BALD-HEADED STATEMENT
When going bald is beautiful
The temporary loss of hair can strip someone of confidence and power— but perhaps not when everyone else does it. »
There are so many bald people in my office. Some are bald for fashion or out of resignation to the inevitability of genetics and age.
More than a dozen others— men and women— shaved their heads last weekend in solidarity with a colleague whose chic blonde hair was stolen by chemotherapy.
She maintained the illusion of a mane with wigs and hats for a few weeks before giving up what was left to the clippers. She was scared of being bald— maybe more scared of bald than chemo.
You can tell she feels the love and support of our co-workers, laughing as they streamed in sans hair. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said again and again. And they shouldn’t have to. There is something perverse in the notion that the temporary loss of hair can strip the confidence and power of a female photographer who faces person- al danger and unbelievable physical challenges seemingly without hesitation. Climb Longs Peak on a day’s notice? No problem. Mountain bike in the dark to where people are stranded by flood? Sure thing. Bivouac inside fire lines? Absolutely. But the hair. It’s a societal issue that apparently has been dogging us since, well, forever. Scholars blame the Victorians in particular for mythologizing women’s hair and its power as both the warp and weft of family and society.
Arizona StateUniversity Professor Rose Weitz, in her book, “Rapunzel’sDaughters: WhatWomen’s Hair TellsUs About Women’s Lives,” puts it in a contemporary context: “Our hair is one of the primary wayswe tell otherswhowe are and by which others evaluate us, for it implicitly conveysmessages about our gender, age, politics, social class and more.”
But why is the message, when it is told by a bald woman’s head, mostly negative?
My cousin, a firefighter-EMT-doctor,