You might remember Jordi from this post about her experiences travelling the world while working for various international aid organisations. These days she’s back in Melbourne getting ready to tackle her PHD next year.

When Jordi came to me with her post about dating while bald, she wasn’t sure I’d think it was a good fit but, as you’ll read, hair is about more than just hair and provides an interesting perspective on the expectations placed on women and how they live their lives – something I’m grateful to be able to explore here on TMA.

Keep the conversation going in the comments, or you can connect with Jordi on Linked In or Instagram.   

Many months of trepidation went into deliberating whether to shave my head or not and, in all honesty, my main anxiety over the state of my hair was the impact it was going to have on my dating life.

To clarify: I am an avid dater. I see people. We do things. It’s the 21st century, ya know? “Freedom and liberation” is the flavour of the millennium and tentatively available for the masses and I ain’t complainin’. While I am fully aware that dating is not the most serious issue to be concerned with when it comes to bodies and gender roles, it has taken me a long time to fully dissect the varying aspects and intersections of my shaved-head experience in relation to bodily autonomy, femininity, as well as conversations surrounding racial and class tensions.

Yet, in the age of The Bachelorette, dating sans hair is the aspect of my lived shaven experience that friends were most curious about. And really, I don’t blame them. So, I have bowed down to peer pressure and have begun to make sense of our systemically entrenched gender norms by writing your daily dose of clickbait in the form of this piece. Continue reading…