our hair naturally interlinks with our gender identities – so what do we do when we start losing it?
content warnings: gender dysphoria, body image issues, eating disorders, (internalised) transphobia and transmisogyny
i was never scared of the dark as a child. beneath my bed laid no sleeping monsters, and in my dreams i have never once found myself against the dreaded sleep paralysis daemon. what has always haunted me, however, is the fear of balding. perhaps this is why i’ve never looked at any of the men in my family without a deep hatred. moments like this remind me of the bittersweet scene in toni morrison’s timeless classic the bluest eye (1970), when a pubescent cholly breedlove meets his estranged father for the first time, and his instinct is to touch the ‘clean space’ atop his father’s balding head (p. 153).
the haunted space for all transfemmes where the biological man-clock rears its face.
something about this scene bespeaks the unvoiced estrangement i’ve always felt from my patrilineal family. when i looked upon my own father, i always looked ahead: into the face of the future i longed to deter. there was no ‘clean space’ atop his head. only crop circles of my future: a future from which i could not bear to look at, yet from which i could not look away, where acute thinning becomes fully-fledged male pattern baldness.
glaring back at me from this specular interspace, i see my future with more clarity than any tarot card or time machine could ever prophesise. it comes to me through the hateful heirloom us transfemmes are fated to bear: the barren halos of mortality and masculinity.
it comes to me through the hateful heirloom us transfemmes are fated to bear: the barren halos of mortality and masculinity.
when i realised i was transfeminine, i finally understood why the future of my body terrified me.
only when i understood how my body was ageing hormonally at odds with who i was, did i realise how pronounced the experience of time is when you fall outside the cis/gender binary. the ticking of our biological second-hand rings so much louder than it should, and we must therefore seriously acknowledge that hair is not just a cosmetic issue, but plays a crucial role in transfemme futures.
losing your hair can only be described as watching your body fall apart in slow motion. it is a gradual, parasitic process. you reach a point where you can scarcely recognise the person staring back at you in the mirror.
what people don’t understand when they say “it’s just hair” or “it’ll grow back in no time!” (guess what: not always!) is that for trans people, especially trans people of colour, for whom their hair likely also doubled as a source of racism and fetishism, it was never just hair. each strand holds within it the fabric of our identity, the weight of our herstories, the traumas we overcame and the lives we have to live.
only when i understood how my body was ageing hormonally at odds with who i was, did i realise how pronounced the experience of time is when you fall outside the cis/gender binary.
only now do i realise how testosterone is one hell of a drug.
i am not denying that it works wonders for some people – but for bodies like mine, those genetically predisposed to a dht sensitivity, it wreaks havoc. it isn’t helpful to think about the body i could have occupied had puberty blockers been an option, but the hair loss that came with my un-oestrogenised blood is something that leaves a gaping wound even long after recovery.
this wound is repeatedly salted by a climate of aesthetics and culture of passing.
as we know, experimental hairstyles are hallmarks of queerness. the mullet, the rainbow split dye and the undercut are how many of us find and grow into our gender.
but i never had a chance to explore this.
when i was 18, i was diagnosed with chronic telogen effluvium, a form of stress induced hair loss that by 22, had become so pervasive my ex was telling me to “look up” so they didn’t have to see my bald spot.
this wretched halo of mortality became my biggest source of dysphoria. as my hairline receded over the years, i noticed i was being increasingly read as male in situations where i could previously have passed as not.
it isn’t helpful to think about the body i could have occupied had puberty blockers been an option, but the hair loss that came with my un-oestrogenised blood is something that leaves a gaping wound even long after recovery.
as a neurodivergent non-binary person, i have tried to make peace with the fact that ‘passing’ as anything, be it neurotypical, or a woman, shouldn’t be the telos of transition.
but there is something undeniably validating about it: the coy euphoria that hits you every time you have completely evaded the cissexist gaze. gender is a game, and i have won. my receding hairline, combined with my ineradicable five o’clock shadow, marked me as masculine in unseeable ways.
masculinity, it seems, casts its shadow on those who fear it the most.
the repeated misgendering, rooted in my hair loss, internalised itself.
i realised i would never be the passable or desirable ‘themme fatale’ i once fawned over.
something i found helpful is seeing myself represented through different bodies. some of the most beautiful women, both cis and trans, are bearded or balding.
they helped me realise the need to embrace our vulnerabilities because these are insecurities are constructed by a medical system that points to behavioural faults as the cause, to avoid acknowledging their own negligence and responsibility.
we will sooner be told our hair loss is from our incapacity to control stress (which stems from these very systems) or our disordered eating patterns, rather than a refusal to provide forms of hrt.
we only need to look to the responses of our own bodies to realise we have been tube fed a host of myths that redirect the blame away from institutional indifference towards individual pathology.
we only need to look to the responses of our own bodies to realise we have been tube fed a host of myths that redirect the blame away from institutional indifference towards individual pathology.
i am approaching one year on oestrogen, and i could never have predicted the power of this hormone to reactivate follicles i had long assumed dead.
within six months, my crown has replenished itself.
by ten months, my temples are blossoming with tendrilled regrowths that are thicker, sleeker and stronger than ever before.
it is, of course, a process that demands patience, but the felt effects are a testament to the power of oestrogen that gps and the nhs refuse to accept.
hair loss is not a symptom of stress, as they will have us believe, but a disorder of a healthcare system that refuses to provide.
a system that stresses us to the point of no return, which can be so bureaucratically excruciating it can leave us no choice but to develop maladaptive coping mechanisms.
i am not saying that hrt is the panacea for all our problems – from chronic stress, to eating disorders; rather that not withholding oestrogen or making drugs like propecia available on the nhs would reframe the conversation away from behavioural pathology and back towards the structural inequalities that push our bodies and minds to their limits.
i realise now that it was never just about hair or beauty: it’s about what sheds, and who falls.
how many of us will have to fall in silence? and what else must we shed for them to finally listen?