“What made you do that?”
“Is it because you’re gay now?”
“I just wanted to check in to make sure you’re doing okay?”
What fascinated me wasn’t that people asked the questions. It was how few people believed the simplest answer: that I was just curious.
This wasn’t the first time I followed a curiosity that didn’t make sense to anyone else. Moving to California didn’t make sense to a lot of people. Living in a van made even less sense.
The first night I parked outside of my old apartment, sitting on my mattress on the cold van floor, clothes and boxes scattered around me. It was just me, the quiet, and the occasional whir of a passing car. It didn’t feel triumphant or tragic. It just felt chosen.
Looking back, I don’t think these were acts of rebellion or “bravery” but simple acts of curiosity.
I wanted to know what was me and what was just a habit. What do I want when I’m not performing for anyone?
And that’s all it is. I’m not trying to shock the people I love. I’m not trying to make a statement. It’s just me inching toward whatever feels honest. I can theorize forever, but clarity only shows up after I act on my hunches and choose to drown out the noise.
It was July of 2025, my girlfriend Aimée and our friends Hannah and Bailey decided to spend the 4th in a yurt in Yosemite National Park. After weeks of serious contemplation and maybe months of thinking about it, I decided I was going to shave my entire head.
I spent most of my life with my hair down to my hips, but after moving to California five years ago, I eventually chopped it into a bob… and I fucking loved it.
As a woman raised in today’s world, I’ve spent most of my life measuring myself against conventional beauty standards. It wasn’t until I lived in a van three years ago that I finally stopped wearing mascara every single day—a habit I’d had since I was 12 because I genuinely felt ugly without it. The funny part is, I only quit because it wasn’t practical anymore. I didn’t even have a mirror.
Somewhere along the way, I started feeling pretty without it. The more distance I got from those routines, the more I realized how much of my self-image had been built on standards I had never consciously chosen. Living in Orange County, where there are Botox clinics and gyms on nearly every corner, makes it hard not to notice how exhausting beauty culture has become. Pair that with spending three years off social media, and for the first time in my life I had enough room to breathe—to question the expectations I'd inherited instead of automatically living by them.
So to say shaving my head was years in the making would be an understatement. By that point, there was only one question left that I couldn't stop thinking about:
What would it feel like to step away from the one thing that still seemed so closely tied to whether I was considered beautiful?
The weekend was finally here.
I tossed a pair of cheap Amazon clippers into our duffel bag and headed to Yosemite, equal parts excited to see the park for the first time and to finally follow through on a decision I'd been carrying around for years.
After arriving, we unpacked our things and stood quietly beneath towering trees that made all of us feel impossibly small. We set up a camp chair outside our yurt, plugged the clippers into the outlet, and flipped the switch.
BZZZZZZZZ.
I grabbed a section of hair on the right side of my head and slowly dragged the clippers across my scalp.
A few passes later, my girlfriend stepped in. Then our friends wanted their turns. We laughed as chunks of hair tumbled to the ground, slowly dismantling the bob I'd grown to love.
I couldn't stop running my hand over the tiny hairs left behind. I'd never felt my own scalp like that before. I couldn't stop smiling.
Shaving your head is one thing. Shaving your head in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, surrounded by the people you love most, is something else entirely.
It felt sacred.
It felt safe.
I've never felt more alive.
I remember the first time I grabbed Aimée's phone and saw myself without hair. Even now, I'm still amazed by what I felt in that moment.
A small part of me had been afraid I'd regret it… that I'd feel ugly, or worse, that everyone who questioned the decision would be right.
Instead, I'd never felt so feminine. So beautiful. So comfortable in my own skin.
I felt good.
The decision felt right.
There's something incredibly gratifying about trusting your intuition and discovering it knew you better than your fear ever did.
I stood up and felt physically, and somehow mentally, lighter. The only slight discomfort came from the tiny hairs that had worked their way into every corner of my body... and from the occasional double take I caught from people passing by.
We decided to find some water to wash it all away. So we changed into our swimsuits, hopped on a couple of rental bikes, and pedaled through the park.
You'd think wind through your hair would be more dramatic the longer it is, but with no hair at all, the sensation was almost impossible to describe. Every breeze met my scalp for the first time. The sun hugged my skin while the wind seemed to cheer me along.
Eventually we found a creek. The water was painfully cold, surrounded by towering trees, wildflowers, and smooth granite boulders. We jumped in anyway.
It shocked every inch of me awake.
As the little hairs drifted away in the current, so did the last lingering doubts I didn't even realize I was still carrying.
We climbed out, spread out a picnic by the water, and sat there talking about everything and nothing. About the moment we'd just shared, but also about the strange privilege of getting to keep becoming ourselves.
Not everyone has the freedom to make choices simply because they're curious. I don't take for granted that I do.
It was at that moment I realized why I'd been so damn exhausted.
I'd spent years chasing people's approval. Their affection. Their understanding. I believed that if I could just explain myself well enough, and if people could finally understand who I was, then I'd be at peace. Then I'd be happy.
The problem is, no one will ever fully understand you.
They'll never fully understand me.
Not my family. Not my closest friends. Not even people who've walked remarkably similar paths.
That realization used to make me feel painfully alone. I thought being misunderstood was proof that I had failed to communicate who I really was.
But shaving my head helped me realize something I never expected.
It wasn't the haircut itself that changed me. It was what the haircut represented a culmination of years spent following one curiosity after another, simply because I wanted to know what they might teach me.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped needing every decision to make sense to everyone else.
I stopped believing that the purpose of finding myself was to eventually explain myself.
Instead, I realized that a life built on curiosity almost guarantees you'll be misunderstood from time to time. And that's okay.
The freedom wasn't in being misunderstood.
The freedom was in no longer needing to avoid it.
The moment I let go of the need for certainty, for one final identity, for everyone to finally "get me", I felt something I hadn't felt in a very long time.
Free.
