Why I Cut Off All My Hair

The author of City of Girls and Big Magic talks about how she made the bold decision to break out the clippers in order to find her own version of beauty.

- ELIZABETH GILBERT

Sometime in the middle of last winter, in the middle of my 50s, I got my hands on some clippers and shaved my head down to a velvety stubble. It was something I'd been dreaming about doing for years.

And by "years," I mean "decades." I can still remember an article I read in The Village Voice way back in the late 1980s about women shaving their heads as an act of both liberation and beauty. This was during the height of Sinéad O'Connor's popularity, and I suppose her iconic example gave permission to many other women to get rid of their hair as well. There were a series of photos of all these women with buzzed and bald heads-and to me, they all looked stunning. I remember many of the interviewees using the word cleansing to describe the act, and one woman said that the ritual of shaving her head every week made her feel not only powerful and healthy but as if her life was suddenly in perfect order. "Shaving your head is like going to the gynecologist and the dentist on the same day," she saidand the fact that I can still remember that quote after 35 years is an indication of how compelling I found the subject! I have always been attracted to the idea of buzzing my head because I have had difficult hair my whole life.

Or at least that's what I was told, ever since I can remember.