On Nakedness (& Hairloss)

For God, Love and Liberation

In the Embodying Bhakti series a few weeks ago, we explored what it means to be “nekkid for God.”

We sat with our muse, Akka Mahadevi, a renowned poet-saint from Karnataka, India, who emerged as a beacon of progressive embodiment during the 12th-century Bhakti movement. She walked around naked in devotion of her Lord. Her defiance of social norms and gender expectations made her one of the most radical and relevant badasses of her time, and ours.

“Coins in the hand
Can be stolen
But who can rob this body
Of its own treasure?

The last thread of clothing
Can be stripped away,
But who can peel off Emptiness,
That nakedness covering all?
Fools while I dress
In the Jasmine Lord's morning light,
I cannot be shamed-

What would you have me hide under silk
And the glitter of jewels.”

Akka Mahadevi

In the session, we boldly inquired within ourselves and one other…

where are we hiding?…

In Indian depictions of Akka Mahadevi, thick black locks cover her bare body to make her “appropriate” even in her known and notorious nakedness. Ironically, the unsurprising thing that came up for me as I reflected on how I hide was…my hair.

For the last 10+ years, I’ve struggled…and I mean waves on waves of rollercoaster-ride emotions like grief, anger, frustration, insecurity, fear, terror, disgust, helplessness, confusion, anxiety, dread, self-hate, envy, and more grief around my hair; specifically my experience with androgenic alopecia, or said another way, diffuse balding. The word “balding” would be enough to make me cringe and tighten in my whole body.

I’ve hidden my scalp- which is becoming more and more exposed over time without my control or understanding despite various diets, stress management practices and whatever else over the years. I’ve hidden my scalp with ashy powders, fashionable and itchy hats, regal headscarves, and…lots of lots of shame.

This shame is not just mine; it’s intergenerational. I come from at least two generations of beautiful beings who have hidden their thinning hair and have suffered in silence for significant chunks of their lifetimes. I also come from a family of cousins with black waterfalls down their backs, who see someone with a shaved head on TV and say, “ew, they look sick.” I come from gaggles of aunties who exclaim with unsolicited concern, “why did you cut your hair?!”

When I’ve opened up about this with the most well-meaning people in my life, I’ve often received looks of pity and concern. “It’s not as bad as you think,” or “maybe you can wear a wig or a topper?” or “have you tried B12 or rosemary oil?” they’d say, either bypassing the pain, or trying to help me “fix” or hide it.

But today, I write this with my South Asian and Black sisters at my back. With this ancestor, Akka Mahadevi in her wildly shameless pilgrimage on earth. With Lakshmi Didi who held me and bathed my head with love in the waters of Boulder Creek. With Leena Didi who affirmed my sexiness and celebrated me when I sent a picture of my shaved head. With Maisha and Olivia who also come from a culture where hair is looked at as identity, health, and worth, and who shaved their heads all the way down to skin while claiming their place in dignified exuberance. I am because of all these muses.

I also write this standing on the shoulders of some people I don’t know but have drawn so much resilience, joy and awe from. I want to name two particular Indian women who have claimed their shiny bald heads with realness en vogue: Supriya Surender aka Baldieboo and Neehar Sachdeva. I’ve turned to their content time and again when I’ve needed permission and representation to be naked, and free, in this particular way.

“There is no standard of health that is achievable for all bodies. Our belief that there should be anchors the systemic oppression of ableism and reinforces the notion that people with illnesses and disabilities have defective bodies rather than different bodies...

We must make peace with not understanding. Understanding is not a prerequisite for honor, love or respect. I know extraordinarily little about the stars- but I honor their beauty.”

Sonya Renee Taylor
The Body is Not An Apology

So the other day, I prayed to Gods and Goddesses, to Trickers and Disruptors and Ancestors. Then I shaved my head.

I collected my hair and placed it on my altar as an offering for a few days. Then I cut up the hair into smaller pieces, soaked in water, and poured it over the soil of my house and garden plants. This was a ceremonial funeral for the identity, sense of beauty, health or vitality that hair has given me all my life, that it no longer can in the same way.

I gave this hair to the dirt as nutrient, as gift, as way of letting go and blessing earth with earth material that my body grew in the best way it could; material that, in some way, I had chosen to shave off, even when hair loss is not a choice I would wish for any body.

I gave it to the soil with all the pain and freedom that each stand has held for me. May this become good compost, I whispered.

“What then is decay?

Watching a compost heap transform into fertile soil it can seem like decay is genesis.

Decay is the first scene in a comedy of mycelial threads and millipedes and sprouting wildflowers, seeds invisibly deposited by a bird flying overhead.

Sometimes I think about death as being the transition from a solitary aliveness to an anarchic polyphony of aliveness.

Sophie Strand

When I practice being naked for God, revealing my spotty scalp- this expanding graveyard of hair follicles that once sprouted; when I unclothe my body from feet to crown to let the Artist gaze upon Their masterpiece…I feel evanescent sparks of…

Tenderness, acceptance, unconditional adoration.

I feel a big warm hand on my little head blessing me in all this persisting beauty, in all these “flaws” and all the grief I’ve felt with them. I feel utter and sheer Love for me exactly as I am, divine perfection.

This feeling comes and goes. I have to work hard to cultivate it in a world that looks at a naked scalp with so many unloving feelings.

I write this crying in gratitude for all the experiences I’ve had recently that have nudged me to be naked here, free here even for this moment, loving here, sharing a small yet big part of a human experience here…letting this form of decay perhaps transform, into an anarchic polyphony of aliveness.

I’m not alone in the challenges of accepting an aging, paining and dying body while also honoring and reveling in its miraculous vitality and uniquely delightful beauty.

Radical Acceptance and Devotional Love are daily choices.

And some days, I cry and hide, and that’s okay.

And many days, I carry big adornments on my earlobes as compensation, or wrap my head in silk for protection, and that’s okay.

One day, I may choose to wear a hair system or topper or wig to play more with different looks, and that’s okay.

I continue to softly tend to my envy and grief when I see flowy ponytails blowing in the wind or voluminous curls on the beach.

I commit to compassionately caring for my fear and vulnerability in front of judging gazes upon my baby-haired scalp, shiny in the sun.

Each day, I devotedly pray to God nekkid, as I keep coming back again and again to Their unconditional adoration.

And I will keep releasing layers and layers of shame, as I expand glimmers and invitations of love and freedom.

I’d really love to hear from you, dear reader. How did this land with you? What does it inspire? How might you be hiding?

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