How Losing My Hair Led to Deeper Intimacy With My Partner
By: Tubi Hamid
Tags: Hair Loss, Healing From Trauma, Cancer

How Losing My Hair Led to Deeper Intimacy With My Partner Tubi Hamid Sep 8·10 min read

In the novel How One Becomes Sarah Mead, there’s a scene in which the main character Sarah asks her partner Sam to shave her head upon starting to lose her hair to alopecia. The process is detailed in a way that highlights how intimate the act is and how feminine Sarah felt going through it. The book is fiction and was written well before I became sick. But when I began losing my hair after undergoing chemo and radiation on my head, I resented the passage and its author for writing something they were clearly out of touch with. That my hair loss would likely be permanent made my resentment that much stronger.

My hair has been a central matter in my life since I was first old enough to consider it. I’m a hijabi and ensure my hair remains covered when I’m out in the world or in mixed company. As a Muslim girl, my parents raised me to believe that a woman must have long hair to be obedient to Allah, for women with hairstyles men wear were an affront to God. This is not something I believe as an adult, for I’m certain Allah cares more about how I treat others than how I wear my hair, but one’s upbringing is hard to shake. In my first marriage, my husband, who became violently abusive shortly into our marriage, used my hair as a means by which to control me. I got it cut once without his permission and he beat me. More than once he threatened to shave it off if I brought him shame, which could occur any number of ways, all dependent on his mood. Years into our marriage, keeping my long hair, not losing it to his rage became a point of pride for me. Long hair meant I was being a good wife. Being a good wife meant a life with minimal pain. Losing my hair, I came to understand, meant that I had failed in some great way.

In my current life, I pride myself on having put all of those false beliefs behind me. Or so I thought I had until I was diagnosed with a brain tumor last year. I’d always naively thought, as many do, that if I was ever diagnosed with cancer, I would be the one to not let silly vanity trip me up, I’d not be bothered by something as trivial as the loss of my hair if it was between my survival and my hair. It’s easy to think these things when cancer is an abstract concept, something that happens to other people, not a real illness you must endure. When I was diagnosed and told I would need surgery, I was at first okay with what I assumed would be a temporary loss. It was “just hair” after all.

The day before my surgery, I sat in a dining chair in the bathroom as my partner cut off my hair that hung to my waist. We laughed as they cut it ever shorter, through questionable styles. I had the mushroom cut of children of the 80s, a severe mullet, a flat top, and we finished with the worst of the terrible styles by shaving just the crown of my head with a razor. I shaved the rest, standing in the mirror feeling empowered as I did the thing my ex husband always threatened to do while feeling loved and wanted, not ashamed and scared. My long, thick hair lay in a massive pile on the floor and I didn’t give it a second thought as we cleaned it up and my partner took it out to the dumpster. It was temporary. Within a year or so, things would be back on track. I was experiencing a new hairstyle after having the same one for 20 years. This was an opportunity for growth.

This all changed when my surgery was only semi-successful. They weren’t able to remove the entire tumor and I would need chemo and radiation. This was again fine with me, still a temporary loss, I assumed. In preparation for the radiation therapy, the doctor gave me all sorts of info. Pamphlets, support group info sheets, brochures and websites to wig shops.

“Wigs are uncomfortable,” I told him, “I’ll just go without until my hair grows back. Save the brochures for other patients, please.”

The doctor offered a kind smile and hesitated for a moment. “Tubi, the hair loss from this radiation is often vast.” He said. “And permanent.”

My mind raced through the mental pictures of exactly where and how much of my head would be irradiated. Where, exactly, I would be permanently losing a “vast” amount of hair. The memory of the terrible “joke” haircut in which my partner shaved only the crown of my head and we laughed and laughed at how bad it looked on me came to mind. That was precisely where I would be losing my hair. My head would be transformed into the permanent joke, the most unfeminine caricature we could come up with.

My partner and I didn’t talk on the way home from that appointment. We were both stuck on now-bad memories. Courtney on what a joke they had made of the “medieval monk” hairstyle just a few weeks before, and me on all the times they had mindlessly ran their fingers through my hair, brushed it out of my face, expressed love and affection through their hand in my hair. Now what would they do, I wondered, rub fingers over a bare head complete with cartoon squeak sounds?

In the days before radiation therapy began, my partner tried to comfort me, make me believe that my hair didn’t factor into their attraction to me, and wasn’t what made me beautiful. They reminded me that as a hijabi, no one but them need ever know that I had lost my hair. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe their words. After all, Courtney spent ten years as my older sister’s partner and for the last five years of their relationship, my sister was voluntarily bald or wore a close crew cut. What I struggled with was my past beliefs, my failings as a woman, and the loss of my femininity.

As treatment went on, it wasn’t a matter we ever brought up. I was still on chemotherapy and bald from that anyway and as sick as I was from it, my hair rarely crossed my mind. It was several weeks after chemo ended and fuzzy wisps of hair began to grow everywhere but atop my head that I began my daily struggle with seeing myself in the mirror.

The morning I noticed the light-colored and fuzzy wisps becoming my natural dark and thick stubble, I was again reminded of our laughter at the look as we shaved my head for surgery. I was reminded of my ex husband and his threats to shave my head to shame me. I was reminded of what I was raised to believe about Muslim women and short hair. I needed to get rid of the stubble before my partner could wake and see it. How could I bear their gaze as a shamed, failure of a woman with the hair we’d mocked? I could share anything with Courtney but not this. Not the realization of a deeply held fear knowing they would feel obligated to make me feel better, no matter what they felt about how I looked now.

I closed the bathroom door, turned the shower on to muffle my sobs, and got my shave gel from the shower. I tried to steel myself but failed as I rubbed the gel around my head and it turned to foam, just as it did on my ex husband when he shaved his head to conceal his male pattern baldness.

There’s a passage in the novel when an unspoken trust is shared between Sarah and Sam. Sam, a barber, has just finished shaving off Sarah’s long hair at her request and he spins Sarah around to see her now-bald self in the mirror. Instead of being horrified as she expected, Sarah noticed all of the feminine features of her face and she notices Sam staring at her with as much adoration and attraction as always. Sarah’s greatest fear had come to fruition after she’d spent so much energy trying to conceal her hair loss and Sam was there to help her, without question.

I didn’t expect the same “help” for myself, even though the novel’s author is my partner. I didn’t expect it because I would never ask. My ex husband standing behind me, razor in hand, looking at my bald head was a thought that terrorized me for years. Why would I willingly put myself in that position now? Plus, shaving your feminine significant other’s head would surely have a way of killing any romantic feelings there were between you.

The closed door and running water failed to muffle my crying and Courtney came into the bathroom to find me a trembling wreck hunched over the sink.

“Can I hold you?” They asked me.

I nodded.

“May I kiss you?” They asked me.

I nodded.

“Can I have this?” They asked, holding out a hand for the razor.

I put it in their hand.

“Do you want me to do this?” They asked.

I shook my head, no, and they held me without a word until my tears stopped.

“Can I do this for you, please?” They asked, when I finally allowed my eyes to meet theirs.

I nodded, reluctantly. I knew this game. Our back and forth of consent. Courtney knows my past and what I endured with my ex husband and they know that when I’m struggling, when my mind goes back to my life with him, everything must revolve around consent. This empowers me in ways past me was always denied. The back and forth of consent, me granting permission for every touch, everything that’s done to and for me, it reminds me that now, even in situations that feel out of my control, there are always things that I have the power to control.

Yes, you can do this for me because I cannot do it for myself. I know this and I am grateful that I do not have to say it, that it is just understood. This is an intimacy I allowed for the first time in our two years together and despite my obvious vulnerability, for a moment I feel more powerful than perhaps I ever have. No, I did not take control of the situation myself, I gave my control over it to someone else. A control that would have been dangerous in my former life. A control that reminds me that I am safe and loved and not ever shamed no matter what I am going through at that moment.

Every day now begins with shaving away the stubble that grows around the sides of my head. It’s still a relatively new routine, as my hair has only been re-growing for a couple of months, and sometimes it’s still a struggle. Sometimes I can do it myself, sometimes I have to ask for help. Sometimes I open social media and resent people that post selfies with hairstyles I’d want for myself and other times I’m grateful my morning hair routine has been shaved — pardon the pun — from 45 minutes to five. I’ve found femininity in other things and though I started this process of acceptance by insisting on wearing my hijab in our home because I didn’t want Courtney to look at me and see a bare head, I’ve returned to smiling when I catch them looking at me when they think I won’t notice. There’s such a sense of empowerment in having a daily ritual that grew out of love where it was once a tool used to control me.

Two weeks ago, I met a doctor that does hair restoration for women that have lost their hair in situations like mine. He had come to my salon with his wife. She sat in my chair and said, “What’s your hair look like under there?” But not in the nosy “what’s under your hijab?” probing manner of many others. She simply didn’t know what she wanted to do with her own hair and she was seeking inspiration. I removed my scarf and laughed.

“Something tells me this isn’t what you’re looking for,” I said.

“It’s a bit more drastic than I’m ready for, I think.”

Her husband began asking questions about my hair and what happened to it. I didn’t mind. I prefer questions to the assumption that I’m dying or the not-so-sneaky stares. I explained and he told me what he did and offered me an appointment.

Courtney and I went to the appointment and as we sat there while the doctor explained the process and procedures, I realized that where I once would have done anything to not have to be a bald woman, I now had no desire to subject myself to any amount of pain to not be a bald woman because I simply don’t need to. I’ve grown to love the way my partner looks at me, studies me on the days I hand them my razor and I love how powerful I feel on the days I do it myself. I love that I’ve been released from my longest held fear and not because it happened to shame me and it wasn’t so shameful after all, but it happened to help me and it continues to help me to grow and heal from my past every day.

Perhaps in time I’ll reconsider hair restoration but for now I’m quite happy with the woman losing my hair has helped me become and I’m grateful it’s a source of intimacy and trust in my relationship.