<
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/feb/04/a-moment-that-changed-me-shaved-hair-became-invisible-woman>
"In November 2000, two weeks after giving birth to my first and only child, I
found myself collapsed in bed, breastfeeding in front of
Top of the Pops,
hair matted, sheets dirty, surrounded by sick-soaked muslin rags. I liked it.
Or at least, it felt like a perfectly reasonable thing to be doing, until
Madonna – who had given birth to Rocco Ritchie only three months earlier –
appeared on the screen in a cropped leather jacket, belly bared, sexy-dancing
to
Don’t Tell Me. Did I feel inspired? Resentful? Brimming with pity for this
attention-seeker? For sure, it was all three.
As the weeks wore on, I began to see how it might be possible to shower, put on
actual clothes and maybe even pop to the corner shop. Occasional visits to
cafes, museums and other warm, baby-friendly spaces soon followed and stopped
me from feeling as if I had fallen into a well of loneliness.
But I knew that, if I was to fully return to functional human-ing, I urgently
needed to sift through my priorities. What time-consuming activities could I
let go of? Housework was a no-brainer but eating probably had to stay. Top of
the list of useless things to do – or so it seemed in my time-deprived mania –
was haircare. What was the point of hair? You had to wash it, brush it and have
it trimmed. Plus, I had grey roots so I also imagined I had to dye it.
There was a barber shop around the corner from my house. If I could just free
up the 20 minutes it would take to get my head shaved, I’d be buying myself
hours of future time. Plus, I secretly hoped there would be other benefits
too. I had started to find the attention and idealisation around motherhood
exhausting. I was tired of the gooey way strangers would look at me while I was
breastfeeding, for example. I was also a bit sick of people sticking by my side
after they’d helped me up the stairs with my pram. This constant “lovely lady”
projection was getting on my nerves: just because I had a baby, it didn’t
follow that I was
nice. If I shaved my head and looked a bit more
grrrr, I
wondered if it might stop."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
