" ...you would think I would be posting it for an approval but it felt more like an announcement that I was approving of myself. "
It’s the third of September 2018, Sunny day, friends are over - great mood all around. I have a radio interview with one of Cape Town’s biggest radio stations, an Instagram live and the responsibility of continuously posting videos to raise awareness for a campaign I’m involved in.
You would think I would try my best to not potentially ruin my look.
Instead, I decided to shave my entire head completely bald. The big chop! There’s no emotional breakdown story where I have a Britney spears 2007 moment - in fact my friend was going to cut his hair I said I wanted to cut my hair too, he thought I was joking but played along anyway, we walked to his room talking about the night’s dinner. He sits down to clean the clipper’s, eventually finishes and looks up at me with a daring grin probably waiting for me to bail out on my confident request. Everyone in the room stares at me. I walk towards him and take the clippers. They’re heavy, but I’m not intimidated, I gently glide through one side of my head, then throughout the rest of my head getting more confident and comfortable with each stride. It feels great! For the first time in a long time I feel like I’m totally in control of something happening to me! Its literally in my hands, it feels invigorating! All I needed was dramatic slave running through the cotton fields to meet her long lost love after being separated music in the background.
My friend takes the clippers from my hand and says he’ll finish it properly as apparently there is a technique to shaving a bald head besides a mental breakdown and wine. I let him as he’s bald so he most likely knows what he's talking about. In the process of perfecting my baldness I place my hand on the back of my head to track the progress and the coldness of my hand against my skin forces me to jump up in shock. I rush to the mirror to look at just how bald we went. It doesn’t feel invigorating anymore, my seemingly erratic moment is starting to sink in and I burst into tears. To be honest I know I wasn’t crying because I was bald. I have wigs I wear all the time I could’ve been bald all along and nobody would’ve been the wiser. I was scared, I was scared I didn't have something that was apart of me for so long, something that supposedly made me pretty, comfortable ...normal.
My amazing friends consoled me by telling me how beautiful I was and how I had to wait for the process to be over so I could see the final look. I gathered myself, sat down and let him continue.
So – They were right! I had to wait for the process. I didn’t look half bad, I always believe a shower and make – up pull the look together. I did just that and I quite liked this look. I knew it would turn heads, I knew some wouldn’t like it. In typical me fashion I either don’t think about something at all and do it or overthink it to the point where I continuously put it off or convince myself not to do it at all . this was the latter. Truth is I had been wanting to shave my head for more than a year, my ‘erratic’ moment wasn’t erratic at all I just ended up thinking “@$%%^ it” and went for it on a random day which made it seem erratic.
I felt much more confident now than I did with long hair It was a different kind of confident, people were calling it 'brave'. I’m not too sure how I feel about the term yet considering I didn’t save a cat from a tree or a baby from a burning house but I get it, I shouldn’t make it so deep. In this context I am brave. with long hair there’s less face, with a bald head you’re almost forced to either ignore or accept what you view as your flaws before anyone else attacks them, if they do.
Obviously being a millennial it didn’t happen if I haven’t posted it on Instagram, I got a resounding vote of confidence but the oddest aspect in all of this was that you would think I would be posting it for an approval but it felt more like an announcement that I was approving of myself.
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