What I Vowed Never to Do — Until This Happened

Here's what changed everything.

By

Michele Weldon

 
Published January 08, 2025
gif illustration of woman looking at herself in the mirror in different hairstyles
Vidhya Nagarajan

“The beauty, the splendor, the wonder of my hair…” are the lyrics from Hair, the award-winning Broadway musical that opened in 1968 and shocked the world with rule-bending lyrics and the entire cast performing nude on stage.

I listened to the Hair album on the stereo console the size of a twin bed in our family’s basement, dancing alone and mourning the pixie cut my mother insisted I get.

I loathed it, even if Twiggy, then the "It" model, had one. I was 10 that year and missed my long blonde hair that I could twist into pigtails, braids or a ponytail.

My pixie ended all those options. When it grew out, I vowed never to don short hair again. For more than five decades, I flipped and fluffed my beloved shoulder-length hair.

At 66, I am again an involuntary representative of a pixie cut. As a cancer survivor — now twice — I lost all my hair recently from nearly 10 months of chemotherapy and radiation. Since May of 2024, I am cancer-free and my hair is growing back very slowly.

I have tight, four-inch curls bursting from my skull in every direction. Adjusting to an entirely new body profile was one thing after a radical mastectomy. But I was emotionally unprepared for how off-kilter I felt with tightly wound hair spirals that shoot straight up and out to the sides, like Bozo the Clown.

As an alternative, the dark blonde wig I got through the American Cancer Society without cost was beautiful on the head stand, but uncomfortably hot on my real head. It also had its own mindset about shifting and sliding so much that I had to clamp it down with a very tight headband.

I don’t know how Tina Turner did wigs so beautifully for so long. It did help — a little — seeing actress Jenna Fischer (whom many of us love from playing Pam on The Office) speak about her insecurity after hair loss from breast cancer treatments.

I compensate with a wide wardrobe of scarves, headbands and wraps and am learning to see my hair as a symbol of what I have not only survived but conquered. My hair is an expression of my power.

For women over 50, hair identity is an enormous part of who we are. Perhaps it is because so many of us conformed to the hair abundance of Farrah Fawcett, Pam Grier, Diana Ross and more recently Selena Gomez, Sofia Vergara, Michelle Yeoh and so many more. Luscious locks are the cultural vision of femininity.

Perhaps that is why hair loss and baldness from cancer, menopause or alopecia, as well as graying and thinning hair as a result of aging, confront many of us with a look we may or may not embrace.

A 2023 roundup of 11 qualitative studies of 225 women found several disturbing themes, including women commenting on their hair loss with, “I'm in emotional chaos,” and “What did my hair take from my femininity when it was gone?”

For Black and mixed-race women, a 2022 study shows that many expressed “hair is involved in the performance of identity because it is through and with hair that individuals make statements about self and society.” Many are reacting to racism, sexism, classism and ageism.

Maddy Dychtwald, 74, author of the bestseller, Ageless Aging: A Woman’s Guide to Increasing Healthspan, Brainspan, and Lifespan says, “Hair is an extension of personal identity and self-expression” for both women and men. When hair transforms, “it can make us feel less than,” says Dychtwald, who co-founded Age Wave with her husband of 40 years, Ken.

She explains that biological aging, emotional aging and chronological aging are factors in health and well-being. While ageism is “pervasive and also embedded in us, you have a choice as to how you want to show up.”

She adds, “Aging is like playing dodgeball. You can have a big, spiked ball or a slow dribbling ball coming your way.” It is up to you how you manage it all.

Andie MacDowell, 66, the iconic film actress, says her pandemic graying of her trademark waves was deliberate. “I was ready at 60 to be an older woman,” MacDowell tells an interviewer for Vogue. “Everybody makes such a big deal over my hair. They would never do that to a man.”

About 78 million people in this country at age 50 have primarily gray hair, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Participants in a 2021 study shared that graying and balding contribute to “social invisibility,” and their personal reactions include dyeing their gray hair to appear competent, or embracing gray to express authenticity.

“I saw myself in pictures and my hair no longer seemed to go with my face,” says Deborah Hill, 67, a real estate attorney, who in July 2023 stopped dyeing her hair (which she had been doing for 30 years) and went full-on gray.

“For me, it says I’m OK with being my age and youth is not necessarily to be envied,” Hill says. “There are positives to aging and it is empowering to embrace my age with dignity. Celebrating whatever we are is the way to live our best life.”

However our hair goes or grows, how we choose to express ourselves with or without hair is a testament to the power of our choice. My choice is to go with the flow and gratefully salute the blessings of my tiny curls — laced with dark and pale gray. I am learning to embrace the beauty and the wonder of my very, very short hair.

 

How many of you have long hair? Or do you have short hair? Have you gone gray? Let us know in the comments beloiw.

Michele Weldon is an author of seven nonfiction books, journalist, emerita faculty at Northwestern University, senior leader with The OpEd Project and editorial director at Take The Lead. Her most recent book is The Time We Have: Essays on Pandemic Living. She has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, USA Today, Time, CNN, Cosmopolitan, Forbes, MSNBC, NBC Think, Chicago Tribune, Slate, and more. She has appeared on CNN, BBC, NBC, “The Oprah Winfrey Show, ” NPR and many other outlets. Mother of three grown sons, she serves on advisory boards of several nonprofits.