i shaved my head and men still wanted to fuck me
sorry mom
shaving all my hair off into a buzzcut was a long time coming. I had saved countless pictures of women with buzzcuts to my pinterest boards since high school, and in 2015 (ish — the details are fuzzy now) i dipped my toe into the waters by shaving an undercut into my hair. high school me wanted so badly to get rid of the mop on my head, especially after my previously reasonable hair descended into unruliness as i got older. my hair was neither straight nor curly, but some odd in-between that was impossible to make look good without spending at least an hour and two separate products taming (or straightening/frying the hell out of it). some people enjoy the process of doing their hair and/or like the way the outcome looks, so for them, the labor is worth it. i am not one of those people.
despite wanting to shave my head for years, i was never able to turn on the clippers and go for it because i was still under the impression that my hair was a large part of what made me attractive, particularly to men. as a person who is attracted to men and is not asexual or aromantic, i wanted men to remain in my life in romantic and sexual ways, and i figured that if i shaved all my hair off, that would go out the window. after all, there aren’t any disney princesses with a buzzcut. how many men have dissuaded their wives from cutting their hair into pixie cuts because they wouldn’t be as attractive to them? i am, in fact, one of those women, though it wasn’t a husband who didn’t want me to cut my hair.
my college boyfriend was adamantly against the idea of me shaving my head, and when i asked him why, he said “because i wouldn’t be as attracted to you with a buzzcut.” obviously that would be a horrible tragedy for him, and since i was still afraid to break up even though the relationship was doomed before it even began, i relented. (he also had many other opinions about how i should look, including the type of boots he liked me wearing, where and what tattoos i should and shouldn’t get, and how i should dress in front of his mother and sister, but that’s outside the scope of this essay).
that relationship inevitably ended, and thank god for that. i spent the next six months doing all the things he told me that i shouldn’t do, in true leo moon fashion. this bitch doesn’t control me anymore! that’s how i felt as i wore my two-inch platform boots and got tattoos on my hands, his mother’s opinions be damned.
(you might be wondering: “why did you let this man control so many things you did, both during and after that relationship?” and the answer is: i was 20/21 years old. i think that explains it well enough.)
the final boss in my self-reclamation journey loomed ahead of me as summer approached: the buzzcut. this was the last thing he had told me he didn’t want me doing that i had yet to do. i scoured youtube for videos of women shaving their heads, talking about their experience and if they regretted it. i saved pins of women who looked great with their buzzcut, as well as grow-out styles in case i didn’t like it and had to grow it out right away. i told my friends and we set a date: june 26, 2021. the plan was to do it in the front yard of my parents’ house, using my dad’s clippers.
the day arrived, hot and dry like any good june day. my hair was sectioned into many pigtails all over my head and my friends gathered around with scissors to make the first chop. my dad had his clippers at the ready for once all the ponytails were chopped off. my mom peeped out her bathroom window and cried (she didn’t want me to do it). even my baby sister joined us for the momentous occasion.
as my friend prepared to cut the first ponytail, i stopped her. “i don’t know if i’m sure about this.”
“why not? what’s holding you back?” she responded.
“what if no one ever wants to date me again?” i asked with genuine sincerity.
she laughed in my face. “i really don’t think that’s going to be an issue.”
and the chopping began.
a different ex of mine, several years after shaving my head, had a friend who was, at the time, single and in his hoe phase, which, to be clear, i have no issues with. if consenting adults want to have sex with each other, i think great! go for it! but one night we were all out at a bar and a girl came up to us. i think she was trying to hit on me at first, but quickly realized i was with my ex and pivoted to his friend. they ended up going home together and hooking up twice in my ex’s spare room, so we got all the details the next day.
“so (friend’s name) was really into that girl, it seems like, since they hooked up twice,” i said to him later.
“nah, he wasn’t attracted to her at all. he’s not gonna see her again,” my ex replied nonchalantly.
“what? why did he have sex with her if he wasn’t attracted to her?” i didn’t understand this.
“sometimes you just want to have sex, you know?” he said and moved on to another subject.
i’ve never been able to forget this. it’s one of those experiences you have that feels like it fundamentally alters your brain chemistry. men just have sex with women because they feel like having sex, even if they don’t find them attractive at all. every experience with a man i’ve ever had came into a new light. it means nothing, i discovered, if a man fucks you. as the saying goes, a man would fuck a cheeseburger if it had more holes.
each person took their turn cutting off ponytails, which were deposited into a gallon plastic bag, one by one. when all the ponytails were gone, my dad used the clippers to even out the choppy hair. i avoided the mirror until the very end; i didn’t want to see the awful in-between stage where i was sure i would look like sid’s doll from toy story.
everything was finally evened out and the excess hair swept away, and i took my first look in the mirror. i actually have a video of this moment that i’m so grateful for. i rubbed my hand over my newly-shorn scalp and turned back and forth as a grin spread over my face. “oh i really like it!” and like it i did.
it’s been almost four years since then, and i still religiously shave my head every one to three weeks. it feels like a part of me now, being a woman with a buzzcut. never say never, but i can’t imagine myself growing my hair out anytime soon.
but the real question is: what happened to my sex life?
reader, let me tell you: absolutely nothing. in fact, it might have even gotten better.
like a true zillennial, almost all of my adult dating experiences have been on apps, so i figured a good way to test whether i was still attractive would be to delete my accounts and make fresh ones with new pictures, then see if i got more or fewer likes than before (extremely silly, but sometimes science is like that). the likes came in, just as many as before, and in some cases even more. men almost seemed to be into the fact that i was bald, which i had not expected at all. maybe it’s just because a woman with a buzzcut is still relatively uncommon, but i got so many comments about it that i grew tired of talking about it.
(in fairness, one guy responded to a picture of me with my buzzcut bleached and said i looked like “sexy buttered popcorn,” so it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows).
i went on just as many dates as before, got just as many compliments as before, got approached just as much at bars. nothing seemed to have changed. and i realized: male validation actually means nothing at all about you or how attractive you are. men can shout until they’re blue in the face about how women with long hair are the most attractive and how women with short hair are ugly, but at the end of the day they’ll still fuck you just the same.
as i got older, the real prize became not securing a man’s sexual attention but finding one with empathy, who saw me and others as whole people, who could hold an intelligent conversation about important issues, who doesn’t vote republican because “i just want lower taxes” (sad but true). if you’re a woman, chances are it isn’t hard to find a straight man who will sleep with you, if that’s what you’re looking for. in fact, it’s probably pretty easy. the challenge is finding one who respects you.
even when they find out you still keep the gallon plastic bag of chopped-off pigtails on the top shelf of your closet.
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I forgive you. ;)