hairy girl
2004-01-15

I had no hair on my head when I was 15.

Do I have your attention now?

For the past few days or so I�ve been considering picking up a pair of scissors and a shaver to just take it all off. Some of you who knew me from high school would remember the �botak� stunt I pulled at 15. It brought laughter (mine) and tears (not mine), as well as some pretty nasty insults. It sure taught me a lot about notoriety.

No, I am not a skinhead at the moment.

There are two things that are stopping me from taking the cut, excuse the pun.

1. Mr. J seems particularly averse to having a bald lover a la Sinead O�Connor.

2. I picked up Nancy Etcoff�s Survival of the Prettiest at the bookstore.

While I�m the last person to, you know, give a damn about male egos, I do however, have a heart.
I�m strong enough to ignore snide comments or surprised snickers that come packaged with a shorn head, but I�m unwilling to share the nasty stuff with Mr. J, simply because it doesn�t concern him.

So what if his girlfriend is bald.
It doesn�t mean she�s asexual, or masculine, or, god forbid, is dominant in the relationship (although I mostly am ... lalala~).

But people don�t think that way.

So. That�s one thing.

Reason number 2 really made me sway more towards hair and less towards hairless. Etcoff eloquently made her point in Survival, which is basically that pretty people are accorded more power than un-pretty people, which we all instinctively now at some level or another. It is presumable that people, specifically women, with hair on their heads are generally more attractive than their hairless counterparts, and therefore, more powerful.

I like power. I like being in power. I want more power.

Sure, I�d feel empowered after shaving my head; I'll control the symbols of my fertility, I'll determine what is or what's not important in my appearance.
But a nagging voice at the back of my headful of hair tells me boys (and girls) won�t really like a girl without hair. It�ll be too creepy, too weird.

I bet you someone�s going to come around and say, �just wear the goddamn tudung and be done with it!�
Been there, done that, not doing it again, thank you very much.

Me and my god-complex.
It just cracks me up.