Mo Stewart
I have found so much peace in being bald and loving myself that I wish I would have done this ten years ago; it would have helped a lot with my self-image issues. I plan to stay bald for quite a while as I love the free-ness of getting up and just going. No hassle, no fret; just brush and go, if that. Not to mention, I feel more beautiful than I have ever felt in my life. After years of wearing weave because I felt I needed longer hair to be pretty, the damage has become irreversible and the hair thinning and hair loss from improper care, genetics, and a slew of other reasons led me to shave my hair off on July 8, 2014. I took the clippers and just went full scalp bald. The fact that I didn’t cry when I shaved it was a sign that I had grown from the younger days when my hair defined me and meant the world to me and my image. I still slightly saw beauty in myself enough to feel good about shaving it. I wore head wraps for the first week because I was began to feel ugly and thought people were staring me at the time. The day before I went out without a head wrap, I looked at pictures of beautiful women online who were bald, and from them and their sassy diva-ness I became motivated and felt pretty. I walked out the door, bald, and never looked back. Almost two months in and I feel great. The damage from the weave and hair pulling is very vivid to me but I am dealing with it, finding faded hairstyles to rock while I wait to see if the damage really is permanent. All in all I feel great, beautiful, and a shower has never felt so amazing.
The first day I went outside without a head wrap was actually the day before I left for work and I went to the pool. There a young boy stared at me puzzled as to why I was a bald girl. His mother spoke to him in their native tongue and I could tell she telling him to stop staring at me, which caused his little sister to stare. The mother continued to look back and forth between me and him yelling at him to stop. I laughed inside because I knew how inquisitive he was, but I felt like maybe he thought or even his mother thought that I was sick, cancer, perhaps and I didn’t want people thinking that I was ill. The craziest thing was my cousin commented on Facebook saying, “NOOOO why cousin, what were you thinking!!” All of the other comments were encouraging, motivating, and telling me I was still beautiful. My family did as expected and confirmed for me that looks are everything to them and that stuck with me, but not anymore. Be strong. It’s ok to cry and feel unpretty, honestly because you are not unpretty, you are beautiful but it may take a moment for you to look in the mirror and see that and it’s okay when you do. I felt so ugly until the more I looked in the mirror and saw myself in my natural raw state, detached from what I thought made me beautiful. I felt prettier than I had ever felt and so will you. We are not our hair. We are not defined by it. Your beauty lies within your heart, soul, courage, and bravery. Do not be afraid to embrace who you are. We focus so much on trying to look perfect that we forget that perfection does not exist. Once we remove that stigma that beauty is created by the things we add to our appearances and focus on beauty being exactly what it is: Self-Love – we will never feel ugly again. Kudos on your journey
