I Shaved My Head—And Finally Felt Seen

“Did it feel liberating?” A stranger shout-whispers in my ear over the pulsing beat on the dance floor. I roll my eyes and shrug my shoulders. My answer—the same feigned nonchalance I’ve been banging out for the last two - nearly three - years: “I just wanted to. Luckily it looked good.” 

Which is true. Partially.

I had always wanted to shave my head. Somewhere between my childhood saturated with sci-fi, Tumblr years reblogging photos of buzzcut Angelina Jolie and GIFs of Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta, and an adolescent obsession with achingly cool British model Agyness Deyn, a seed of curiosity was planted in my brain. I wanted to know what it would feel like. 

In August of 2023, I went to a friend’s house after work. He—after my repeated insistence that I wasn’t going to hate him for it afterwards—took out his clippers and shaved my hair off. My reasoning, at that moment, was that the dark roots in my bleached blond pixie bob were an eyesore that I didn’t have time to fix before flying to Berlin in the morning. Buzzing my hair off was simply the most logical step. 

I thought that I hadn’t felt particularly attached to my hair. In fact, I actively recoiled at the idea of being one of ‘those’ girls; the girls who took ardent pride in caring for long, glossy locks, who oiled and brushed and plaited their pampered, luscious waves. I didn’t think I could feel that different. 

Large clumps of my hair falling onto my folded legs, I felt the adrenaline high that you only get from following risky, impulsive desires. I felt reborn: as vulnerable and naked as a baby. I also felt the most myself that I could remember. There was nothing to hide behind. I don’t think anything could have prepared me for how exposed I would feel. Like many things in life, you can't really understand it until you experience it firsthand. 

Two days later, I was drenched in sweat at a rave in Berlin. Splashing water over my face at the sink, I realised I could just run my entire head under the tap like a bird in a bird bath, cooling myself down. It felt animalistic, novel, cleansing. 

My lack of hair made me very visible. Pretty much everyone started noticing me. I lapped up the attention that came from a look that I realized carried many interpretations. I found myself obsessed with what people’s reactions revealed to me about their own cerebral connotations. To some I appeared pixie-like, androgynous. To others I was something to be feared. Some people asked if I had cancer. Others were disturbed, their confusion as they processed something so unconventional painted across their faces. I revelled in the shock factor my new hair held, not only from people who knew me but from strangers in the street who did double takes, intoxicated revellers at parties confessing their adoration, and transfixed children who gazed at me like I was an otherworldly being.

“Hair can represent sensitivity, intuition, and embodiment. Cutting it can be an act of shedding psychic weight,” Tree Carr, author, transpersonal therapist, death doula and High Priestess witch, tells me. “Think catharsis—which comes from the Greek word κάθαρσις (katharsis). It means ‘cleansing’ or ‘purging’. In the esoteric sense, hair is a thread between the inner and outer worlds. It's like an antenna of spirit, a vessel of memory. To cut it is to clear psychic static, to start fresh.” 

I may have appeared fearless, with an otherworldly look that gave the impression of striking self-assuredness. However, that wasn’t the whole story. 

There were more than a few nights where things were taken way too far, and some choices that ended in consequences far more serious than what outfit to wear or who to go home with. You could say that I had a Brat summer before Brat summer was even a thing. Whilst it wasn't all from a place of underlying self-destruction or a death drive, you could say that my mental health had something left to be desired and my common sense compass definitely needed to be reprogrammed. However, I was having the time of my life. I was turning over every stone, saying yes to everything, doing it all for the plot line and the autobiography. 

Living in chaos is a non-stop rush. It’s like constantly disarming a bomb. If it goes right, it’s better than fine. You feel like you’re winning. If it goes wrong, everything blows the fuck up. Shaving my head was a perfect bomb disarmament. Spontaneous, instinctual—it made me feel invincible. 

The narrative I told myself was that I had spontaneously made the choice to buzz my hair based on some vague urge. This wasn’t exactly a lie but instead a complex masking of many truths. On the other side of recklessness, of wanting to appear reckless and fearless, was a sense of desperation. I had longed for a sense of control over my own image since I’d hit puberty and begun to understand how deeply entrenched my physical appearance was with how I was perceived and treated. I think I can speak for most girls when I say this: the female experience is thrust upon us. Modeling had placated this somewhat; it momentarily appeared that I’d found a way to harness the societal possession of my appearance to benefit myself directly, albeit whilst still continuing to play into conventional beauty standards. However, there was an ominous underlying contingency that my modeling career rested on my conformity. So much so that the agency that represented me for the entire 20s dropped me a mere few months after the buzz. 

More than an act of emancipation, shaving my head is an act of rebellion. I now embody an archetype I call the Misfit Woman. Angelina Jolie or Natalie Portman buzzing their hair for films is one thing, but the manifestation of this archetype is epitomised by none other than 2007 Britney: an act of defiance from a woman under immense scrutiny and insurmountable pressure to conform that shocked the world, and is still one of the most seminal pop culture moments of all time. 

“It is both rebellion and reclamation! She carries the energy of the defiant rebel: fierce, sovereign, and unbound,” Carr tells me. She cut off her hair the night before she ran away from home, at the age of 18, leaving her severed locks in a pile for her parents to find on the kitchen table. “There’s a shadow lineage of buzzcut women. In history, women’s heads were shaved as punishment or shame. Think accused witches, prisoners of war, widows, collaborators, the outcasts. So when a woman chooses to shave her head with her own hands today, she’s reclaiming that narrative, turning shame into sovereignty.” It’s giving Joan of Arc.

The more we attempt to exist within a structure that is built on the scaffolding of our conformity, the deeper our alienation from our true desires and instincts ploughs. 

It’s cliché, but there are few things truer in life than the relationship between the feminine urge to get a drastic haircut and drastically, tangibly changing your life. My buzz felt as final and personal as it could get. It was all there—the good, the bad, the ugly—for everyone to see, nothing to hide behind. The same went for my inner world. 

Suddenly, I understood a lot more about Britney’s 2007 “meltdown”. I have spent most of my life being told I am beautiful but, for the first time in my life, I actually felt beautiful. I had chosen to let go of something that had both felt safe and restrictive, a keratin-weight blanket. It wasn’t just a haircut;it was a psycho-spiritual reckoning. “To cut it away can feel like renouncing a script you never agreed to perform,” Carr puts it. “It’s a powerful act of individuation, a ritual of emergence.”

I often catch men looking at me confused, completely bewildered by the juxtaposition between finding me attractive and my shorn, masculine head. On the other hand, one of my absolute favourite things is getting the most generous compliments from older women. A few days ago, a woman stopped me on the street. She was older, with long silver hair. “Your hair is beautiful. I had it myself when I was younger. Only the truly cool girls can pull it off.” A teenage girl I met at a rave last year told me she loved my hair; a few months later I saw her at another party, and she’d shaved all hers off too. 

And then there's the ease of it. If you haven’t paid for a fresh fade at your local barber with a crisp £10 note, you’re missing out. Trust me.