Got long hair?
Got any hair?
Woman, shave your head.
And collect the assumptions hoisted upon you,
the ones you weren’t quite certain,
but now you know,
have been dragging you down.
Belly scraping the road.
Woman, got long hair?
Shave your head, and learn how confused
perceptions and expectations of you
are.
Where you may have been pretty, attractive,
desired,
suddenly the sight of that is gone
and people, most people, don’t have a clue
how to respond, how to comprehend–
But you were pretty.
You were attractive.
You were desirable.
Watch them turn their eyes away, unable
to look at you.
Hear them,
hating what they see and can’t understand,
say, “You look so…different.”
The least offensive, yet unasked for, comment
they can make.
Woman, got long hair?
Shave your head,
and discover what assumptions shove you low, in place,
a shallow ditch where you have been put.
Some react in adoration,
others with titillation, however briefly,
or with shock envy disbelief disgust.
Woman,
if ever you didn’t fully get it,
not in the tautness of your sinews,
how the appearance of a woman is believed
to belong
to the public,
that it is open invitation to
critique judgement opinion desire and rejection,
stick a personal act of transformation,
like dynamite,
within social view.
Woman,
if you want to know not
what others want you to be
but the stuff you’re made of,
Go,
Shave your head.