How Hair Loss Helps Me Combat Shame
Just as shame builds incrementally, I suspect it diminishes in the same way. What makes it diminish? Moving away from your comfort zone toward awkwardness and vulnerability.
Most of us know the experience of being pushed to do something we’d rather not do only to discover surprising benefits. The benefits of hair loss come unexpectedly. On a surface level, I enjoy having a soft face, like an expensive facial or wax job. Also, there’s nothing quite like hearing your kids say, “You’re cool and hip with a buzz.” (see these links for why I buzzed my hair: “Buzz” and “Shave Angel”) They might change their minds when I’m completely bald, but I’ll take the compliment for now. Then there’s the freedom of not having to shave my legs, or shampoo, cut, and style my hair, not to mention the savings.
On a deeper level, hair loss bumps against a sense of shame and embarrassment which casts a long and familiar shadow over my life. It’s time to emerge from that shadow. I don’t want to conceal my baldness as I did the first time I had cancer 17 years ago. After all, it’s summer and wigs are itchy. Not ready to go out with a balding buzz, I’m experimenting with straw hats and caps. My mom jokes about my having an “armeisenkopf” (the head of an ant) when I pick her up at the curb wearing a bucket hat for the first time. I like the feeling of flouting embarrassment. I’ve spent too much of my life trying to blend in, look right, be right.
It’s partly my personality, which on the Enneagram is probably a 1--though I’m reluctant to admit it because perfectionism isn’t exactly flattering—and partly my upbringing as an American in a small bureaucratic city in Germany in the 1960s. A teacher snaps a ruler on my bitten fingernails. Another teacher forces me to learn to write with my right hand though I’m left-handed. In answer to a question by a German English teacher, I dutifully stand to answer, but he yells at me in front of the class “Wir sind nicht in Amerika” (We are not in America!). So, I resentfully learn British English. Every day, I tremulously enter the grocery store for milk, hoping the abrasive owner doesn’t yell at me again for touching her precious produce. I ask a bus driver if he’s going to such and such a place. He yells “Nein!” and starts driving off, stops, then tells me he’s not “going” there, he’s “driving” there and I should get in. Strangers tell me not to walk on the grass or sit on pubic steps. The train conductors with their whistles and officious voices yelling “Karte!” are the worst. In Germany compliments are in short supply, rare to the point of penury; I don’t remember compliments from teachers, instructors, coaches, or adult acquaintances, mostly instructions, warnings, and reprimands. Perhaps they believe that consequences motivate children to be good.
A thousand petty pedantic lectures, dire warnings, and catastrophic consequences from people, books and the culture—books like Der Struwwelpeter, Max & Moritz, Gebrueder Grimm--steadily hammer in a solid sense of shame. The aforementioned book Der Struwwelpeter replete with shocking consequences is subtitled: Happy Stories and Cute Pictures for Children from 3 to 6 Years. My kids think this book is appalling and verging on abusive. Growing up, I absorb a culture of criticism and abrasive truth-telling without a soft cushion of kindness.
How do I respond? I blend in and refuse to stand out as a loud American. My dad, a friendly, outgoing, and assertive man is a loud American, albeit a lovable one; my mom is a more reserved German. He often embarrasses us in public, so we learn to stay back when needed. My parents speak English at home—American style—but I stubbornly respond in German. I only speak German until we move back to the US for three years in sixth grade. I speak without an accent; no one can tell I’m not a German girl, though neighbors and friends know it and sometimes I hear the jeer “Ami, go home!”
As I get older a streak of rebellion targets the disapproving German stare. Staring in public is an acceptable pastime in buses, restaurants, trains, anywhere. It starts with a critical eye locked on your face, lingers awkwardly, glides down the entire body to the feet, and then gawks in wide focus for a moment too long. One day I decide to stare down strangers as a kind of game during long hours of commuting to school. I like the boldness of it, no brashness, and soon I’m quite good at the sport. It’s hard, though, to completely strip the layers of shame from those early years. Shame is an unconscious part of my inner framework; it creeps into my perceptions and relationships; it steals joy, stifles spontaneity, and leaves regrets.
Just as shame builds incrementally, I suspect it diminishes in the same way. What makes it diminish? Moving away from your comfort zone toward awkwardness and vulnerability. It’s possible to create patterns of avoidance where discomfort crowds out our better selves. We communicate indirectly because we’d rather not face the discomfort of dealing directly with a person we’re in conflict with; we avoid speaking our minds, tell lies, curate an image, say what’s expected, do what everyone else does, and ultimately create a false self. Before too long, we are cut off from ourselves, our true feelings, our voice. Just as avoidance of shame feeds it, so small daily movements toward shame dismantle it. We have to tolerate the discomfort. I want to take bigger and bolder steps once my hair grows back. Starting a blog would certainly be a step, no a leap, in the direction of discomfort and vulnerability!
For now, I’m shedding my wig and my shame. No one stares at me as I go out wearing the baseball cap a friend gives me with “FOX” on the back. It’s a small daily act, but I feel strangely empowered by it. I’m not sure I would feel that in Germany. Unless you live in another country, you may not notice American politeness and the space people allow for individual expression, that people don’t stare and try not to offend. Freedom is imperceptibly embedded in American culture. It’s not the same in many other parts of the world. Americans may have good reason to complain about civic rudeness right now, but there’s also much to celebrate.
Sometimes I need a push, a shove, a kick to leave my comfort zone and ditch my shame. So, I’m hitting the road in my hats and not looking back.
“Great things don’t come from comfort zones.” Roy T. Bennett
Thank you for reading this blog post! I’d love to hear how this story impacted you or someone you know and/or any stories you’d like to share. Click here to contact me. - Sheri