How shaving my head bald is impacting my career and life

 An interesting perspective from a woman who has alopecia:

Thankfully amid the copious sad online hair-loss results, there are a few bright spots. My favorite right now is a Black girl from Detroit (like me), Nikki Vontaya. I love that she is just living her whole life and happens to share the bald part on her incredible journey.

Hair sometimes seems like such a small thing, but it absolutely shapes how we experience one another. Appearances can inform whole lives, and shape relationships and the way we work. Secretly, I have asked my partner more times than I care to admit if he will still love me with no hair. It’s a small thing but the impact can be far-reaching.


Yet, greater than all of the worries is the desire just to cut it off already. To work out without wondering if the powder I put in my hair will run down the side of my face during hot Pilates à la Rudy Giuliani. To not have to travel with a collection of hair products and tools to hide my baldness. To not feel a small cringe when people say “I love your hair” and I have to eke out another smiling “Thank you” while fighting the urge to tell the kind stranger that I love my hair too but I am cutting it off because I am balding.

Besides the worries, I am excited most of the time. I can’t wait to free myself of the hair I love but have been living my life around. I don’t desire to be a woman bound by anything, and while I know the deep authenticity I crave isn’t how everyone wants to live, my soul screams out for it. I don’t want to cover it up unless it’s an occasional fun choice and not because I am hiding. I hope to love it. I know several bald women who are fine, look incredibly beautiful, and live life like bald is a vibe. I am hoping that is how I feel about it. I am making sure to also have grace for myself if my initial reaction is something vastly different.

So if you see me out in the world in the coming weeks, with my head out or covered, I hope you too can grant me a little grace. I will likely still be working through embracing and celebrating the complexity of adding another element to the parts of my appearance that make my life really hard at times. Black. Woman. And now bald.