Or the lack of it, and the things I have thought about doing, and done, to fix that.
When I still thought I was male, I had embraced my male pattern baldness. My father had a long and wide strip of hairless head running from his forehead wrapping over the back of his head. I did, too.
I remember the moment it became clear to me that I was balding. My wife and I were going camping with really good friends. We’d stopped along the way, at a lakeshore. I was crouched down at the edge of the water, looking through the rocks, and my wife and her fried were standing up, behind me. Her friend said, “Oh, I see what you mean.”
That was… twenty-five years ago? It still hits, even today. Maybe more today, given my transition.
A great deal of my dysphoria is about the hair on my body. I had a lot of body hair, and I had very little of it on the top of my head. In a mirror, I looked like I had some hair. In photos, it was clear I did not have any. For years I just avoided photos, problem solved? I wish, but as you may also experience, since realizing my gender identity, I’ve become pretty obsessed with my appearance. Ignoring it has not worked.
Accepting it has also not worked. I tried for two years. First I buzzed it really short. That helped when I’d catch a look at myself in a shop window, it was all short on sort of indistinguishable. People are really good at fooling themselves for a long time. I managed to do that until one day in class, the Zoom session being recorded by a camera at the back of the class was projected on the screen in front. My shiny bald head, surrounded by not-shiny buzzed hair, was right there. Right there. Nobody else cared, I know, because they see that side of me every day, all the time. And please understand, I knew that was the case. I’d even contorted myself in the bathroom mirror to see just how bald and shiny I was. But for some reason, this really hit home.
So, I began shaving my head. No hair anywhere! I pored over pictures on the internet and Pinterest of bald women. They looked good! The only good hair was no hair! Solved! Only it wasn’t, of course. Even shaved close with a razor, it was clear where there was hair and where there wasn’t.
So, I started to wear hats. I have a friend who is a transgender woman, who had made hats her thing. It’s amazing. The hats she has are beautiful, funny, colorful, demure, and everything in between. She herself is beautiful, funny, colorful, demure, and everything in between. But I’m not her. By this time I was starting to settle into my identity as a nonbinary and transgender person, and while I still want to dress femme sometimes, it’s not all the time. But hats seemed like an answer, so I bought several kufti. These are the woven or knit skullcaps commonly seen on Muslim men that cover the head, but are short enough to not reach the ears. In fact, to find quality ones, ones that were not American-style skullcaps that cover the ears, I had to shop (online, of course) at stores catering to Muslim men. I wore various kufti every day for six or eight months. It became my thing. It worked, and it looked good and I forgot about my hair, mostly. Success.
You may be asking yourself if I ever tried wearing a wig. It was certainly suggested ot me by a lot of people (none of them wig-wearers, mind you) with stories like how fun it was to watch their co-workers change hair color every day of the week! Whee! I did buy a cheap-ass wig off of Amazon, purple hair, kind of a bob. I looked idiotic. I dove deep into Reddit’s wig communities, and I know that the wig I got, which turned out to be my one and only attempt to wear a wig, was crappy on every level. A good wig, with real hair, with a lace front to blend well with your hairline, is super expensive. Then you have to take care of it. Then you have to replace it. Then you really should have a few available to you.
Don’t get me wrong, I can see how amazing a wig can be. Even the purple monster I got gave me a tiny thrill of euphoria when I put it on. A real wig, quality, cared for, styled for my face, sized for my giant head, would no doubt be a transformative experience. But even on my most femme days, I’m not the person who is going to spend all that time on my looks. Especially not when hours later I’ll have face stubble, and the whole time I will still be 6’ 2”, and my voice will still betray me. At that point I will still present as a man, with an amazing head of hair, yes, but still a man.
So. I made an appointment with a hair transplant doctor. He was charming and positive and supportive and we set a day for a transplant procedure. I’ll talk about that in another post, because you may not be interested in the nitty gritty. What’s important about that is this: I need my body to be independent of my brain.
When I am not thinking about it, or when I’m only feeling up to sweats and a T-shirt, or when I’m old and dependent on someone else to gender me correctly, I need my body to be as much me as is possible. When my brain is not engaged, I need people to still look at me and, at the very least, wonder what it is they are seeing.
Then it is up to my brain to catch up. When I catch myself in a reflection, or think about how I’m going to dress for an event, or want to feel sexy, my brain will have to catch up to where my body is at.
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