When a woman has long hair, it is her glory

Paul the Apostle

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I read this bible verse over and over again during my 20+ years as an evangelical. I could bore you with things like historical context that make the command Paul gives the women of Corinth to have long hair irrelevant today. As a matter of fact, one of my favorite things about leading a bible study used to be taking something simple and digging at it until spiritual mysteries were unearthed. But, this isn’t a blog post about spirituality. It’s about hair.

One of the things that is universally true about femininity is hair. No, I’m not saying a woman with a shaved head is less of a woman. However, they are making the choice to have a shaved head.

I never got that choice.

Male pattern baldness started taking my hair in college. When I started to embrace and move into my femininity three years ago, my bald head was one of the things that I grieved. I wouldn’t ever have feminine hair. I told one of my friends that I got extremely insecure about my baldness when I thought about being intimate. I imagined making out with a woman, getting hotter and heavier, and then having her knock my wig off or catching it on something and having it slip. I also thought about the whole bedtime routine of having to take my wig off and go to bed bald, exposing my former masculinity to my lover.

My baldness made my womanhood feel like a charade.

As I tried to find my place in women’s clothing, that same friend I talked to about my baldness suggested an edgy look to me. She told me she could see me in black skinny jeans, a punk tee, and blue hair. I realized that she was right. I love my black jeans. I love my Honk Mah Fah tee shirt (“Honky Motherfucker”, a common phrase from The Dark Tower series) that I’m wearing right now. My blue and purple wigs felt like a middle finger… a dare to anyone to challenge my baldness.

It’s like I was saying “Yeah, it’s a wig. Yeah, its blue. If you can’t handle me being bald, then fuck off.”

But, if you told me I could instantly change one thing about my body, it would be my baldness. I still don’t like it. I wish I could grow a full head of hair. I still don’t like going to bed in a nightgown and bald… it triggers my insecurities. It makes me feel more like a crossdresser and less like a woman.

I finally made the decision to get a high end wig a couple of months ago. My girlfriend knew it would help me feel at home in my womanhood. I knew it, too. I felt the same way. The week my kids went back to Louisiana, I found a local wig shop that catered to women going through chemo. I reached out to them and they told me I would be more than welcome as a bald transwoman to shop in their store.

My girlfriend and I decided to go shopping last Saturday. I walked in and was kinda overwhelmed by the amount of wigs and the woman who worked there could sense it. I eventually grabbed one wig to try on and she grabbed a few more. The first wig blew me away. The rest didn’t. My girlfriend kept saying “Soccer Mom” every time I would try one of those other wigs on.

At the end of all the wig tryouts, we went back to the first one. I almost cried when I put the first wig back on. It fell naturally instead of having a poofy top like the wigs that were half the price. The color was pretty close to my natural hair color. The longer bangs stayed out of my eyes but still hid the fake hairline. The only reason I didn’t cry was because I didn’t want to fuck up my eye makeup.

I walked out with my wig on. My girlfriend asked me how I felt and I told her “settled.” My heart was at peace. Yes, it was expensive. But it was the best money I’ve spent in a long time.

When I start living full-time as a woman in 2020 I’ll still wear my bright wigs… they’re my “work hair” that can take a beating and just be thrown away. They’re fun and they’re the punk rock middle finger I like.

But now I also have my hair. My hair. The hair that I feel at home in.