19 famous women and non-binary people who rocked a buzzcut, and their powerful reasons for shaving their heads
There are a multitude of reasons for shaving your head. It may be an act of defiance against patriarchal beauty standards. Or perhaps, it's a decision made in the face of conditions such as alopecia, or a side-effect of chemotherapy. Whatever your reasons for shaving your head – whether you opt for a buzzcut or go completely bald – you can rest assured that it's one hell of a sexy look.
In popular culture, the act of shaving one's head is simultaneously codified as an act of oppression and rebellion. In Netflix's Unorthodox, one of the most striking scenes shows Etsy weeping as her hair is shaved off the night before her wedding. When Britney Spears shaved her head in 2007, after being hounded relentlessly by paparazzo, it was widely reported that she was experiencing a "meltdown." Emily Wynne-Hughes, a tattoo artist who Britney reportedly confided to, later said that Britney told her the real reason she shaved her head was: "I just don't want anybody, anybody touching my head. I don't want anyone touching my hair. I'm sick of people touching my hair."
The world's reaction to Britney shaving her head revealed an uncomfortable cultural association between hair and wellness.
In Don't Touch My Hair, Emma Dabiri notes that, "For girls and women, femininity is intricately bound up in hair. For a long time, long flowing hair remained one of the most powerful markers of being a woman." Emma's book (which GLAMOUR highly recommends), examines how this warped notion of femininity specifically harms Black women, adding, "Femininity – like beauty – remains a culturally specific project, and certainly not one designed with the physicality of black women in mind."
And it's Black women who've been at the forefront of imbuing a shaved or naturally bald head with autonomy, strength and sheer sex appeal. In her 2015 book I'll Never Write My Memoirs, Grace Jones wrote,"My shaved head made me look more abstract, less tied to a specific race or sex or tribe. I was Black, but not Black; woman, but not woman; American, but Jamaican; African, but science fiction."
More recently, Jada Pinkett Smith spoke powerfully about her journey with hair loss, sharing an empowering selfie of her newly-shaved head with the caption,"My 50s are bout to be Divinely lit with this shed."
Here, GLAMOUR takes a look at some of the famous women and non-binary people who've chosen to shave their heads.
Getty ImagesErykah Badu
The American singer debuted a freshly shaved head at The Grammys in 2001, which according to The Cut, was around the same time she chose to stop wearing head wraps. She explained this decision to Essence, saying, "[The headwraps] just got heavy, physically and a little bit mentally, because of the expectations of what was under that wrap and what it came with. I remember riding the airplane and people treating me different, as if I were a diplomat, a goddess or an empress of some sort."
Getty ImagesDemi Moore
Demi Moore shaved her head for her role in Ridley Scott's 1997 film G.I. Jane, in which she played a woman recruited to train with the Navy SEALS. According to The Telegraph, Demi said, "I had more people want to touch me. The funniest responses came from my children, who would say to friends, 'Hey, do you want to come and look at my mom's head?' as if I were a show-and-tell item."
Getty ImagesJessie J
In 2013, Jessie J shaved her head on live television to raise money for Comic Relief. She told GLAMOUR, "I want to keep it like this for a bit, yes. I look like this on my album cover. I wanted to make a statement. I feel like there's no point in shaving your head for charity if you're then going to just grow it back the next day."
Getty ImagesKristen Stewart
Kristen Stewart first showed off her luxurious crop at a screening of her film, Personal Shopper, in 2017. Appearing on The Today Show, she explained why she shaved her head (via Harper's Bazaar): "I'm doing a movie in a couple of weeks called Underwater and I play a mechanical engineer who is working on an oil rig on the bottom of the ocean floor, so for me it's practical."
She added, ""I've wanted to do this for a long time for novelty's sake, just because at some point in your life you want to be able to do that. It feels amazing – I just want to head bang all day
Getty ImagesCara Delevingne
In 2017 Cara Delevingne shaved her head for the film Life in a Year, in which she played a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy. Speaking at an event in Cannes in 2017, Cara revealed that her agents and managers were not keen on the idea of her shaving her head but she chose to do it anyway, saying, "Before I even got the project, I said to the director, 'I want to shave my head for it. My agents and managers were like, 'Please don't! Why would you do that?'"
Cara continued, "When it's a part like that, especially when it's about cancer [...] I needed to feel what it would be like to have no hair. The way you look, I think, it's so important to feel beautiful, no matter if you have hair. It doesn't matter at all."
Getty ImagesSinead O'Connor
In an interview with Dr. Phil in 2017, Sinead O'Connor described the heartbreaking reason she chose to shave her hair off. She explained, "When we were children, my sister had beautiful red hair, glorious red hair. That’s why I’d be jealous of her. But my mother took it into her head that my sister’s hair was ugly, and horrible and disgusting. And she started, when I had long hair, she would introduce us as her pretty daughter and her ugly daughter. And that’s why I cut my hair off. I didn’t want to be pretty.
She continued, "It’s dangerous to be pretty, too, because I kept getting raped and molested everywhere I went [...] I did not want to dress like a girl. I did not want to be pretty.”
Getty ImagesNatalie Portman
Natalie Portman famously shaved her head in 2006 for her role as Evey, a freedom fighter in V for Vendetta. At the time, she reportedly told reporters, ""Personally, I was excited to have the opportunity to throw vanity away for a little and go around with no hair [...] I was in character at the moment it happened. So, for her, it is a very traumatic experience. She is not choosing it. It's being forced upon her as a pretty violent act."
Getty ImagesAdwoa Aboah
In a moving personal essay for Teen Vogue in 2015, model and activist Adwoa Aboah explained why shaving her head was such a liberation decision:
"After many years of hating my hair, I finally felt no attachment to it. I was empowered, and for the first time, I don't need to carry around a large plastic bag of products, and it doesn't take me an hour to find all the hairpins after a night out.
"Now, I feel very comfortable, and no longer panicked about looking different. I've grown up and I’ve learned to appreciate looking unique, and not having long, blonde locks…at last. That in itself is the most important achievement. I would love it if other girls with the same hair could feel the same way—empowered and beautiful."
Getty ImagesDanai Gurira
Danai Gurira shaved her head for her role as Okoye in Black Panther in 2018. She told Hello Giggles, "I was the first one [of the female warriors in Black Panther] to get my head shaved and in theory it sounded amazing. Then the day came and we’re doing it today and I was like, 'Today?' Then it happened. Then you go into the restroom to wash your hands, and you look up and you’re like, 'What the?' So that took a few days, and then all the girls start coming in. We’d all been bald'ed, one by one. Everybody had their caps on. Then the pride started to grow”
Getty ImagesLupita Nyong'o
Lupita Nyong'o told Allure in 2018:
"I had my hair relaxed for most of my teenage years, and that was a whole other world. The upkeep of relaxed hair is a commitment. It took styling it once a week and then having it retouched once a month. I remember doing crazy things, like sleeping with my head above the headboard so that my curls wouldn’t get messed up for the next day. I’d have these terrible neck aches because I was determined to keep my hair as pristine as possible.
"My dad joked, “Why don’t you just cut it all off?” And a few months later, I thought to myself, Why don’t I? I went into the hair salon, and I said, “Let’s cut it off.” It was almost a dare to myself: Can I live without hair? He shaved it right off. It was so scary but so liberating because I went completely bald."
Getty ImagesGrace Jones
In her book I’ll Never Write My Memoirs explained, "I liked how having it short was a threat to people because it made me look so confrontational. It made me look hard, in a soft world. It made me look more like a thing than a person, but that was how I had felt I was treated growing up – as a thing, without feeling, an object, not even human."
She continued, "Shaving my head led directly to my first orgasm [...] This is because I am fairly sure the man I had my first orgasm with was Andre, my hairdresser from Cinandre. [..] I suppose it’s not surprising that my first orgasm was with Andre. His fingers on my scalp working their magic helped, and it didn’t take much for that to lead to great sex."
NETFLIXShira Haas
In an interview with Variety, Shira Haas explained how she felt having her hair shaved off on-screen: "I was ready for it. I knew about it a long time before, even in the audition process. At the same time, I’ve always had the longest hair. I never cut my hair. …I love my hair. It was scary. How does my head, shaved, look? Even before we started filming, I really felt nervous and scared alongside excited, just like Esty in a way."
Getty ImagesHalsey
In 2016, Halsey highlighted the importance of her biracial identity in choosing to shave her head. She told Nylon, "Hair has also been a big indicator of racial issues in my life," the biracial singer-songwriter said at the time. "It’s one of the ultimate symbolic struggles for women of color. Shaving my head was important to me because I needed to be able to prove that I could still love myself if I did it."
Getty ImagesAmber Rose
Known for her iconic blonde buzzcut, Amber Rose told Flirt Cosmetics in 2016, ""I think that I'd definitely seen Sinead O'Connor's 'Nothing Compares 2 U' video. I was inspired by her. [...] My friends said, 'Please don't do it, Amber, you're gonna look crazy.' And, of course, me being me, I rebelled against everyone and went straight down the middle at a barber shop. Fourteen years later, I still have it."
Getty ImagesAmandla Stenberg
In an essay with InStyle, Amandla Stenberg opened up about her hair journey:
"At first I had a very big, curly ’fro that kind of became a symbol of my self-acceptance. It was me loving my blackness: It was the hair growing out of my head, so there was nothing wrong with that! As soon as I got tired of that [look] being my identity, I cut my hair shorter. I was curious how that might affect people’s perception of my gender too, so I kept cutting it shorter and shorter. I wanted a hairstyle that felt less feminine."
Getty ImagesSkin
In 2016, Skin from Skunk Anansie spoke to Vogue about shaving her hair off, saying, "Being a black British girl of Jamaican descent I had that identity crisis, and when I shaved my head I found myself. Up until then, I’d had this long curly perm, which was greasy and nasty, I hated it."
@evangelinelillyofficial / INSTAGRAMEvangeline Lilly
In 2019, Evangeline Lilly shaved her head in a series of videos posted to her Instagram, with the caption "Verified
Hello 🌏. It’s a BEAUTIFUL day."
@willowsmith / INSTAGRAMWillow Smith
In 2012, Willow Smith made a statement when she shaved her head in the middle of her “Whip My Hair” tour.
She explained this decision to InStyle, saying, "“I was just over it,” Smith tells InStyle. “The truth of the song is ‘do want you want;’ it doesn't actually have to do with hair. ‘Whip your hair’ is just a symbol for doing whatever you want. So in a way, I feel like it wasn't even a rebellion because the song was saying that, and I was doing whatever I wanted and just being wild — but obviously, it was a rebellion to people who thought it meant something different. I was just over it; I was literally so done and said, ‘I’m going to show people that I'm not attached to this.’”
@jadapinkettsmith / INSTAGRAMJada Pinkett Smith
In 2018, Jada Pinkett Smith bravely opened up about experiencing hair loss on her talkshow Red Table Talk, saying,"I've been getting a lot of questions about why I've been wearing this turban. Well, I've been having issues with hair loss. And it was terrifying when it first started."
In July 2021, Jada shared a selfie of her newly shaven head to Instagram, saying, "Willow made me do it because it was time to let go BUT … my 50’s are bout to be Divinely lit with this shed."
