As some of you have seen, I have some decent hair growth! It’s funny to think that the last time my hair was this short was when I was a baby. There even is a good chance that when I was a few months old, I had more hair than I currently do. What a thought!
As my hair has grown out (and I say this lightly, because we’re talking only a couple centimetre so far), I have started to become more comfortable with the idea of sporting the shaved head look. There is something so free and liberating about it – that’s the energy I feel anyways when I see another girl rock it. I find that without knowing it, we actually can hide behind our hair and blend in so much that you would need to be wearing a magenta body suit to really stand out. And even then, you may not be considered as bold as the girl walking down the street in neutral colours but rocking a bald head.
I have been starting to catch on that I am going to be living different personas for the next while before I completely ditch my headwraps and wig. It occurred to me recently when I was out for dinner at a hip restaurant downtown. I had decided to wear my wig that day, so I was looking all prim and proper with my hair “just so” and it pulled back delicately on the one side. The wig almost makes my hair look like a Barbie dolls hair. What I don’t realize, is that to me, I feel like myself and I am aware of what is underneath the wig, whereas to everyone else, they see me as a girl with perfectly styled long brown hair, and I blend in way more than I realize.
The waitress at the restaurant had a shaved head and so naturally, I thought that we would have a moment of “you go girl!” or something along those lines, given I considered myself as having the same hairstyle. I was about to say something, but then held back because I quickly remembered that to her, I am not the same! I could have done the whole song and dance of “I have the same hair style, but this is a wig, blah blah blah” but I decided not to. It hit me that I am presenting myself to the world as someone different than who I really am. It’s a very strange feeling. I almost feel like I’m walking around in someone else’s skin.
I can imagine that to people who meet me or pass by me, I give off different vibes depending on whether I would be rocking my shaved head, my headwrap or my wig. I probably attract different people and I certainly would leave different questions in people’s minds as to the type of person I am. Funny enough, the most “fake” one (being the wig) is the one that would blend in the most and look the most “normal”. How weird is that…..? Why is it that the one that takes me the most effort and to which I find the most uncomfortable and annoying, is the one that helps me feel the most “normal”??
How and why have we been so ruthlessly trained on the understanding that we need to fit in to be happy. We need to start taking on uniqueness as the new norm and all the ways that we are and can be different from one another. We need to support each other to be different, reducing comments and all of the “oohs and aahhhhs”, because as much as they seem to act as a compliment sometimes, they are pointing attention to “different”. Does the girl walking down the street wearing the buzz cut want to be gawked at and stared at? Why do we do that? That makes someone feel like a rare animal at a zoo that nobody has ever seen before. We make it hard on ourselves to be different, yet all the while wishing there was more of it. We don’t even understand or take into account the effect we have on the entire concept.
I notice that whenever I have seen a girl with a buzz cut, I start trying to guess why, yet at the same time wishing that people didn’t do exactly that. The funny part is that every single girl I’ve seen with a buzz cut looks AMAZING. Why do we just assume that everyone wants to be like everyone else? I love witnessing someone going against the grain. The level of confident energy that person is giving off is always inspiring and when we see it we all think “wow, good for them, I wish I could be as bold as that”….. yet we don’t act on it, and we’re forever the observer.
Let people be different, and maybe start accepting that idea as the normal. Next time you see someone on the street who looks/acts/dresses differently to you, let them walk by you without you staring them down. Sure, maybe they could actually like the attention, and being bold and different is important to them. But on the occasion that they could be someone like me, walking down the street with my buzz cut as a result of cancer treatment, try to remember that your staring is a way of making someone feel like they don’t belong. And that has a powerful effect on people. We need to start being aware of those types of actions and maybe even asking ourselves why we do it? Why are we SO curious about that person? Why do we care so much about their story as to what drove them to act/look/dress differently to you?
Maybe the answer is that we, ourselves, need to branch out and widen our horizons of what we consider “normal” and let our universal uniqueness be the new “average”. Until then, I will be the “bold” girl walking down the street with the buzz cut!
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