BALD & BADASS Would a buzzcut change your life?
WOMAN GOT A BUZZCUT?
Celebrities and supermodels have made a shaved head the haircut of 2017. But what happened when a real woman got one? Cosmopolitan beauty editor Cassie Powney found out ›
“I feel like the lovechild of Justin Bieber and Brucie”
Ta-daaaa! You’re all done!” I raise my hand and run it tentatively over the peroxide blonde bristles now populating my scalp. It feels like someone has laid Astroturf on my head. “It suits you,” I hear someone say from somewhere in the room. I catch sight of my manly jaw, exposed in all its right-angled glory, and manage a shaky “thank you” back. But the truth is, I’m not so sure. “I agree, you look gorgeous,” my make-up artist chips in, but when I glance up at her, all I can see is hair – gorgeous Rapunzel-length hair. Shit.
I have a buzzcut – the scalp-skimming crop now found on models, actresses and hip young things across the country. Pick up any fashion magazine and it will tell you it’s the haircut of 2017. And I’ve got to say, I think Cara Delevingne looks even hotter than before with her new peroxide buzz. Ditto supermodels Ruth Bell and Ajak Deng. I mooted it in an ideas meeting with my editor.
“It’s the next big trend…” I gushed. “Everyone will be writing about it!”
“Really?” she said, stony-faced. “Then why don’t you get one?”
And so this is how I find myself, a 34-year-old mother of one, on a drizzly grey day in London, with a buzzcut. I immediately regret dragging on the first items of clothing my hands found on the floor that morning: jeans, a hoodie, leather jacket and Converse. As I leave the house, I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I look less like a Balenciaga catwalk model and more like the love child of Justin Bieber and Bruce Forsyth (RIP, Brucie). The urge to pull my hood over my head is all-consuming.
Believe it or not, I’ve had weeks to prepare for my big scalp reveal, and what makes my reaction even more pathetic is that my new shaved head is only temporary. It took three hours for special-effects make-up artist Stefanie Kemp and her assistant, Lily, to create, and would take only half an hour to peel back off again. Which makes me feel terrible when I realise there are women out there who are losing their hair due to illness every single day.
“We are pretty much the only animal to have head hair that grows non-stop, and in a huge variety of colours and textures,” body-language expert Judi James tells me as I explain what I’ll be doing. “This is why our hair became, and continues to be, a powerful signal of individual recognition.”
As a soap actress in the early noughties (yes, Hollyoaks… you can still find me on YouTube), having good hair was as important to me as delivering my lines properly. When my character was written into an alcoholism storyline, I still insisted on having my daily blow-dry before arriving on set. Paint eye bags on me, put me in a tracksuit, but do not mess with the hair. It was my armour. It was, I believed, a potent force of femininity. It was my identity. Growing up, I was not the girl with the pale skin, or the girl with the blue eyes, or even the little girl who could do a serious shuffle-ball-change at tap class. I was the girl with the long blonde hair. I dyed it brunette once for a storyline, but struggled, feeling almost invisible among the bevvy of platinum-haired actresses I worked with.
That said, up until a few years ago, and certainly during my childhood, women with shaved heads were a source of intrigue to me. Sinéad O’Connor singing hauntingly into the camera; Demi Moore determinedly shearing her hair off strip by strip in the film G.I. Jane. These women were mysterious and ballsy, they had attitude that came from within, rather than external or aesthetic trappings. They were beautiful, yet clearly didn’t give a toss what men thought. Would a buzzcut arm me with their attitude?
I head to an area of London famous for its yummy mummies and high-end shopping boutiques, where the only lack of hair is on the heads of the Joules-dressed babies. I’ve chosen a blistering hot summer’s day to make my buzzcut debut, and children of all ages surround me, simmering with the excitement of their school-free summers.
The shock of catching my reflection in every shop window I pass is balanced out by the make-up I’m still wearing from the photo shoot that morning – subtle daytime, but with some clever contouring and brow defining to ‘soften’ my tough new look. I imagine being bare-faced today and inwardly squirm. That would be one step too far out of my (already stretched) comfort zone.
A little girl catches my eye as we cross paths, and I’m sure I see her mouth slackening as her mum hurries her along. I walk on. A group of teenage boys stand up ahead. I can see them already taking in my
“The Disney Princess ideal still holds sway today”
spiky yellow scalp with openmouthed shock. Then, as if in slow motion, one of them snorts loudly into his hand, and his mates promptly follow suit. I feel tears sting my eyes and want to rip my specialeffects cap clean off my head.
“I felt strangely empowered shaving my hair off,” says training manager and real-life buzzcutter Laura, who went from a pixie cut to a grade three earlier this year. “My husband loved it, my best friend asked why I hadn’t done it sooner, but my stepmum was mortified, saying a woman’s hair is her crown. I don’t think I’ve lost my crown – I’ve just trimmed it down and polished it up a bit! The first time I stepped out shaved, though, I felt the need to wear a bright red lippy and a feminine jumpsuit, but I tend to wear less make-up these days. I think the cut makes my eyes, cheekbones and lips stand out more anyway – although I have had a few sympathetic looks from people thinking I’m recovering from an illness,” she adds. “And always in the supermarket for some reason…”
By early afternoon I’m feeling frazzled by all the eyes on me, so I find a cosy pub to seek refuge in. As I settle myself at the bar and order a stiff drink, I notice a group of men at a nearby table, craning their necks to get a look at me. Pre-buzzcut, I might have come over all smug. Moi? Getting eyed up? Shucks. But now, I’m instantly on the defensive. They’re mocking me, I assume. And yet I also feel oddly empowered.
Before I know what I’m doing, I stride right over, look them dead in the eyes and ask, “What do you think, then?” After a long pause, one of them replies, “Interesting.” Then his not-so-polite mate follows with, “Not for me.” I appreciate their honesty, but feel another chunk of my confidence break off and ebb away. But just as I turn to leave, a hand grabs my shoulder from the table behind and spins me around. “You look incredible, darling!” exclaims a glamorous older woman with a thick French accent. I could’ve hugged her! “I was a punk at your age,” she continues, flinging her heavily bangled arms about as she speaks. “Trust me, I did it all! You just carry on doing what you’re doing, gorgeous girl.” As I leave the pub, she throws me a thumbs-up and I want to cry, but for all the right reasons this time.
When I stop to have lunch later that day, munching on the food equivalent of a stiff drink (that’s a Monterey Jack cheeseburger with fries and BBQ sauce on the side, just in case you were wondering), it dawns on me that the Disney Princess ideal – flawless skin, delicate features and hair so long it could wrap around the planet twice – unfortunately still holds as much sway today as it ever did. How differently would I have approached my appearance as an adult if, as a child, I’d watched Sleeping Beauty wake from her slumber and, thank the lord, she didn’t have to deal with bedhead any more? Things are changing, though. Mad Max: Fury Road (my 2015 film highlight) sees shaved-headed heroine Imperator Furiosa (played by Charlize Theron) drive a gang of misfits to safety in an armoured truck, commanding just as much screen time as male lead Tom Hardy. So with gender-neutral film roles on the rise in Hollywood, is hair losing its status? I’d like to
think so, although it seems we still have some way to go.
I spend the rest of my day swanning in and out of high-end shops, struggling to swallow the feeling that the assistant neatening the clothes nearby must be keeping an eye on me, or that the sub-text behind the endless “Can I help yous?” is, in fact, “You don’t belong in this shop, please leave.”
Of course people weren’t treating me any differently because of my hair, but I couldn’t help imagining the conversations that followed once I’d left. Did you see that girl? Whatever possessed her? And would I be imagining these conversations if I had Cara’s elfin-like features? Or was I missing the point? Was it easier for a ‘nobody’ to wear their shaved head with pride? There was no daunting red carpet waiting for me, or jostling paparazzi shouting my name, or 40 million Instagram followers, thumbs poised, ready to give their scathing two pence on my new look.
When I stop to buy a bottle of water on my way home, the cashier hands me my change and says, “Cool hair,” so quietly I almost miss it. She blushes when I thank her (I can see this because she isn’t wearing any make-up. Her hair is pulled back, too. She is basically the polar opposite of me right now). But it dawns on me later that her whispered compliment is a hundred times more encouraging than the dramatic French lady’s because, despite not having the confidence to experiment with her own appearance, my liberating look appealed to her on some level – perhaps even awoke a closet head shaver lain dormant since she first watched Cinderella swish her hair around while mopping the floor and waiting for her prince to turn up.
According to the owner and creative director of Hare & Bone salon, Sam Burnett, there’s been a notable rise in the number of women requesting shaved heads. “Most opt for a slightly grown-out buzzcut,” he tells me, “keeping it feminine by bleaching and graduating the hairline for a less aggressive finish.”
But these cuts aren’t a new thing. They’ve been part of the uniform for many tribes over the years. In the ’60s, skinheads came with braces and Dr Martens, representing working-class pride. Punks reigned supreme in the ’70s, their buzzcuts complemented with neon liberty spike mohawks. There has always been a sense of rebellion behind this divisive style, a sense of ‘sticking it to the man.’ The same can be said for the trend this time around, only the focus is firmly set on the gender-neutral movement. Full brows and barely-there make-up have become the cornerstone of androgynous high-fashion beauty. Millennials seem determined to challenge conventional gender stereotypes, too, refusing to feel defined by their sex. Stars such as Ruby Rose, Miley Cyrus and LilyRose Depp have all spoken out about feeling neither male nor female, and in many cases, their hair (or a lack of it) has been the tool they’ve used to reflect this blurring of gender lines.
My initial panic about not feeling attractive enough suddenly feels immature and, quite frankly, backwards. If a young star trapped in the glare of the public eye can refuse to conform with such certainty, why can’t I? It’s too late for me *said in dramatic film voice*, but if my daughter turns around one day and says, “Mum, I’m shaving it all off!” I’d like to think I’d be proud.