This blog was born when I ruined my hair.

I know, I know, that sounds strange. And I don’t mean ruined as in ‘it turned a funny colour’ (although it does, occasionally), or as in ‘got a bad haircut’ (although I did, once); I mean my hair was so destroyed that when it was wet, it had the consistency of chewing gum. It broke off in my hands. I had to put wash-out conditioner on every time I washed it and leave it in.

It was fucked, if you’ll pardonez-moi my French.

This was the result of bleaching to white (I have naturally blonde hair, but I wanted further), then getting a perm on my longer hair - see this post for my old hairstyle - and then dying it lavender on top. This was during March 2011.

I liked this hair at first, particularly the curls. I have always wanted curly hair, I used to eat all the crusts on my bread because I honestly believed it made your hair curl. Sure, I didn’t like the half-melted texture, but what can you do?

Anyways. Fast-forward to April 2011. I get bored quickly, as any of my friends will tell you - since I turned 16, left my all-girls private school and started at art school, I have had 7 changes in hair colour, and have shaved more and more hair off my head. My undercut stopped being ‘under’ quite some time ago.

I was talking to my best friend - incidentally, one of the most wonderful people I have ever met - about how sick I was of my hair, of the effort of conditioning and rolling it, the continuous cycle of roots growing, reshaving the shaved bits, bleaching roots, topping up dye, etc., and the dread of having to get it re-permed every 3 months. In a classic case of ‘teenage hyperbole’, I exclaimed how I wished I could just shave it all off.

She asked me why I couldn’t. I explained that while art school was extremely liberal (aside from some strangely bitchy girls in other classes), my campus also provides other courses, and I had already been intimidated by some of the individuals on those courses.

I had people cough and say ‘lesbian’ under their breath as I walked by. Something like that, I explained, makes you feel unsafe, no matter how out and proud you are. It makes you feel angry to your very core, that they are using something so personal and beautiful as who I love as an insult.

She said why not test them?

I’ll admit, I did not take much convincing. I missed my old hair colour. I wanted to start over with my hair. I missed being able to wash it every day, I missed being able to go in the rain without worrying about running colour or my perm going funny.

So I decided: once my roots had grown out enough, I would clip my hair to a number 4 gauge on my family’s clippers.

I decided to start this blog to document how people react when a queer girl they know, who doesn’t dress how ‘usual’ shaved-headed queers do, shaves her head. I want to provide a place for us; a place that documents the wide variety of girls, straight and non-straight, who have this hairstyle, and the reactions they get from their peers, and even passerbys.

I am a girl who has always received…comments, shall we call them, from passersby. Polite and not so polite. This to me is a combination of human experimentation and self-expression.

I’m doing this for me; I’m documenting it for any girl out there who wants to shave her head, but doesn’t know how her life is gonna be when she does.

I don’t hate dykes. I don’t hate femmes. I don’t hate straight girls. I love everyone. This blog is anti-ignorance, anti-prejudice, anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-ageism, anti-ableism and anti-transphobia. Everyone is welcome here, cisfemales and females*, cismales and males*. Any gender expression, or lack thereof, is welcome.

I don’t care about your weight or the clothes you wear or who you sleep with or what gender you identify as or whether or not you wear fucking make-up.

Fuck heteronormative fashion standards, fuck lesbian stereotypes, fuck gender stereotypes. This blog stands for radical self-love, body positivity, and the grrrlvirus.

Rape culture is not a laughing matter. This is a safe place.

Sometimes a shaved head = dyke. And that is wonderful.

This blog is just here to show that that is not always the case. 

So sit back, relax. Judge not, lest ye be judged. This is my life since I decided to say bye-bye to my hair.