Embody Real BeautySHANNON IRIS

At 24 years old, I was looking…looking for something transformative, daring, a radical change.   After very little consideration, I found myself standing in front of the mirror looking at my reflection.

Searching for Real Beauty

I don’t remember exactly what was going through my mind….. no reservations, no hesitations, I remember feeling a little nervous.  I just took those buzzing clippers and chewed off a swatch right down the middle of my head.  Smiling and scraping off six inches of my vanity and my identity and watching it fall around the toilet. Watching my new lover watching me.  I was driving those clippers. Driving them right over everything I knew as my worth and my protection – my looks.

I wanted to stop the world from spinning just long enough to see what might appear beyond my own reflection in the mirror.   I was being chewed and prayed upon by a cultural rat; and doing my share to keep that rat fed. But, I was starting to catch on, and that is why I clipped off my hair. To screw the system…what happens if I break away? Do I find some depth, some meaning to this crazy emptiness?

People stare, they stare if you’re pretty they stare if you’re ugly they stare out of boredom they stare to distract themselves from really looking at who they are: they stare because they are scared of what they would see if they really looked at themselves.  I know because I spent most of my time either looking at myself or looking at other people.  An hour in front of the mirror in the morning, a permanently cockeyed rear-view mirror, many trips to the bathroom to check lipstick and powder, the list is endless – and, if I were to put a figure on it – I would say well over half of each day was spent either looking at myself or worrying about what I looked like.  Ah what a curse.

That night in bed I felt like a balloon might feel with too much air.  And not too much like a woman.  Like a hybrid, something new to myself – different somehow improved upon.  Gutsy and bald.  A bald woman.  A bald Girl.  Just Bald.  The first realization in the morning brought a wide grin to my face and again in the shower, rubbing my hands over the remnants of my lost and found femininity.