother, friends and colleagues always kept telling me how beautiful my hair was most of the time. I took pride in never going to the salon and just letting it grow naturally. I think I was pretty attached to it because I thought it was my crown and made me look beautiful, and I wanted to be considered beautiful,” Shreeda shares.
“My parents were the best through this – they were out of town when I shaved. When they returned and saw me, they both smiled. My mum told me I looked beautiful. My dad said in Hindu culture a girl shaves her head if her husband or father have passed away and I’m still here but it’s okay. I love you and you are beautiful!”
Changes in behaviour and personality
“I actually felt extremely liberated. I took 4 showers the first day I was bald because it felt so damn good! People were really nice. I felt my friends were really kind and my parents were extremely understanding. People at work were kind of stunned but in a good way. (I swear I felt people were starting to look at me for who I was than for what I appeared like – maybe it’s all in my head but I noticed a stark difference in the way people started treating me). But then again this was a while ago and I have changed since I changed then. There was a time where I mistook rigidity for integrity but I’ve come to realise that I want to change if it helps me be the best version of myself and I like to change because it’s just such a fun social experiment.”
Buzzcuts in the workplace
“People at work did start to treat me differently. Not many bald female Assistant Directors (AD) out there. They must’ve thought I was nuts, but like I said, dealing with people became easier once the burden of beauty was off my shoulders. Or maybe all this was/is just rationalization for me wanting to be impulsive, maybe even a little self-destructive and socially experimenting.”
Featured image: Tulsi (L) photographed by Ishaan Nair, and Gouri (R) photographed by Nyla Saldanha
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