NEW YORK (AP) — “Being bald is sexy. It’s an attitude. It’s a luxury. It’s a lifestyle.”
That’s how Brennan Nevada Johnson, who shaved her head voluntarily 14 years ago, opens the video podcast she launched last November to celebrate the advantages of choosing a bald look.
Sensuous, self-assured and glamorous are not the adjectives typically assigned to women with shorn hair. For centuries, many cultures have viewed long hair as a symbol of femininity, health and fertility. But more women are defying that traditional beauty standard and finding empowerment by baring their heads.
“Once you do it, it brings all this confidence into your life,” Johnson, 34, said. “Whenever you see someone who’s bald and not wearing a wig, just know that they have fully embraced themselves, and I think that’s something that’s really challenging to do.”
Her initial decision to go baldheaded was practical. Johnson played competitive volleyball in college and found the sweating she did on the court affected the expensive hair relaxing treatments she often had done. Once she started shaving off her hair, though, she was hooked. She was relieved to save money on salon trips.
Johnson now owns a New York public relations firm. “Bald and Buzzed with Brennan,” the video podcast she posts on YouTube, was an attempt to fill a void in social media content that affirmed bald people, especially women. She says she always thought baldness was sexy.
“It’s such a fashion statement, and it’s a really powerful look,” Johnson said.
Other women without hair, whether voluntarily or due to medical conditions, also have sought ways to support each other, attending conferences, joining “baldie” groups and swapping grooming and scalp care tips.
“There’s a whole community of us out there,” said Dash Lopez, a content creator who posts a weekly video series of her shaving routine called “Fresh Cut Friday.” “We need to talk about it because we do find comfort and empowerment and beauty in what some people think is weird.”
Redefining beauty
Lopez said members of her family praised the long curly hair she had growing up. Some of her friends played with different hair colors and styles, but Lopez said she didn’t have the same freedom. And she didn’t enjoy detangling her hair or spending long afternoons at the salon.
As soon as she turned 18 and could get a haircut without permission, she chopped her locks into a pixie cut. Then she shaved it all off during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It makes me feel powerful in the sense that I’m able to detach from the things that people place so much emphasis on,” Lopez, 29, said. “I’m not sitting here planning, ‘Oh my gosh, when am I going to get my next color appointment done? That’s gonna cost me $300. Oh my gosh. I’ve got to get my hair done before I go to this event.’”
Lopez signed a contract with a modeling agency in 2020, a time when brands wanted to showcase diversity, she said. Back then, being bald worked for her professionally.
“There was an appreciation for quirks and if you had a gap in your tooth, if you had a bald head, if you had a face full of freckles, that’s what casting directors were looking for,” Lopez said.
She noticed the tide shifting last year, when her bookings for modeling jobs decreased. “Let’s be honest, the odds were stacked against me in the modeling world,” Lopez said. “I was 5′ 4″, 5′ 5″ on paper, no hair.”
A client suggested she wear wigs to land more work. Lopez did not want to do that or grow out her hair. Her modeling contract ended. Since then, she has shared glimpses of her life as a bald woman on Instagram and TikTok, where some of her videos have been watched millions of times.
“I feel powerful in the sense that I’m making my own choices,” Lopez said. “I’m doing it for my own self-empowerment, I am doing it from my own self-clarity, for a deeper understanding of what it is that I value, a deeper understanding of what beauty means to me.”
Creating community
Many women are confronted with how they define beauty when they lose hair due to health conditions such as alopecia or during chemotherapy treatment for cancer.
Felicia Flores, a flight attendant who lives in Atlanta, was diagnosed in 2001 with alopecia, an autoimmune disorder that causes hair to fall out. Six years later, all her hair was gone. Initially, she wore wigs.
Then she came across a group called The Baldie Movement on Facebook. “The ladies just really inspired me,” Flores, 47, said. “They really did help to encourage me and give me strength, … and they were just so confident.”
She eventually decided to stop wearing wigs and embrace being bald in 2015, after a romantic breakup. “I was tired of lying. I felt like I was hiding something. I felt like I wasn’t myself,” she said.
To help uplift and inspire other women, Flores founded an annual conference called Baldie Con. The fourth one drew drew more than 200 attendees to Atlanta last month for a fashion show, guest speakers, a jazz brunch and a black tie gala, she said.
Managing reactions
Aicha Soumaoro, who works in Philadelphia as a nurse on weekdays and as a mechanic on weekends, said some of her patients call her “sir” instead of “ma’am,” but she doesn’t let it bother her. “It’s new to them, girls that are bald.”
Soumaoro, 27, said that after she shaved her head, her mother told her that most men wouldn’t want to marry a woman with no hair. She focuses instead on the compliments she’s received while out in public, including “You wear it with confidence” and “Your face is gorgeous.”
“Being bald, it’s like a boost of confidence out of nowhere,” said Soumaoro, who cuts her hair every Sunday. “It’s like a new skin, a new layer, a new personality. I just feel fresh. Like I was born again.”
She also hikes on Sundays, savoring the feeling of cold breezes on her scalp. “Having that connection with Earth, it feels amazing,” Soumaoro said. “I feel like I can hear everything more clearly. It’s like I have a clear mindset when my head is bald.”
Tiffany Michael Thomas, an Atlanta-based performer who goes by the stage name Amor Lauren, shaved her head in a show of support when her mother was undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer.
After her mother died, Thomas continued receiving compliments from other women. She decided to keep the bald look.
“Once I began to really embrace it, it just made me feel like I was unstoppable,” Thomas, 37, said. “There’s nothing that I have to hide behind anymore. … It forced me to deal with all of my insecurities.”
If you’re thinking about shaving your head, don’t hesitate, Thomas advises. Women tell her they’re concerned that their head isn’t the right shape, or they have a lump or a scar. “Do it without thought,” she said. “Do it scared. Everything in life, just do it scared. The best way to get through that fear is to actually do it.”
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