9:32 a.m. - 2007-02-21
Well, Sinead O'Rebellion
Dear Britney,
I never thought I'd be writing you. I am not a fan. I have never been a fan. You hit right as I got out of high school. When I first saw the Hit Me Baby One More Time video staying up late talking to friends my freshman year of college, I thought it was a joke. I thought you were a joke. Oh, was I wrong, and yet oh was I right.
It would actually be far more accurate to say that I hated your work, although not as much as that of your one time boyfriend. At the very least, I did like one song that you put out, and no, it wasn't Toxic, although everyone I know usually says "Toxic's a good song" whenever I talk about how much I hate your music. However good it might have been, after you've heard a Berkeley a capella group sing it in the middle of Sproul Plaza even once, you will never want to hear it again. Then they keep singing it throughout the semester and you want to buy a semi-automatic.
The one song I liked of yours was Me Against the Music, which I usually described as "a song Janet Jackson should be singing instead."
Usually, when I think of you, I'm thinking of you as a crime against humanity, or at least womankind, and you could be found guilty exclusively for inflicting that reptile you married on the world. Then there's the overly sexualized image of a young woman, your guilt by association with Antichrist Paris Hilton, and the fact that you have made more than I made for the past few years before you could legally drink when you have no talent whatsoever. At least Christina Aguilera has a voice. You, as far as I can tell, have a navel.
But I come here not to damn you, but to sympathize. Girl, you shaved your head. And it got me thinking.
When I saw Tori Amos in Los Angeles, she emphasized the importance of hair, being, as she said, with much affection, "in the land of hairspray." The woman herself--who, it goes without saying, has hocked up loogies with more talent than you have--understands how important hair is, as her admittedly artificially dyed locks have become iconic. She even has the line, "I dyed my hair red today" in Take to the Sky, a song about being rejected and saying Fuck. Right. Off. I have happily sung that song on occassions when I have dyed my own hair. It has been a while, though, because about a year and a half ago I realized that I was losing it.
This was NOT a pleasant experience. I was twenty-fucking-five, and my hair was thinning. My mother had ASSURED ME that I would never lose my hair, seeing as her own father died with a full head of black hair. Teach me to listen to a civil rights worker about elementary genetics. It occurred to me that I could have inherited my mother's mother's father's hair loss gene (as well as any number of others all the way up the line), the one that had rendered more than one cousin balding at a very young age, but I consoled myself by hoping that my resemblance to my mother's father, down to the thick, black hair, would spare me the humiliation.
No deal. Summer of '05, I saw something I had never seen before: my scalp. Now, I don't mean a bald spot, thank every star in the sky. I mean that it was thinning, and when I brushed it I could see scalp. Now, Brit-brit, you may be thinking that most guys see scalp when they brush their hair, but I am not most guys. My hair has always been some of the thickest that people have seen. So when I started losing it, I got a lot of "No, you're not" and "How can you tell?" Most people thought I was overreacting, but my best friend, who has dyed my hair red as well as purple and back to black more than once, said to me, "It is thinning. I know. I've had to apply ridiculous amounts of dye and the hair just kept coming. You still have more hair than most people, but it's thinning."
Now, Britney, I am sure you are someone whom I do not need to explain the fear of aging. I'm sure you're already doing everything short of shellacking yourself to guarantee that you won't get a wrinkle until you're 74, because you have a cute face, and we all know that people with cute faces don't age well. They go from adorable baby doll to not so adorable troll doll somewhere around 37. Well, you at least have had a youth of rock hards abs. I have not. The realization came sceaming into my head like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs: I am going to be fat AND bald before I'm 30. And I already knew what you are no doubt discovering: that the naked human head is only rarely a beautiful thing. We can't all be Persis Khambatta or Robin Tunney. I would look like Fester from the Addams Family. You look like E.T. Nobody wins.
Faced with my own mortality and, far worse, the mortality of my good looks, such as they were, I went on full tilt must have a boyfriend NOW mode. I'm not going to talk too much about that. I just decided that I didn't want to be a whore, that I needed to snatch up a man. Because that's what you gotta do. Snatch'em. Only, as anyone can tell you, the more you want a boyfriend, the far less likely you are to get one. I'm sure you weren't even looking for love when that iguana slithered into your lap. Sorry. Bad example.
The other fear I had was the amount of hair I'd lose if I ever had it cut. I mean, I barely washed it, and you know, don't you, Britney, how nasty that can get, when you don't wash your hair. So it grew out into a shag that was kind of indie rock and kind of horrifying, with bangs brushed forward to disguise the receding hairline. I found, to my pleasant surprise, that I have curly, wavy hair, which can be quite fun. I began to enjoy the feeling of it whipping around my head when I went dancing. I also started noticing things about other people's hair, particularly while I was dancing, seeing as I was the only boy in any gay club that had any hair that whipped around, or moved at all.
The gay men of the Castro have maybe five haircuts, ranging from shaved head to spiky. There are various caesar cuts in between. The mode for gay haircuts is clean cut. As if my weight weren't enough, my hair made me stick out even among the bears. Everyone around me had crew cuts. I started getting paranoid about this. Why did everyone around me look the same? Why were there so few haircuts? It is quite unnerving to look around at a club full of men and realize that you can barely tell the difference between then based on what they're wearing. Well, maybe it isn't such a bad thing for you. For me, it was freaky.
I started to take pride in my long hair. Even after I started taking propecia, and thank GOD for modern science and I know I'll probably get cancer or something from it but dammit, my hair is back, I still kept it long. I had the sides cut, but the top was still quite lengthy, able to whip my face and fall in curls around it. It was a source of pride. I wasn't doing what all the other gay guys were doing. I was different. I was staring the conformity of the Castro in the face and saying Fuck. Right. Off.
So, baby, I can understand why you're shaving your head. And I can understand why people are looking at this as the DEFINITIVE moment of your meltdown. Not hanging out with Satan herself. Not flashing your equally bald hoo-ha. Not the drinking and the drugs. Hell, not even marrying a lizard in the first place. It was shaving your head. Being a drunken slut is acceptable behavior for a woman. Doing something that might make you be seen as less beautiful: THAT is insanity. It almost makes me want to applaud you.
The thing is, doll, my own hair is short again. It is in a very gay cut, actually, a near fauxhawk. I quite love it, and I look very cute. And I won't say that I don't look at Austin gay boys from time to time and think "Dammnit, I look just like them, I suck." But mostly, I'm glad my hair isn't in my face anymore, and glad that I am no longer at the point where I feel the need to make a statement with my hair. When you think about it, it's kinda lame. I feel different enough in who I am that I don't need to be different in how I look.
So enjoy your bald head. Go a little punk rock, babycakes. Stop hanging out with Paris Hilton. But take care of your kids and, when your hair grows out, get a cut that flatters you. You'll feel better.
Toodles,
The Notorious RRZ
