A BOLD STEP
June 2nd 2020, the day I shaved my hair, is one of the most wonderful days of my life. I still remember how I felt when I looked at myself in the mirror after shaving my hair. It was the best feeling of my life, the boldness, the freedom, the peace and the sense of completeness. It was awesome. Maybe trying to express those feelings in these few words is impossible. But at the same time, our patriarchal society never left, reminding me that I still live in the patriarchal society where a girl shaving her hair out of interest is an outcast.
Shaving my hair made me realize and see the reality of our society and the real faces of the people (regarding gender equality). I guess it also made those people aware of where they stand and what kind of impact the patriarchal society has made on their minds without them being aware of it.
I don’t remember exactly how many times I have cut my hair. For the first time, I was questioned about my haircut by 100s of people. For the first time, I realized how important my hair was. I also realized that hair is one of the most important components of beauty in today’s world, where the objectification of women is considered the most normal thing. Hair is just a single component. We can find hundreds of poems and songs on the beauty of women. We live in a world where beauty pageants are promoted in the name of women’s empowerment. But the only thing they do is objectify women, promote beauty standards, the cosmetic products and expand their business.
Many girls said to me that they also wanted to shave their hair but they were not able to shave their hair. The most common reason was not being able to convince their family, and they were afraid of the judgements of the people out there. That’s true, with shaved hair comes a lot of judgments; both positive and negative.
Honestly, it was really hard to convince my family to shave my hair. It took me more than a year but I did it. Talking about the judgments of people, no matter how good we are but people will never leave judging us and so we should keep ourselves above their judgement. If I had thought about the judgments of the people and if they had the potential to affect me, I would have never been able to shave my hair.
Shaving my hair was my first step towards self-revolution. I wanted and needed to shave my hair to see the real me and to explore myself. But the strangest experience was people were not convinced by the reason I gave for shaving my hair and I find that funny. They gave their own reasons to convince themselves. The reasons they gave were like: I had cancer, I had a breakup, I might be suffering from some mental disease, I want to be like boys and a lot more.
This is the normal trend of the patriarchal society to outcast people who do things against the norms of the patriarchal society. I was not affected by the comments of the people but everyone is not the same. What if I was losing my hair because of cancer? Are you going to pay for my treatment? What if I shaved my hair because my heart was broken? Are you going to mend my broken heart with your stupid judgements and questions? What if my family shaved my hair because I had a mental disease? Are you going to take care of me? Will you take the responsibility of making me understand the world is a better place to live? What if I shaved my hair because I wanted to be like boys? Are you going to end gender inequality? Are you going to change the privileges and the problems that we got based on our gender?
If you can’t do any of these things, stop asking me why I shaved my hair.
Some of the sincere and loyal followers of gender norms said to me that I should not have shaved my hair because I am a girl, even boys need specific reasons to shave their hair and you are a girl so how can you shave your hair just because you wanted to. I also got the comments like ‘you did wrong by shaving your hair now who will like you? and who will marry you?’ That’s funny, right? But we live in a patriarchal society and these are the normal reminders.
The awkward staring of the people surprises me. I wonder why they look at me like I have come from another planet? From the top to the bottom, they keep on staring. Ok, it might be possible that they weren’t able to distinguish whether I was a girl or a boy. But I wonder why that matters. Again, the reminder I still live in a patriarchal society.
It’s not that I only experienced that negative side of shaving my hair there are lots of people who appreciated my step towards self-revolution, who loved me with my shaved hair and I was also able to inspire lots of young girls to do what they want to do and that gives me a great sense of satisfaction.
Lastly, I want everyone to understand that nobody deserves to be treated unfairly just because they belong to a particular gender. So, I want everyone to open their eyes and see the injustice and inequality that we are facing and doing just because of someone’s gender. We have a culture of comparing different genders. But according to science, we can’t compare 2 different things. At the same time, we need to understand that whether it’s men, women or LGBTQ we all are humans and we all are equal.
Let’s together end gender inequality.
- Puja Bisunke
