2 hours ago
2
In November 2000, two weeks after giving birth to my first and only child, I found myself collapsed in bed, breastfeeding in front of Top of the Pops, hair matted, sheets dirty, surrounded by sick-soaked muslin rags. I liked it. Or at least, it felt like a perfectly reasonable thing to be doing, until Madonna – who had given birth to Rocco Ritchie only three months earlier – appeared on the screen in a cropped leather jacket, belly bared, sexy-dancing to Don’t Tell Me. Did I feel inspired? Resentful? Brimming with pity for this attention-seeker? For sure, it was all three.
As the weeks wore on, I began to see how it might be possible to shower, put on actual clothes and maybe even pop to the corner shop. Occasional visits to cafes, museums and other warm, baby-friendly spaces soon followed and stopped me from feeling as if I had fallen into a well of loneliness.
But I knew that, if I was to fully return to functional human-ing, I urgently needed to sift through my priorities. What time-consuming activities could I let go of? Housework was a no-brainer but eating probably had to stay. Top of the list of useless things to do – or so it seemed in my time-deprived mania – was haircare. What was the point of hair? You had to wash it, brush it and have it trimmed. Plus, I had grey roots so I also imagined I had to dye it.
There was a barber shop around the corner from my house. If I could just free up the 20 minutes it would take to get my head shaved, I’d be buying myself hours of future time. Plus, I secretly hoped there would be other benefits too. I had started to find the attention and idealisation around motherhood exhausting. I was tired of the gooey way strangers would look at me while I was breastfeeding, for example. I was also a bit sick of people sticking by my side after they’d helped me up the stairs with my pram. This constant “lovely lady” projection was getting on my nerves: just because I had a baby, it didn’t follow that I was nice. If I shaved my head and looked a bit more grrrr, I wondered if it might stop.
I asked the barber for a number-two buzz cut all over. He seemed reluctant, asking if I was sure. I said yes and told him I was tired of looking “like a mum”. The actual cut took less than five minutes; I went from Virgin Mary to badass Alien-destroyer in the time it took to change a nappy. I was euphoric.
It took about 48 hours for the bubble to burst. Standing with my pram at the bottom of a tube station staircase, I looked up haplessly as people scurried past. Why was no one stopping to help? The next day I ventured out alone and tried to buy a coffee at a crowded counter. I felt like a ghost. Why couldn’t anyone see me? Then I cracked, complaining that I’d been waiting longer than anyone else. This did not endear me to the busy barista, who paid back my snappiness in spades.
I had got what I wanted – and it was terrible. Yes, I’d saved myself some time getting ready to go out in the mornings, but at what cost? I moped around cafes and museums looking at other women’s hair, calculating how many months or years it would take me to catch up. Any hair length over three inches would flood me with hideous envy. My haircut had made me a monster, inside and out. (Incidentally, there are no pictures of me as a true baldie. Did I dodge cameras, or did they dodge me?)
I quickly discovered that life is much harder for women without swishy hair – a harsh lesson in what happens when you step outside gender norms. Dropping just one of the key markers of femininity meant strangers treated me very differently: being femme-presenting had meant getting help and approval – albeit with an occasional side serving of creepiness – while looking grrrr meant being ignored, or risking being labelled as stroppy. It was frustrating to discover how a few minutes in a barber’s chair had completely changed who I was for others.
Of course, hair grows, and soon enough I was once again sashaying through pre-opened doors with abandon. And now I have waist-length, white hair, which somehow perfectly fits my neurotic insistence on conforming and not conforming at the same time. But my temporary, self-inflicted privilege dip did give me the tiniest glimpse into what it might be like to be ignored, excluded or feared on the grounds of appearance alone. And that really is an ugly sight.
