Bald is Beautiful on Women: Challenging the Norm Since 1999

Bald is Beautiful on Women, and its companion site, Sanctuary are intended to function as a meme -- one that hopefully challenges Western conceptualizations of who and what is considered beautiful. The words and images are intended to inspire women of any age and walk of life who have always wanted to try a shaved head to find the courage to do so; to help those women who live with alopecia or who are undergoing chemo to feel better about themselves and to realize that they don't need hair to be beautiful; to challenge conventional Western notions of attractiveness and foster more acceptance for those who dare to be a bit different.

This website was originally launched in May of 1999 at geocities.com. I moved the site to tripod.com in late October 2001 when the lack of space and bandwidth at geocities became too much of a hassle.

I started this website back in 1999 for a number of reasons. Until recently, the whole notion of a woman appearing in public with a shaved head in the West was something of a taboo - one tied to a largely a Euro-American standard of beauty that had been the norm for many centuries. The very few women who chose to appear bald around the 1970s were quite striking in their appearance - Persis Khambatta and the actresses from THX-1138 come immediately to mind. Although these women went bald for an acting job, they wittingly or unwittingly made a statement that women were not their hair. The phenomenon of women shaving their heads even became something of a minor fad around 1980.

The more direct inspiration for the site was the increasing number of celebrities who had tried out the bald look during the 1990s (Demi Moore, Sinead O'Connor, & Eve Salvail). I was also inspired by women (a few of whom had been personal friends during my college years) who had either chosen to shave their heads at some point in their lives, or who had simply chosen to accept and embrace life with alopecia. These women had found the social climate of the 1990s to be more accepting than ever before. Finally, I wanted a website that would focus on bald women in a much different way than the fetish websites (which back in the 1990s were the only game in town). I wanted the website to give its viewers an insight into what makes many of these very cool women tick. By drawing on whatever I'd picked up from being a part of (or on the periphery of) various countercultures, feminism, and the social sciences, as well as by linking to those personal stories of women who had dared to try out a radically different look, I hoped to provide a perspective that was not readily apparent from the available fetish sites.

The main website includes images of celebrities (actresses, models, musical performers, television personalities, dancers and performance artists), as well as links to various websites that might provide some enlightenment and inspiration. The focus of my second site, Sanctuary, my main focus is on the growing number of women whom we might encounter in everyday life. Whatever the reason for being bald in public (be it fashion statement, political statement, fundraising for charity, curiosity, etc.) all of these women prove is that no matter your walk of life, age, shape and size, or ethnic background, you don't need hair to be attractive. Over the last few years, they have asserted themselves to a degree that would have seemed unimaginable in our culture only a decade or two ago.

If I can get visitors to this site to view beauty in a different light, then I have succeeded. By posting some images of attractive bald women, my intention was to present a radically different perspective: you are beautiful and valuable as a human being and the presence or absence of hair is entirely irrelevant. The attitudes that dominate any particular corner of the world are not set in concrete. Over time, a critical mass can change the attitudes that dominate by spreading alternative memes. Our cultural conceptualizations of femininity and attractiveness are nearing a tipping point. Think about that the next time you look in the mirror or are out and about.

Thanks for supporting this site, and remember that you are not your hair.

Respect.