On June 10, 2026, I shaved my head.

More accurately, my hairdresser helped me — she shaved my head. Not razor-shaved, but “#2” shaver, shaved my head. We began with me cutting off my ponytail, and then she started buzzing it off from there:

I have always had long, straight blond hair (except for when I thought perms were cool in middle school). For the last ten years, I’ve also had bangs. The look really hasn’t changed. It’s been easy, consistent, and predictable.

GI JANE, aka Demi Moore said, “I probably never felt more naked than when my head was shaved.”"

But I’ve always WANTED to shave my head. That scene in G.I. Jane left a mark on me, when Demi Moore shaved her head. It has always been on my list of things I’d like to do “someday,” but I never quite had the gumption.

Enter: my friend Caley, aka, twin. She’s a relatively new friend, and yes, she’s also a decade younger than me (with dark hair, no less), so the twin reference is mainly in terms of how we think about certain things, like being dog-moms, and also that we don’t drink and we both tend to be the first to leave a loud social event ;)

Anyway… Caley was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm back in May, and she had surgery scheduled for June 22. We knew the surgeon would need to shave part of her head to make his incision, but we didn’t know how much hair would be shaved or how big the incision would be. I just had a sense that the post-surgery stitches and haircut-look might be hard on her.

So on June 10, I got all my hair cut off in solidarity with Caley. It felt amazing — vulnerable, emotional, shocking, honestly. After all these years of highlighting my hair blond, I didn’t even know what my natural color was. I was surprised to learn it’s a dark brown! (Thankfully, NO GREY hairs were spotted!). But wow, the dark head of short hair was really shocking to me, and I felt it changed the way my face looked completely. (Pics above credit to Zach White).

To lessen the shock, Emily, my hairdresser, advised we go platinum with all-over color. So we did. That was also shocking in its own way! I felt like a fuzzy yellow Q-tip.

And then … I got to experience life for the first time ever without a ponytail back there, which has apparently been like a rudder my entire life, because my head felt off balance without that counterweight swinging around back there for a really long time. I also realized fully just how much heat we really do lose from our heads and, as someone who is almost always cold to begin with, beanies and hats became suddenly quite critical without the hair to hold the heat in. And, I realized how much I fidgeted and messed with my hair on a regular basis.

I needed to think about sunscreen for my scalp and neck for the first time ever. The way the wind blew over my scalp in my cycling helmet was wilddddd. Wow — so many new experiences! And just the way I felt out in the world: suddenly, it seemed people interacted differently with me, or maybe —I with them?! Perhaps I had become more approachable, or maybe with this new vulnerability, I was less assertive!? … Either way, I felt received by others in a new way.

“There’s something to be said for voluntarily making yourself a little uncomfortable and letting people see you in a way they’re not accustomed to seeing you. I felt more exposed, certainly, but also somehow more approachable. Maybe when we’re less attached to how we’re supposed to look, we’re a little more open to how we’re actually experienced.”

— me

I also did not have the identity of the female cyclist with the long blond ponytail sticking out of her helmet anymore, and that was also a new sensation. I didn’t realize how much of my identity my hair had become, or always was, until it was gone. There is a nakedness, an exposure element to it. It’s also freeing and liberating - all of it.

There was so much self-learning and insight in this experiment, and of course, I think Caley felt better post-op having a twin with a weird hairdo in solidarity ;)

Me and my twin, Caley, a few days fresh out of her big procedure as we proudly rocked our new hair-dos.

Her scar was quite big, and yes, the surgeon’s partial head-shave was not her favorite haircut. She decided to cut her long dark hair shorter, so that it wouldn’t pull on her sutures as she recovered.

I’m so glad I did this and have been able to share the weird hairdo feelings with her as she has recovered. Hair grows back. This is just a journey for now — and I keep trying to remind her of that when she feels badly about how her head, scar, and hair look. I’m just grateful she got through surgery and is on the road to recovery!

Of course, the timing was also excellent to have no hair, as this was just before I embarked on the cross-country bike ride, where having no hair meant I had one less thing to manage each day. No need for shampoo all the time, no comb to carry, no hair in the drain or on my clothes… (And for van life, it’s the best hair ever!).

Like Tadej said, It’s cooler, and… it’s cooler.

As the hair has grown out, I’ve been learning how to style it at each new length, and for the first time in my life, I’m using POMADE — which makes me laugh! But it really does work and is so much less crunchy than hair gel — who knew!?!!? I leaned heavily into my “mohawk” era during the bike trip, where I didn’t have to look “like a lawyer” or look professional and just got to have fun with a punk rock hairstyle. As the platinum grew out, I had dark roots and white tips, and it felt edgy and fun and very different from the days of long blond hair.

What was fun during the Tour de France timeframe is that Tadej, the TDF winner, showed up with a buzzed head dyed platinum, saying it would keep him cooler and he’d also be/look cooler. So in my road cycling circles, people began nicknaming me Tadej or Pogi, as he’s known, and it was always good for a laugh.

Now I’m at the phase where we’ve toned down the blond/dark contrast (since I’ve got to be in court in a few weeks and look more “professional”), and it’s also long enough that it sticks up in the vents of my cycling helmet, which feels very UN-aero.

But it’s the grow-out phase that I knew would take some time and would be weird and awkward in its own way as the hair slowly grows back out. It’s a fine line between pixie and unkept hair that is overdo for a haircut…

One thing that has shocked me is how much fuller and thicker this new hair is. My long blond locks, after years of highlighting and abuse, had become very thin. It feels good to have a fresh start with a new head of brand-new hairs ;)

Most importantly, though, Caley continues on her road to recovery, every week getting back to her normal levels of activity, work, and output, with the fatigue levels dissipating slowly (not as fast as she’d like, I’m sure).

If you’ve ever felt called to shave your head, I recommend it. This has been such a powerful masterclass in the attachments we have to our appearances and to superficial assumptions we make about people based on their hair or style and so much more. It’s also very freeing. Very liberating. And while I have felt quite self conscious about this new look, I can’t even believe how many compliments I’ve received about my short hair.

For now I’ll grow it out a bit and then see what’s what. That’s the fun of all of this- the impermanence of it all, the unseriousness of it all, and the chance to re-invent ourselves over and over again.

The hair will grow back, and eventually I'll probably look pretty much like I did before. But I don't think I'll look at my hair, or my appearance, quite the same way again. And I'm pretty sure Caley and I will always have this particularly ridiculous chapter of friendship to laugh about.

More importantly— please check out Caley’s IG and read about her recovery and how she was diagnosed to begin with, in case it might save you or someone you know! As her hair has grown out around her scar and she’s gone shorter and shorter with her style, I think it looks super cute. But I know it’s still not how she would prefer it, and I totally get that. I’m just glad she’s doing ok and that we can still ride bikes together.

*Apparently, I'm not the only woman who has discovered the peculiar joys of a shaved head. Charlize Theron famously said, 'You have not showered until you've showered hairless.' (She is not wrong.) Demi Moore described the experience as life-changing and empowering, while Karen Gillan talked about how scary and liberating it was to shed something she'd always been identified by. I guess there's a whole club of us who have discovered that losing our hair can sometimes mean finding a little more of ourselves.