Escaping the Male Gaze
Or, Why You Should Shave Your Head More Than Once
I have a cranium that is small and flat in the back like a falling soft-boiled egg going splat at the first moment of impact.
Beanies are a no-go. In adjustable helmets I set the size to zero, like a child's.
I once dated a guy training to be an EEG technician. He took a closer look at the back of my head and went, "Woah. I measure heads all day at work. And yours is... it's... I've never seen anything like it. Can I measure it? For fun?"
For this reason, hair has always been instrumental in covering up this defect. I have thick hair that stands up on its own, like grass. Any salon technician who is not Asian immediately balks when they put their hands through it.
It looks decent when it's long, because it drapes and is full of volume. It also weighs many, many more pounds than I would like it to.
In my last year of college, after putting off what should have been my annual haircut for far too long, my hair had managed to reach my hips. It was crispy at the ends and increasingly unmanageable. In the search for a simpler maintenance routine, I got sucked into the fantasy of a pixie. On the last day before spring break, I booked an appointment at a salon on Telegraph. The hair stylist tentatively hacked at it at my behest and it grew ever shorter, until finally it was about two inches at the top and faded at the sides and back.
Biking back home, the wind was so incredibly refreshing on my newly exposed scalp. I felt free and easy, weightless.
I called my mom and dad on Wechat. "What!" she shouted into the phone. By the end of the call, the shock had worn off, and she told me I looked like a rock star. My dad murmured in agreement, that it wasn't so bad. She asked me for photos so she could send it around to her friends. And then she changed her phone background to a picture of me with my long hair, in memoriam.
I made plans with my boyfriend Hubert, who was attached to my long hair. He knew I was getting a haircut, but initially he didn't believe me when I said I wanted it short. His jaw dropped when he saw me. We argued for several hours, me failing to hold back tears as we walked around bookshops and cafes in Elmwood on what was supposed to be a relaxing date.
"How could you even think of doing this to me?"
"It's my fucking hair!" I whispered back under clenched teeth. We had been going around and around the topic, his bewilderment returning every time he tried to look me in the eye. The other bookstore patrons, mostly elderly women taking a calm afternoon stroll, glanced over with mild concern.
"You look like a guy! Or a lesbian! Both!"
"It's JUST hair! Nobody cares! It'll grow back."
"But your long hair looked so good! Why would you just get rid of it?"
"If you love long hair so much, you should grow it out yourself!"
I was furious at his inane jabs at my appearance, but also mad at myself for caring so much. It wasn't very feminist of me at all to break down crying, in public for godssake, because my shallow boyfriend didn't like my haircut.
It began to cross my mind that he was so mad he might break up with me over this. Hell, I thought about breaking up with him. But because we had already established an on-again, off-again pattern in our relationship, I had sworn to not return to such pettiness.
My history with Hubert had always been troubled. Early on when we first met at the beginning of college, I was trying to be truthful and mature in talking about my being attracted to him. He rejected my gentle advances.
"Maybe if you had bigger boobs," he said, partly in jest. "Do you think they're still gonna grow?"
And yet, throughout the years of having overlapping friend groups and being in marching band together, we nevertheless managed to fall back into each other's orbit. It was propinquity. Or maybe it was desperation, I couldn't tell. I think deep down he was sad that no one else had admitted to having feelings for him, like I had.
We shared several things in common which bound us – similar immigration timelines, first loves from high school who we still thought of often, an unattractive skinniness that could only be explained by genetics, a love for Chinese calligraphy and art. The first year we knew each other, we spent quite a bit of time together. He couldn't write, or read, for his life. Friend-zoned as I was, I still took it upon myself to agree to rewrite his essays for him. I pitied him, and simultaneously wanted to show off. You don't think I'm beautiful, but look what I can do with my words, I wanted to say.
For the following year, Hubert and I didn't talk, though we were both still in band. I dated someone else, a strikingly handsome young man from Berlin who was studying abroad for the year. Our relationship ended with the conclusion of his sojourn, on my account – once he boarded his flight back to Europe, I could no longer stomach the distance. He had been rejected from all the US grad schools he applied to, and turned his gaze instead toward England. I slaved over editing and helping to write his application materials, despite my change of heart. In the end he made it to Cambridge, and I was glad for him.
By the time Hubert and I did officially date in our third year, the German boyfriend became a sore subject. On the one hand, my relationship history raised my esteem in his eyes, because it was social proof that a good looking man could find me attractive. On the other hand, the jealousy and spite he felt for this man who was no longer in my life reached feverish levels. The very first time we broke up, over a summer we spent apart, was precipitated by Hubert's insistence on revisiting my old facebook photos which showcased my previous relationship, and then telling me that I had made him vomit twice that day.
A month after my shocking haircut and the resulting traumatic argument, Hubert and I took graduation photos together with our band friends. These turned out quite well and a couple went up on facebook, on both of our profiles. At his department graduation, an acquaintance came up to him to say hello. "You never told me you had such a cute girlfriend!" she squealed. She had seen the photos online.
Hubert told me this story, beaming. I wanted to smack him in the face.
My eventual end with Hubert is not pertinent here, though fatefully, it also took place in a bookstore. Hubert had many qualities that made him a good boyfriend. His tendency to scorn my appearance, however, was not one of them.
He is also not the only one to have criticized my looks so severely. My mother takes home the prize on that one. At the beginning of puberty, she began a campaign to prepare me for the cruel, outside world.
"Sweetie, men put a lot of store by good looks. I had one close friend I used to play tennis with, do you remember so-and-so? She hardly had any breasts at all, and all the girls pitied her. She never married. I don't want you to end up like her. You need to develop a strong personality, have more to rely on than just looks."
As a child, I sneered at these warnings quite effortlessly. Already by that age I began to lay claim to a tomboy style, readily throwing up the middle finger to boys who dared critique my body. People commented on my androgynous appearance, and I decided it wasn't altogether a bad thing. In young adult novels I found countless heroines like Scout Finch who backed me up in this regard. I wore a shirt and tie to the 8th grade dance, in defiance of dresses that didn't fit anyway. (Hence why prom was so painful.)
But my mother's anxieties and warnings echoed in Hubert's critiques of my appearance. In college, more interested in dating than I cared to admit, I struggled to properly fight them off.
When I began dating my husband many years later, he laughed out loud at all these stories, how stupid we all were. He loved my tiny boobs; large, gelatinous breasts freak him out. He loved the delight I took in telling this to my mother.
I kept my pixie after college for about five years, eventually growing it out during the pandemic. That particular style needed to be trimmed at least every ten weeks, and turned out to be more maintenance than I was originally led to believe. By the time I gave birth, my hair was back down below my shoulders. After my nighttime showers it took forever to dry, and it was eating up time where I could have been sleeping.
At my first haircut postpartum in Berkeley, I asked for something shorter, not quite a pixie but above the shoulder. The hair stylist, a Vietnamese mother of two grown boys, chatted with me about her heady postpartum days and told me that she and many of her friends had simply shaved their heads back then. It was during a period of deep seclusion anyway, and was extremely low maintenance. I balked at the suggestion, but thought it a brave notion.
Soon, college boys still waiting for their turns began to fill up the little salon. She wrapped up my cut, and frowned at what she saw in the mirror. My hair was above my shoulders but rather choppy at the ends, its thickness betraying the lack of carefully planned layers. When I handed her the money, she folded up my tip and placed it back in my hands.
"Come back if you're not happy with it. I'll shave it for no charge."
The eventual shave happened not with her, but at my parents' house, eight months later. It was peak summer in the humid foothills of east Los Angeles. We were 'temporarily' staying at my parents’ house while waiting for our new townhouse to be built, an unexpected delay that stretched intolerably from one month to six. Outside temperatures reached well over 100F, whereas inside temperatures on the second floor bedrooms in an aging house with broken AC hovered at 90F, often late into the night.
My husband was riding out his obsession with Zen Buddhism at the time. He listened to my endless complaints about my postpartum hair loss and my general unhappiness with my appearance, and simply said, why not just shave it?
It was the complete opposite of Hubert's comments, and it astonished me. For many nights I tossed and turned in the heat, sleepless and undecided. I didn't have a job, I wasn't trying to date, to keep up appearances. I shlepped around all day with a baby on my chest, wearing a gigantic hat to shield us both from the excruciating sun. What did I have to lose?
We did it together, taking turns in the backyard, using his beard trimmer. My dad held the baby, who watched in bemusement. I went for a conservative 16mm at the beginning, but with the trimmer guard being of such poor quality, I eventually went down to 5mm for a smoother shave.
That first week, I went through such unbelievable highs and lows.
Every shower was a deep, intoxicating scalp massage. I constantly rubbed my head, in disbelief that I had actually gone through with it, and it was pleasurable to the touch. My husband loved it. He delightfully nicknamed it 'the fuzzball'.
Every step outside was nerve-wracking, especially if I wasn't wearing a hat. My dad couldn't meet my eyes. My mom belligerently told me I had been rash and was making a huge mistake. I stared at my reflection in the mirror and almost didn't recognize myself. I gazed at the back of my head and thought, how frightening, this egg-ish thing. I worried my baby wouldn't recognize me. (He did. Or more importantly, he recognized my boobs.)
On one occasion, we went to the Huntington Library in San Marino on a family outing. Several female monks in sweeping orange robes were there, with cuts exactly like mine. I hid myself under my gigantic hat and secretly wished I could befriend them, to be an honorary member of their sisterhood.
In the four brief months it took for my shaved head to grow back into a short pixie, not one stranger commented on my appearance or mistook me for a guy. If anyone noticed me, it was to tell me about the adorable baby strapped to my chest.
When we had finally moved into our new house, in a brand new town, I had aspirations to make friends. I joined a 'dating app' for moms and a local parenting class. I fretted over what aspect of myself I wanted to broadcast, what would seem attractive to others. Even though there were zero men involved, in a way I was 'dating' again, and all the old anxieties and self-criticism came back like muscle memory. The initial sensory euphoria of shaving my head had faded, and my hair once again became a frequent source of feelings of inadequacy. I questioned my rationale around shaving, and swore I would never do it again.
Then I got pregnant once more, and ultimately I did shave it again, and again. Always the practicalities won out. I was faced with a wailing infant and tantruming toddler, a mess of a house, a night routine that felt chaotic and never quite long enough for me to budget in time to manage my hair. It fell out in thick, black clumps that clogged the drain and horrified me.
The shave freed me from all that. Growing it out started to feel easier. We upgraded our clippers, and found something that worked for the whole family, kids included. I found I had more time and mental energy to pick out clothes instead, to diligently clean my face and actually remember to put on skincare.
The more I experienced of motherhood, the more I started to realize that no one actually noticed much of anything about me. I was invisible, in a good way.
My hair is my own, once again. The little baby hairs are coming in where the loss occurred in the corners of my hairline, and I look closer to the old self I remember. My husband still has to occasionally listen to me complain about it, but I'll wager that he complains about his just as much. (My haircutting proficiency has wavered throughout the years, as has his.) The difference is, the Huberts of the world no longer have a say in it. His voice, or even my mother's, is not one that gets a chance to linger in my head.
Hubert and I stopped talking a long time ago. I deleted my facebook for good, and haven't seen anything of him since. I do have one friend who still makes an uproar about my cutting ties with social media and takes it upon herself to send me bits and pieces from time to time – a few years ago it was a photo he posted of himself and his new girlfriend at the beach, a severe receding hairline just faintly visible on his glistening, bald head.