“just shave it all off”

is what I told the barber as she tossed the cape over my shoulders.

There’s a powerful letting go when you watch your hair fall away from your scalp and fall to the ground in big tufts. Your face transforms as the shape of your skull emerges. Who is this stranger? You feel naked, vulnerable, ugly, tough, stripped-down, brave, anonymous, pure.

Of course, if you’re a woman, people start trying to figure out why you’d shave off your pretty hair[1]. They probably assume it’s something to do with sexual or gender identity. Or maybe you’re just crazy!

Fine, let judgmental people put me in their boxes[2]. Meanwhile, I no longer have to worry about helmet hair. And when I got to Seattle, with a halo of new growth emanating from my scalp, I can measure my cross-country bike tour in centimeters as well as miles.

[1] Well, unless it’s pubic, leg, or armpit hair, in which case we’re expected to obliterate it entirely.

[2] Which I’m pretty sure my very first WarmShowers hosts did later that night. They still shared their home with me, and I’m grateful, but I detected a little coolness in the way they explained my hair to their toddler, and they left me a neutral review on WarmShowers. Naturally, I obsessively went over every detail of my behavior — did I eat too much? should I have tried to stay up later? be more entertaining? was it wrong to stay with a host on my first night? — but I wonder if they would have been nicer if I had long hair.