What Motivates Rape Survivors to Cut Their Hair?

This undocumented trend among rape survivors is real, and here’s why.

Photo credits insta: @allen_mcinnis

It was the day after my wedding and sparkling, crystal snowflakes were lightly falling outside the restaurant where I was having dinner with my new extended family members.

According to my ultra-orthodox Jewish custom, now that I was married I was mandated to cover my long, curly tresses with a heavy, friggly wig for the rest of my life.

After all, according to Jewish custom, a woman’s hair is what makes her sexy and the moment she gets married, she must cover up her sexuality, hide it from the world and reserve it only for her husband. But instead of enjoying the new faces, engaging in conversations and getting to know the new members of our clan, I just sat there and imagined what would happen if my fantasies came true.

I daydreamed of slowly reaching beneath my brand new, gorgeous, two thousand dollar wig with my fingers and scratching my scalp so hard until all that itchy, scratchy wiggyness simply floated away from my scalp. Then I imagined the look of horror my mother-in-law would give me in response to me vigorously itching my hair beneath my perfectly coiffed wig. Then my fantasies fell, shattered in itchy-scratchy land.

Instead, I smiled through the urge to scratch and politely nodded at the mysterious conversations going on all around me, where as far as I noticed, no one else seemed to be fighting the urge to itch and scratch themselves like they had the fleas.

As the years passed and I tried oh so many different wigs to make me look and feel like my old self again. But I finally came to the realization that my own hair was the only thing that made me look, well, so… ‘me’.

Ten years later I stood naked in the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. Now, I was a divorced single mother with a young daughter and a beautiful baby boy. I no longer had an abusive husband, nor a religion that I adhered to, nor a community to tell me what was right or wrong for me, my body, or my children.

I no longer covered my hair, I no longer covered my elbows or my knees or my collar bones. I no longer showed my underwear to a rabbi anymore or asked him permission to have sex or use birth control.

I was independent for the first time and that meant everything to me.

But unbeknownst to me, soon after I uncovered my hair, my sexuality, my independence, my power, and my freedom — all the monsters came forth to fight me for it.

The father of my children fought me in court then disappeared, my parents fought me for my kids then moved away, the rabbi’s fought me to stay silent and submissive, and then came the men who roofied and raped me.

So many men fought me for dominion over my femininity, my sexuality, my power.

Now, when I looked in the bathroom mirror at this period of my life, my hair rested there lifeless around my shoulders, over my bare breasts. In the past, I had loved my curly hair. These dirty blonde tresses that made my elementary schoolmates call me ‘Goldilocks’. But now, I felt like my hair had failed me terribly, somehow. My hair felt so heavy on my head. I hated it. I wanted it off. I felt this overwhelming desire to shave it all off.

I wondered at this strange, new attitude towards my hair as an abuse and rape survivor.

As I thought more about my strange, new attitude towards my hair, I suddenly understood where it all came from and resolved not to chop it off, the way my whole body screamed for me to.

I promised myself I would keep all my tresses untouched, even though I despised them. I stared into the mirror and held my hair up between my index and middle finger trying to picture what I would look like if I cut it all off.

“No. I’m not doing it. I only started hating my hair from the point when I woke up after being drug raped. If I hadn’t been raped, I wouldn’t want to chop my hair off, with all my soul. I won’t let them change me. Fuck them. I’m going to keep my hair.”

As the weeks passed, I developed a strange compulsive habit of running my hand through my hair until a few strands came out. If there was a knot, I roughly tugged at it until I was left with a clump in the palm of my hand. It felt like I won something when I lost those hairs.

For over a year, it was the oddest feeling to look at my hair like it was some strange, foreign object that absolutely didn’t belong where it was. Like it was a fungus that had to be chopped away from my body.

I was left wondering if I was the only woman feeling this way after being raped.

A year later I stood in a grassy green field, in a circle and waited for something that someone called an ‘Indigenous Smudging Ceremony’ to begin. I imagined in my bemusement that this First Nation’s custom might be a mud throwing ceremony where we threw dirt and each other and got all dirty and ‘smudged’!

My two year old and I stood there in the grass, waiting to see what would happen. I watched, mesmerized by the ritual and the prayer song, the drum and the smoke wafting into the sky. It was at least ten minutes until I realized that my boy must be getting bored, but when I looked down, I was surprised to see that he was watching the scene with just as much curiosity as I.

The man with the smoky herbs spoke for the first time. He explained that he was going to sing a prayer for each person in our circle and that when he came close, we should draw the sage smoke around our bodies to expel any negative energies lingering from past experiences. He said that we should spread the smoke around our heads because hair holds many past memories.

When the tribe member waved the smoky sage with his feather before me, I fought the flashbacks of dark memories my hair held. The flashback returned to me when I let my hair hang in front of my face as I was being raped, to hide me. My hair helped me hide in shame, but it also made me look more attractive, more feminine.

I fought the tears quickly welling up in my eyes as I cupped the smoke into my hands and lifted it to my face and over my head, onto my hair. My long, curly, golden-brown hair. Using a long, thick feather, the First Nation’s man gently brushed the smoke over the rest of my hair, my shoulders, then my back.

‘Go away all the horrible memories stored in my hair, go away’.

The praying, chanting tribesmen moved on to my son. My boy brought the smoke to his face and gave a little wave with his hands. His perfect, little face remained serious and still as if he understood the prayerful movements he was making.

Time passed. I met other women who were raped and noticed that regardless of their sexual orientation, nearly all of them had very short hair when I met them or had chopped their hair off shortly after they were assaulted.

I asked each woman why she cut her hair.

One responded, “because I couldn’t look in the mirror and see the same woman who was raped in that room. I needed to look at me and see a new, different person. Not that victim that I was when I was sexually assaulted.”

Another replied, “When I first cut my hair, I felt like this big weight was lifted off my shoulders and over time, I shaved all of it off and I felt free from the past. Abuse can change a person and for me, it definitely did. I wanted to show the new stronger, confident me and it was a decision that I made on my own, for myself”.

I asked her if perhaps looking less traditionally feminine by cutting her hair made her feel like less of a ‘target’ for sexual assault (although in reality hair length is unrelated to sexual assault). She agreed with my line of thought, “Yes, I’ve definitely thought of that factor before.”

Another woman told me, “I really don’t know why. For some reason, I just felt like I had to”.

My best friend who survived multiple rapes called me up super randomly one day and exclaimed excitedly, “Guess what Tanya?! I just chopped all my hair off! It feels like I cut away this massive, heavy feminine weight. I feel so light, so empowered and free from my past”.

No one really put much thought to it because each believed that this was a random, stand-alone manifestation of their own, individual healing process. No one seemed to notice that this was some kind of unconscious trend among female survivors.

I got my answer while travelling in India. It was there that I met a young woman who described to me how she travelled from place to place safely, as a solo female traveller.

“When I travel alone, I hide my hair beneath a cap and I wear very loose masculine clothing. I look just like a man and that’s how I avoid being harassed and targeted”.

“Ah! Very smart!” I exclaimed, “I’m totally going to try that!”

So if I presented myself as a man, I would almost be guaranteed safety and by presenting myself as a woman, I would increase my risk of being in danger.

As a rule, survivorship is a fluid and adaptive process even though it is a painful one. Our psyches are supposed to adapt and help us navigate our environment as any mammal adapts to their surroundings. The same way a mammal’s fur naturally thickens to adapt to the cold winter, or an animal ‘plays dead’ when a predator is too close, a rape survivor’s subconscious mind adapts too.

Our brain understands that we can’t chop off what makes us a target, like our feminine curves, or our vagina in order to ward off violent, toxic masculinity — but we can quite easily chop off our hair which identifies us as feminine from a mile away.

I guarantee that as women gain more political and socioeconomic power, it will be a much safer world because the evolution of femininity never involved the systemic disempowerment and abuse of the vulnerable.

So the truth of the matter is, rape survivors aren’t ‘going crazy’ when they chop off their hair. They are merely demonstrating a natural adaptation to protect them from their misogynistic and patriarchal environment.

So survivors, respect your psyche’s adaptations! Rock your hair (or lack thereof) whether you’re bald, bodacious, cis, gay or bi — let your hairstyle (and your healing process) fly.

Tanya is a mental health nurse specializing in trauma therapy and women’s health. She writes for Rewire Trauma Therapy’s online therapy services: https://www.rewiretraumatherapy.com/