Buzzcut

This piece was originally longlisted for the 2022 CBC Nonfiction prize.

The first time I shaved my head, I sat excitedly in the salon chair while the hairdresser stalled, double and triple-checking with my mom to ensure that this haircut was allowed. At 11, I hadn’t yet received a full introduction to the world of sexual and body politics. This is one of the first memories I have of being told that my body did not belong to me. My body belonged to the world around me, and I was supposed to look to adults who knew better when I made decisions about what to do with it. My mom sat behind us, smiling and reassuring the hairdresser that she approved of my decision. “Besides,” she said, “it’s just hair, it’ll grow back".

When I shaved my head again, at 24, I knew I needed to hold the clippers in my own hands. I needed to feel my hair cascading down my bare shoulders. I needed to take my time, letting the emotions, tears, and laughter come as they might. This was my decision alone to make. Besides, it’s just hair, it’ll grow back. Not that it matters.

–

As passé and misogynistic as “not like other girls” rhetoric has become, the truth is that growing up I was not much like other girls at all. At the time I shaved my head, my daily uniform consisted of striped polo shirts and garishly colored sweatpants, all purchased from the boys section.

I grew up in the suburbs playing competitive soccer, which meant many of the families in my community were rich, stuck-up, and extremely focused on aesthetics. My fashion and hairstyle choices were scrutinized by many, but my biggest critics were the other soccer moms. Most of them couldn’t believe that my mother would allow me to cut off all my long, silky smooth red hair, and they made this clear. To them, their daughters were more like dolls to dress up than autonomous beings. My mom, a staunch feminist, steered as far away as she could from these attitudes.

To put it simply, I was free, and this freedom allowed me also to be as creative as I wanted. I reveled in the idea of spending my life making movies and writing books. The summer I had a buzzcut, I created a series of videos where I acted as a crocodile hunter making her way through a corn maze. They were silly, but they got a laugh out of my family. I took great pleasure in directing my sister, the camerawoman, and improvising in front of the screen. I got to be whoever I wanted to be.

Shortly after the big chop, my mom (a writer) published an article in the Globe and Mail titled “My Bold, Bald Daughter.” In it, she details how I told her “I hate brushing my hair and I want something different”. I don’t remember all of my feelings leading up to the decision to shave my head, but I do remember a distinct feeling of annoyance towards my hair.

At the time, I didn’t think I was doing anything bold or revolutionary. Hair, to me, was nothing but a nuisance that I could easily be rid of. Simple solution: shave it all off. I do know that I wanted to stand out amongst my peers, but this was more out of a desire to line up my exterior appearance with the way I felt internally than to set myself apart as someone daring or bold.

Looking back, I can see that it was a brave decision to make. I did something that I had never seen another girl my age do. My friends didn’t understand my decision or like my haircut, and I withstood many comments about what a tragedy it was that my beautiful long hair was now gone.

Around the same time, I started going through puberty. Overnight, I developed stretch marks on my hips and my breasts grew to a C cup, then a D cup. I got a feminine figure much earlier than any of my friends, and it felt like punishment. Nothing about my body felt right at the time, which was an experience I had no language for. It wasn’t that I hated the thought of growing breasts, it was that my curves were now much more noticeable than I liked. I didn’t want the expectations and sexualization that accompanied a “womanly” figure - I wanted my body to be malleable, transformable. I wanted to be in control of the way the world perceived me, and I no longer was.

A sports bra didn’t cut it anymore when I played soccer. The solution I came up with was duct tape and tensor bandages strategically placed to make myself as flat as possible. At 11 years old, without understanding the history and implications of the act, I was binding my chest. Like with my hair, I didn’t understand that this action I was taking for the sake of practicality might be representative of gender dysphoria. All I knew was that my boobs were so big they threatened to injure me while I ran, and that was an issue I needed to solve. Before my games I had my rituals: listen to my pump-up playlist, stretch, and wrap my chest up so tightly that it was hard to breathe.

As an awkward 11-year-old who was miles away from the world of sex, I saw no use for the things on my chest that weighed me down like anchors. I was fed up with them as soon as they appeared. Around that time, my mother had a breast reduction, and I started dreaming of the day I could have mine.

–

Shortly after the buzzcut, I started to change again. I reluctantly began understanding the weight of expectations that come with inhabiting a female body. My confidence wavered, and I buckled under the expectation that I should change to fit within the narrow parameters of “girl”. I grew my hair out, started shopping in the girls section at Hollister, and forced myself into the closet. Being attracted to girls as well as boys was too confusing for me to wrap my head around at the time. Sexuality and gender were issues I didn’t fully understand, but I knew that both were causing me problems. I started to consider myself defective. Why couldn’t I just be like other girls?

Unsurprisingly, things got worse in high school. I quickly developed an eating disorder in order to try and keep up with my stick-thin friends and I spent hours recreating Youtube makeup tutorials. As a chronically online teen, it didn’t take long for me to grasp what the image of acceptable womanhood was or for this image to become deeply embedded in my psyche. The world saw me as a woman, which meant there were rules I couldn’t break and standards I had to meet. Womanhood became a prison I saw no escape from.

I didn’t create or write much at this time either. The feeling of confinement that I was experiencing had permeated the rest of my life. I resigned myself to a lifetime of disguises and practical decisions, and I set aside my lofty dreams and creative tendencies in exchange for a realistic university degree and career.

In my early 20’s, I came out as queer. Although this opening of the closet door helped alleviate some of my discomfort, I still felt like I was more trapped than I wanted to be. I didn’t have access to a solid queer community yet, and I didn’t understand all the ways there were to be a woman (if that’s what I even was). The ideal woman, in my eyes, still had long hair, wore feminine clothing, and had a meek demeanor. I did my best to shapeshift and shrink myself into this box, but it always felt like a form of self-abandonment.

–

A few years ago, I started therapy for some of the trauma I’d experienced throughout my life. A lot of the work I did involved imagining, interacting with, and comforting a younger version of myself, and eventually, working to realize that that same child still exists within me and I can take care of her now.

When I imagined her, she always appeared as I did when I was 11. In a sense, that was my purest form. That was the person I had been when I felt the most like me. Strip down all the parts that had been passed down from other people, and that’s who I was.

I wanted to find a way to be more like that version of myself. I wanted to be unburdened and unencumbered. I wanted to feel free.

I started getting the itch to shave my head again. As is typical of an anxiety-riddled person, I gave myself a million reasons not to do it: it wouldn’t suit my round face, I wouldn’t look feminine enough, etc. My hair had become a safety blanket that I believed I needed to exist in the world. Although I didn’t feel any emotional attachment to my hair and I absolutely despised the act of styling it, I kept it long because that’s what I was told women were supposed to do.

Around a year ago, I began the process of getting a breast reduction. This made my buzzcut urge even worse, as I knew that having no hair would make the recovery process easier, and I had a suspicion that that haircut would make the surgeon take me more seriously when I asked for a radical reduction. After a few canceled surgery dates because of the pandemic, I started getting antsy. I could see a future with a body that felt like my own again, and I wanted it desperately.

As I graduated university during a pandemic, I could feel my perspective and my priorities shifting. I learned quickly that nothing was promised and that the world could change in the blink of an eye. Why would I spend my one precious life being someone that I don’t want to be?

I still felt fearful, though, and incapable of pursuing the life that I wanted deep down. I needed something to remind myself that I was still bold, still brave, still brash.

I needed to shave my head.

As soon as I had the house to myself for a day, I bought the clippers. This felt like a ritual I should do in solitude. It took me an hour after I got home to steel my nerves enough to hold the clippers in my hands, another 10 minutes after that to turn them on. Once the first chunk of hair hit the ground, I felt like I was flying. Finally, I took my body and my life back into my own hands.

–

Since that day I’ve had 5 pounds of breast tissue removed, abandoned the career path that promised security and stability, and re-embraced my creative aspirations. There’s still a lot that I haven't figured out, but I’m less stressed out by the questions now.

I still don’t know for certain what my gender identity is, but the truth is that I like not having a simple answer. I don’t want to be palatable. I want to be fluid, and I want to be in control.

With a shaved head and a small-ish chest, I look in the mirror and I feel like me again. Life feels more open, more full of possibility now that I’m getting back in touch with the version of myself that existed before the world told me what I could and couldn’t be. Where can I go, what could I accomplish if I simply hand the reins back to that bold, bald, 11-year-old kid?

As my hair fell to the ground that bright summer day, so too did over a decades’ worth of false pretenses. Here I am, baring myself to the world again, hoping this time it will love me back.