I’ve never been hair-centric: Never dyed or permed or styled my hair beyond an occasional haircut and a quick pass with a comb in the morning. Which is why losing my hair due to chemotherapy has hit me far harder than I thought it would.

The truth is that without hair I feel vulnerable, naked. It’s too easy for others to see the sad expression in my eyes and the lines on my face – the inner being that we spend our lives hiding with clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, deodorant, orthodontia, and the regalia of our professional and social statuses.

Being hairless is now the most noticeable thing about me. My bald head announces to the world that I am, first and foremost, a cancer patient. I feel the shock each time I pass a reflective surface: I have cancer; that’s who I am. How I wish there were such an obvious way of announcing to the world that I am a sociologist, a mother, a writer, a cynic, a progressive, a friend.

At times hair loss feels like a sign of shame, a scarlet letter. Yes world, I’m one of those losers, one of those pitiful people who has cancer. I can’t help but see the resemblance to “fallen” women whose heads were shorn as punishment, or to the shaved heads of men and women in Nazi concentration camps, or the clipped heads of kids infested with lice or the malnourished kids whose bodies lack the nutrients to produce hair. Friends tell me this is a ridiculous way of seeing things – think of the beautiful actresses and celebrities who shave their heads. Think of the pro-wrestlers, the avowed monks, all the bad-asses with bald heads. (Note: regretfully, nobody would ever mistake 5-foot-tall, 70-year-old me for a badass.)

I could, of course, embrace chemotherapy as an opportunity to play around with new fashion statements. So let me be clear: I hate the cute crap marketed to women undergoing chemotherapy. Cancer is not cute. Chemotherapy is not cute. All the pink ribbons in the world will not make it cute.

Follow these links to see some outrageous examples of “pinkwashing” (including pink handcuffs and pink guns) that I’ve collected over the years: Pinktober: A Consumer Dystopia; Pinktober 2017; Buy Pink to Support Breast Cancer?; Pinkwashing – It really can get worse; Pinktober 2023: Is Pinkwashing the New Whitewashing?

But that’s just the beginning. Go ahead and google “hats for cancer patients.” You’ll see an entire industry dedicated to profiting from the misery of cancer treatment. I’m particularly irritated by the ridiculous gendering of the basic stretchy caps many of us chemotherapy patients wear to protect our bald scalps. Is it really necessary to distinguish women’s caps with a cheap fabric flower sewn onto the side (which makes it less comfortable to rest one’s head, but hey – we ladies are willing to suffer for our beauty, no)? The hair loss of chemotherapy could have been a great de-gendering opportunity, a statement that underneath our culturally-conditioned hair we all have the same basic scalps. It could have been a chance to neutralize the ribbons we put on the otherwise gender neutral heads of baby girls. But no, binary gender identities must be preserved even in the chaos of cancer treatment.

And if you really want to share in my sadness and outrage, check out the wigs marketed to (women) cancer patients. I don’t know what offends me more: the prices or the photoshopped young models with perfect skin, bone structure, and smiles intended to lure us into thinking that buying a wig will somehow transform us from sick to spectacular. (Spoiler alert: it won’t.)

This essay is part of an ongoing series in which I bring a critical sociological and feminist lens to my own experiences with endometrial cancer. Previous posts include: Beginnings and Endings and Is It Better to Receive, or to Give?