Bittersweet Infamy - #144 - Bald Girl Summer

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

Josie tells Taylor about the history of women shaving their heads, from the ancient Egyptians to modern pop stars like Grace Jones, Sinéad O'Connor, and Britney Spears.

My name's McKenzie, and I started to GoFundMe for the adoptive mother of a nonverbal autistic child. The mother had lost her job because she wasn't able to find adequate care for this autistic child. So she really needed some help with living expenses, paying some back bills. So I launched a GoFundMe to help support them during this crisis. And we raised about $10,000 within... just a couple of months. I think that the surprising thing was by telling a clear story and just like really being very clear about what we needed, we had some really generous donations from people who were really moved by the situation that this family was struggling with.

GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform trusted by over 200 million people. Start your Gofund me today at gofundme.com. That's gofund me.com. Gofund me.com. This podcast is supported by Gofund me. Welcome to Bittersweet Inferme. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on and infamy. The strange and the familiar.

The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet. Any big developments in your recent aesthetic choices? Yeah. I buzzed all my hair off. Yeah, how's that? Is calling you Bald C. Bald Chilt 2 Forward?

You looks cute. It would be affectionate. It's not a diss, to be clear. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Stick it with Josie for now. Fair enough. For now, legally speaking, sticking with Josie, yeah. Why'd you do it? The streets have been asking me everywhere I go. Oh, really? Yeah, the blogs. The blogs. The streets. The blogs. The four-one-one. Everybody, the gossips, the rags. They all want to know. Why'd you do it?

I don't know. It seemed fun. Yeah, that's a good reason. It was like a public exhibition head shaving, though. You sent me pictures. There was like, there was a backyard full of people. It was my friend Justin who did it. He brought his clippers over and McShill was there taking a photo or two and Beat Man. Batman, what was Batman's reaction? Was he like, I hate getting a haircut, count me out, or does he like getting a haircut? You know, I don't think he minds it. It's not his favorite activity. Sure, sure. His favorite activity is probably like chewing on something, huh? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, fair enough. But we do, when we like give him a little haircut, we have a little buzzer that we use on him and we do it in the backyard. So I was just, I was just copying him. He's a trendsetter. He's, he's a role model, I've heard. Yeah. The fact that someone brought over Clippers to do this was this specific. This was like an organized event.

Yes. This was arranged. Yes. The semester ended and it was like, okay. I don't have to be a teacher anymore. Until like June 1st. Then I have to teach summer school. Oh, whatever. But.

Everyone has to face down summer school when it comes. It is what it is. Yeah, it's true. It's true. It's how you keep your bus pass, folks. That's a very good point. And it's summer school, so it's like, chiller, you know. It's not like the same dress code. You can wear like free dress to summer school. 9-0-2-0. Yeah. Yeah, I got that. And what have the reactions been generally? Positive? Um, yeah, positive, positive. Uh-oh. That voice went real high. Was it Alice? Who was it?

No, Alice, I said, I told her in advance and then I send her some photos once it happened. That's good of you to tip her off. You didn't have to do that. There were a few people that I tipped off. You don't want to startle anybody. I don't want to startle anybody. And I also didn't, I wanted to hold myself accountable. I wanted to be like, I'm going to do this.

Right. Now that I've said to people that I'm going to do this. Yeah, that's how a lot of my makeovers came about. I've been like, well, I've already told someone I'm getting this pierced. So now I have to do it. Or I look like a weird poser. The worst thing you can look like is a weird poser. Because either my mom is going to make fun of me for having a shaved head or make fun of me for not

shaving my head. So her first reaction was like, like a skin head? It was like... Like a skin head. That's a funny thing to say. Yes, mother. Yes. Like a skinhead. But she was very positive and sweet. That's hilarious. Like a skinhead.

Bottom. I know. Alice always comes in for like the weird angle, like right through the armor, you know? I was going to say ice cold knitting needle into the jugular. Absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely. That's what moms are for. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what they were put on this earth for.

I mean, my mom doesn't really do that. Anyway, how Mitchell likes it? Yeah, yeah. That's the most important thing. Does a man like it? Exactly, yeah. That's how we measure our self-worth here on this podcast. But what does the man think about this?

Is he okay? Is the husband okay? Has he divorced you? Not that I know of. Okay. Good, good, good. He says he likes it. I've gotten two concerns of cancer.

That's kind of the lay of the land, yeah. Yeah, yeah. One of them was from my dear brother, which is like, if you're going to hear it, like hear it from your older sibling, you know? Another, like, ice-cold knitting needle live. I was going to say, how concerning was that concern? Was that like a skinhead, but it was cancer? Yeah, yeah.

Understood, understood. He also gave me a Chenade. That was fun. Shannade O'Connor. I gave you a Shnade O'Connor. It seems natural. Yeah, naturally speaking. Seems only natural.

The OG bald white lady of no. Yes, yeah, yeah. A friend of mine said, do you want my hat? People are, dude, when I got this lighthouse tattooed on my arm, the insurance lady came into the office where I worked, and the first thing she said was, oh, do you regret that? Oh! I was like, not, you know what? I haven't had time to regret it yet, okay?

Give me a year. Give me a week or two, yeah, at least. Fuck. Yeah. Yeah. Let me see how this thing ages. Yeah. Oh, God. People are weird.

Yeah. Yeah, deadly. People are assassins. The most important thing of all is, like, how do you enjoy it? Do you enjoy it? Are you happy with it? I, yes. Yes, I do like it.

I'm a little surprised with how I'm kind of nervous around people who I think don't like it. It's a little, like, revealing that way. I'm like, oh, man. Like, I went and I did it. being like, yeah, this will be cool and I'll like it for myself. And then, I don't know, it's kind of like, not a bummer, but revealing to be like, oh, I kind of care what my landlord. Inevitably. You know, like. Inevitably. And all the people that you don't think about when you're like getting any other haircut. You know what I mean? No, I got that. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And

Some of it is, you know, like, Mitchell had a performance tonight, and I opted not to go because I didn't want to see his parents. Ah. There's, like, that. I was just like, ah, would you care if I didn't go? And he's like, don't go. You should not go. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Do they know? No. Uh-uh. Ah. See, there you see. That's such one. Do you give them a heads up or no?

I get keeping the boundary, but also, like, I get being feeling how you're feeling now. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot. I keep kind of going back and forth to, like, am I keeping the boundary or am I, like, being a big chicken? Self-protecting. It can be both. Yeah. You know, it can be both.

Like, most things, most things are just both, you know. You know? And swimming. How is it for swimming? Oh, it's great. That's what I told you, too. It's like, I can go to the pool and, like, not have to wear a swim cap. And if you.

Yeah, that's nice. Low maintenance. Really, really cool. Yeah, yeah. And it dries so quick. And I do have to say for, like, the people who I don't see very often, who are, like, I just don't know it all. Like, I went to the doctors today for, like, an annual checkup.

And, like, I see that doctor, obviously, once a year, at the least. And, like, there was nothing like, whoa, hair. You know, it wasn't. Yeah, look at you. Yeah, it was. It was like, it was just none of that. It was just like, okay. All right.

It's good to see you. changes, no, okay, all right. Colonoscopy, sounds good. Colonoscopy? Yeah, I'm going to have to get a colonoscopy this summer. Dude, the hits keep coming and the hits keep coming, eh? I know, yeah, yeah, that'll be fun. Fire that baby in, fire that baby out. I wish you all the best.

It's a lot of out first, and then it's in. We're going to do a four-episode arc on this. We're going weekly. I'm Josie's Dumpur. For September. Let's go. Let's go. I'll see if I can't get the audio of the... Oh, please. Let's get Miss Frizzle all shrunk down, send her up there. The works. No expense

spare. It'll be great. We can get a grant for that, right? I think. I think so, yes. I think some medical equipment company will be really into it, yeah. Oh, Josie. Taylor. Pour one out for a real one question mark. Oh, big time. Episode five. of bittersweet infamy. What was the name of it?

Betty and Dan Broderick, that was back before we got... We didn't get... We weren't too out there with the names. Now we've rained ourselves back in. We're moving more toward austerity. You know, these are the times that we live in. Yeah. You've seen the gas prices.

Oh, my God. So what we're doing then is we're throwing back to episode number five, which is the story of Betty and Dan Brodwick. Josie, how would you characterize this story in brief? Country Club, wifey, mom. who gets everything that she's worked so hard for taken away from her, so she takes it back and shoots her husband and his new wife in their home. Yeah.

And it's a San Diego classic. And it's a San Diego story. Yeah. And also like a little sprinkling of personal connection because my mom knew Betty Roderick. They were like in junior league together. I regret that I've always been too tasteful to. ask your mother directly to her face about this. Oh, like a skinhead lady? No, go for it. It's possible. It's possible I did ask, but it was just in that up to your wedding where I spent

the entire time stoned in the hot tub with her and Ellen. Yeah. So maybe I asked already and I forgot, which I also regret. Yeah, well, that happens. But anyway, what, uh, what newsworthy item of note just came about in this story, Josie? At the age of 78, I believe. Betty. passed away of natural causes in prison. Died of rage. Yep. Died of rage. Mm-hmm.

Yep. In prison. She had a life sentence. There was no getting out. It was going to happen eventually that way. But it happened on Mother's Day weekend. Wow. Wow.

Betty said, no, no, no. Let's talk about me again. Yeah. A really remarkable and singular character who I think gets a lot of sympathy slash a lot of support from like the rise-up scorned women club. The first wives club kind of vibe. The first wife. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Diane Keaton, all of them, Goldie Hawn, the group. Go back and listen to episode five. Yeah. Or if you prefer, you can check out a recent classic in our last episode. I recap the trip that I took to Peru. I know. A little travelogue, baby. Little travelogue and told the story of a local tourist hit,

recently up-and-coming tourist hit. that has a really, like, kind of tragic backstory that's built around, like, a community's struggle around what to do with the newly generated wealth from this tourist attraction. Yeah. Episode 143, Blood on Rainbow Mountain. If you want a little sampling of the wares, I should say, that on my trip back from Puno to Juliaka, I had a cab driver who took us to the airport, and I was really, really nervous because, spoiler alert, I lost my fucking passport if you want to hear that and more.

But silver lining, your replacement passport has a fly-ass picture. You took a really good passport photo. I look really cute. I look really cute in the replacement picture. There's nothing they can do about that. They can't take that one away from you. They might be able to if, you know, but it's yours for now. For now, for now, until I lose it.

Or it expires. It might expire. So we're driving up to the airport and this guy, Brian, is our cat. driver. He was basically doing what I would say was like a diet of steady minfamuses all the way to the airport. Snacking the whole way. He's like, so do any of you guys believe in the supernatural? Yes. Lean in.

Rui says yes. I said, you know what? The honest answer. You know what? Nothing in my life has indicated to me. Like I've never encountered anything supernatural, but I'm open-minded to hear what other people have to say, which is the truth. You haven't encountered anything. yet. Yet. No miracles yet, no aliens yet. No spontaneous combustion, knock on wood. Consessed dolls.

Yeah. Possessed dolls that I knew of. Yeah. If they were possessed, they were chill around me. Maybe I'm just a likable guy. I don't know. Yeah. So I'm sitting in the back of this car and it's great because I'm really am thinking

about am I going to be able to get on this domestic flight without my passport. This guy's really taking my mind off it. And he starts telling us about, I won't go into too many of the particulars except to say that like it's a lot of like local things. folklore about like this is our creature that has the head of a man in the body of an alpaca. Here are the circumstances under which it is born. Here's how you get rid of it sometimes. And a lot of like here is the taboo that this represents, right?

Ah, okay. So doing the deep work. That's good. He didn't put it this way necessarily. This is my interpolation. He would explain what the thing, the chimera, the cryptid was about. And I would infer from this that like, oh, that's also about a taboo. Oh, that's also about a taboo.

So I don't know that he specifically phrased it this. way. But it is my observation that some examples of this were, here is the monster that comes from incest. Here is the monster that comes from making a deal with the devil. You know, these sorts of things. Being anti-religious or in some way like transgressing, that'll make you a monster in these here hills, you know what I mean? So a lot of that. And then also some more like, what I will call more grounded things, although I hesitate to use that term when talking about the tobogon de la Muete. The toboggin of death?

The toboggin of death. It's a giant slide that exists as part of an amusement park in Juliaca, and we kind of drove past it. Oh, okay, okay. It's so called as the Tobogon de la Morte, because the rules were maybe a little bit laxer early on in the slides days, and, you know, maybe some, I think a child under 12 died in 2011. Oh.

So that's the tobogon de la Muete, and that's what you do for a good time in Juliaca. You just like pop over to the Toboggan de la Muete and you pray for dear life. They have handrails now, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Put your life in the toboggins dangerous, dangerous arms. It was literally just like here are minor slightly infamous. Not even, he wouldn't go for infamous, but like the local folklore, right?

Yeah. Here's the local folklore. Yeah. Really good stuff. And if you want to hear more of that, if you have some interest in like Peru or just me losing important travel documents, check out our last episode, episode 143. Batabing, badaboo! Babi!

but a boom, baddest in the room. Josie, good things happening over at the Bittersweet Film Club over at coffee.com, K-O-Hifin-Fi-I-com slash bittersweet infamy. Join three bucks a month, become a member, suggest films for us to watch.

Like... The imitation game. The imitation game. That's one. That's one? I for... The imitation game, get it? I'm imitating.

It's the fucking... That's what the movie is. 90 minutes of that. It's yeah. No, no, what it really is is the 2014 Oscar nominated hit the imitation game about the life of British. Mathematician par excellence code maker, code breaker, code mover and shaker. Daddy of AI. That's what I called. Alan Turin, by the way.

Every time you hear, yeah, it's Alan Turin. Every time you hear Grok made another porn deep fake, you can thank this guy. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow. Movie doesn't dwell on that. No. So much is more about his life during World War II as a preeminent codebreaker. Yes.

And also about homosexuality and the masks we wear and, you know, all of these things. Yeah, like repercussions too of post-World War II and deep set homophobia. There's no dick in it if you're watching for that. No, this isn't heated rivalry, okay? This is cinema. This is an art piece, okay? You go beat off to hockey players over there. No dick in this one.

You're welcome. Have you watched Heated Rivler? No, that's about what it's about, though, right? You beat off. I don't, yeah. I would. I would, perhaps I should say I would beat off watching that. Am I crazy? No?

Yeah, no. Anyway. Did not beat off watching the imitation game. And you're welcome to not beat off with us over at Kio-hyfi.com slash vinerceded of me. It's a video podcast. Mitchell's there. You're not selling it.

shit out of this. Okay? Let me close. Pipe down and let me close. All right. We agreed I would take the lead of this negotiation. Coffee.com. K-O-S-I.com.

That's right. Hands off your genitals. No jerking off to this one. Hands up. Hands up. Yeah, I want to see everybody's hands in the air, okay? No hidden messages. Unless you're a codebreaker.

Right. That's what you should come and watch and enjoy. Yeah. I'm excited to hear what you think. Oh, I'm excited to say what I think and hear what you think. Cool. What I'm most looking forward to you is the story that you have to share with me. What have you brought to the table today?

Well, I just have a few little snippets, a few little insights into a relatively brief history of women shaven their head, baby. Okay, cool. How fun. That's a fun topic, very topical. Then I thought, you know, I'd be thinking a lot about hair and chopping it and what it means. You're in your Erica Badu kind of moment. Yes, exactly, exactly. Got you.

Because we know that hair is power. It's in the Bible, so it's true. Everything in the Bible is true. Everything in the Bible. Corinthians Something Something says, like, women should like never cut their hair. Yeah. So, oops. Oops, oops, doopsy.

I think that translation was. done incorrectly, obviously. But hair. The hair. Samson and Delilah. Samson and Delilah. Yes. Samson and Delilah. I almost said David and Goliath, but I caught myself. Samson and Delilah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hair is power. So says the Bible. And we've seen, too, in our own podcasting ways, how hair is power. I mean, I already mentioned it. My brother already brought her up, but Shnade O'Connor. She iconically buzzed her head to give a big FU to the music industry and it really did something. Worked? Yeah, it worked. It was very iconic, very iconic. Yes. It's so much so that any,

we'll caveat maybe white lady who buzzes her hair, shnade question mark. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But we'll pull back a little bit and I'll note to that head shaving for women through the ages through humanity, right? That's a big, that's a big one. We're not going to get it all. So we're setting the table. We're setting the table and we're lowering the bar. A quick flyover of human history should catch us up to where we need on this subject.

I got it. I got it. So what was going on back in Mesopotamia? Take me there. Right. Okay. Well, in Egypt, we'll start in ancient Egypt. Sure.

Great. Pretty much men and women nearly across the board would work very, very, hard to be hairless, completely hairless. Oh. In tombs and like in, you know, all the excavations that they've done, archeologically speaking. Yes. Aerodynamic.

Exactly. Exactly. A bunch of twinks. Exactly. A bunch of twinks. Well, part of it is like before there was, you know, widespread plumbing and running water. You didn't want poo poo in your bum hair.

I get it. I totally get that. That makes perfect sense. Yes. It's true. It's very true. And so there was a lot of time and effort put into removing hair because that was seen as the most hygienic method of being in the world. So that was, again, for men and women. And anytime somebody did appear with hair, and that's when I say appear for our purposes, it's like in depictions, hieroglyphics, the mummy starring Brendan Fraser, ritualist. They're doing they're making a new one. You heard this. Oh, did I? I didn't hear it. Oh, they're making a new one with him and her.

Oh, my. I just re-watched the old one. Great film, The Mummy. Aw. What an adventure. Like, it hits all of the, like, Egyptology. Raining locusts. Yeah, all of it.

A bunch of shit in there. It's so good. Benny. Yeah. Scarabes. Right. Yes. Oh, scarabs under the skin.

Love it. Love it. The scene where they fly the plane into Emoetep's mouth and he's a sandstorm. Yeah. You know, that's good shit. It's so good. But anytime somebody is depicted as, in the mummy where with hair, it's typical that they were wearing a wig. And that is not exclusive

to the Egyptian ancient world. Mesopotania, other places most likely had a very similar relationship to hair because hair was hard to keep clean when you don't have a lot of water around. So hygienically speaking, shaver off. Twink it up. Yeah. Twink it up. On the Nile. Twink it up on the Nile. I'm really selling it. Now I'm really doing it. For women and head shaving around the world, around. It's funny. It's around. It's funny. Heads around, you know? Sure. No, yeah, I got it. I got that. I went there. Wow. She's breaking all the rules. She's breaking all the rules. She's a rebel. What a rebel. Head shaving has meant different things in different cultures through different eras. In some cultures, India, after typically a man has died, a husband or a father,

it was very customary for a widow to shave her head or even to shave her head upon being married. Because it was like the seduction and the femininity of long flowing tresses was no longer available to her, culturally speaking. If you think about hairstyles in Africa through the ages, having a shaved head for women is really not uncommon. It's much more of a styled choice than in what. Western societies where women are shaving their head. It's less of a style choice, we'll say,

until more recent. But in Africa, through the ages up until now, like... Because who needs to deal with all that, man? Come on. It's hot. Again, water. Yeah, yeah. And again, wigs. If you feel like hair, the wigs right there, you know? Wow. This is good. I should sell wigs in a week's store is what you're saying. You know, I might buy one or two. Oh, there you go. How about three or four? And if you buy four, you should have a fifth. I'll buy an in-law wig. Can I get my mother-in-law's hair created into a wig and then just wear that around her? That is so fucked up and strange.

I think it would work, though. It might. Josie, you look great. You look beautiful lately. Okay. I'm going to kind of fast forward a little bit, and we're going to find ourselves in post-revolution France. So the late 1700s, after the French Revolution, which, as we know, was a total, like, turnover of societal standards. If you think of Marie Antoinette claiming let them eat cake.

What, she didn't. Which she didn't. Exactly. But this whole, like, very rich and very wealthy, very stylized and very intricate society, top, top of the top society in France. was overturned and a big symbol of the French Revolution, the guillotine. So after the French Revolution, when things were starting to like, trying to heal, it was very common that men would adopt a hairstyle called hair a la victim. Hair of the victim, also known as guillotine hair.

You know, it's so odd how our social circumstances can so, like, directly, influenced trans it's I'm fascinated I haven't heard of it no no carry on okay so in the practice of guillotining you know thousands upon thousands of aristocrats and the French Jesus yeah yes it was RIP RIP 4-1-0 yeah yeah then and Betty Broadbandman exactly all the good die young all the good die it's 78 yeah 78 years young so it was customary to cut the hair off of somebody who was about to be guillotined so that the blade had a fresh and clean pathway to slice your head off. And to be fair, like, you don't want, like, a big, thick 18th century braid in the way of that, right? Like, just like that. Oh, God. Oh, this is

stressing me out. I hope not to know. I hope not to have to make these decisions. Here's hoping, right? Here's hope in the revolution. Tell me that's not why you cut your hair. No, no. So it was a very quick and short chop of the hair, right? Like just like very shag, like, boom, vhm. Like Catherine Zeta Jones in Chicago? Yeah. Well, not as like clean as that. Like that's a pretty like tight little bob.

Okay. This was a shaggy kind of wolf cut vibe, if you will. That's cute. Yeah, it was kind of cute, actually. I mean, it probably wouldn't be cute if you were like headed up to the guillotine. No one was probably like, I like that haircut. That's kind of cute. You know, maybe we should try that.

What ended up happening is that after the French Revolution, and you can imagine, if it's thousands of aristocrats, there's a lot of people who knew these people. Either they were family or friends. And so a way to honor their death. Memorial haircut. Memorial haircut. And I know you're smiling down on me from heaven.

Like so many friends, we've lost along the world. That's what we're getting at, right? Yeah, that's it. You've nailed it, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Pretty dark, pretty kind of French. It feels very French to me.

I love it. Yeah, very French. Yeah. Smoking a cigarette. Yes. Apparently, there's also ties to the way, because style always kind of comes in these very organic ways, because it's individual choices, right? But there were men who adopted the haircut first

to kind of approach like a warrior. haircut, like a Roman soldier haircut. So sometimes the same haircut on men is referred to as the Titus cut, referring to the Roman soldier Titus. And it is kind of remarkable, especially because in this era, right before the revolution, like, hairstyles were really elaborate. You needed very long hair to like get everything up there. Stupidly so. Yes. No, that shit is idiotic. You've fucking, and again, wigs. Pin that shit. Just do. Do what Josie did, honestly. And then just fucking glue a wig on your head that has a fucking bird cage in it and 10 sparrows.

Done. You know? We're done. That's what you do that for. Yeah. Chuck some powder on that bitch. Have your lady in waiting do so? Boom.

And apparently when this style was very popular in the late 1700s, it would often see the women who wore it also wearing a red choker to signify. That's hot. That's fucking hot. The slice of the gillotine. Oh, fuck yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

That's edgy. Stop. That's... I know. That's very sexy and weird and dark and morbid. Right. Yeah, very French. It was in style for about 30 years or so following the French Revolution.

And then the Napoleonic situation took hold. And then we came back to these very elaborate hairstyles. Everything kind of reset, right? The French Revolution kind of, oh, now we have a dictator in power. Oh, women are more subject to. Oh, Napoleon. Oh, Napoleon. Napoleon.

Yeah, yeah. But it is kind of extraordinary to think of women at that time having these short haircuts that were not universally accepted. They were seen as like not being feminine enough or not being respectable or not being accepted. Same bullshit for fucking the entire course of human history. Because that's the thing. This is what drives me.

May I? May I? You may. You may. Yes. This is what drives me nuts. Is that like, yeah. You're like, it seems very daring and radical.

And I'm like, yeah, except that you gave me examples from like many cultures and thousands of years before of the same shit kind of like, it's entirely subjective and social, right? Yes. And the notion that women like had never had short hair prior to a certain period in history is not true. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's enforced. It's totally enforced.

This is what I mean. Anyway, as you were, please, please, go ahead. But part of that, to pull off of that too is that hair and long, love. luscious locks were always, and to a degree, still seen as like a marking characteristic of femininity. It's like she got those hormones going and that hair is shiny and long and curly and whatever, right? And so it gets tied to that in a very clear way that like hair equals femininity, but only hair in certain places. Yeah, in certain ways that are acceptable at like as, And they change.

And we'll let you know when they change because we'll start being meaner to you. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I know I was at the drugstore today and I went to buy some razors and there was like cute little like freely advertisements like hair free happy and hair free and da da da da da da. And like with my newly shorn head, I was like, that's a weird advertisement actually to like because hair. What? Like where do you want my hair? Yeah. Right?

Like, be more specific. Yeah. No, good. That's, that's astute, dude, honestly. Your newest banger since you observed that Kelona is a large earls. Yeah. I stand by that. No, you should.

You should. You should. I'm just saying that that was, that was your last, like, really piercing observation in my head. Like, 10 out of 10, like, wow, I hadn't thought about that. Yeah. But you're right. Same thing here. Same thing here.

Okay, good, good, good. I'm glad. I'm very glad. And that power of where someone is told to have hair and where they're not told to have hair, we can trace that in a lot of different ways because removing women's hair, the symbol of their femininity and fertility, has also been not a moment of empowerment, but also a moment of victimization and taking away power, right? Yeah, shame, shame, shame. Yeah. I mean, we can see that with Joan of Arc, another French girlie.

I mean, she had her hair shorn cut like a man's. French girly turned a bar. Yeah, French girly turned a bar. Oh, you're smoothed over her story only slightly. Only slight, but that is fair. She was French and she was a diva. So the rest of it is all just window dressing. Yeah, really, yeah, yeah.

But she had cut her hair to look like the rest of her army. So a man's haircut, there was like a little page boy, you know, beep, burp. And then right before she was burned at the stake, they did shear her hair as a form of punishment. Which you can very iconically see in like many iconic films about Joan ofark. Yeah. But I came across this story that I had never heard of or this moment in history. After the end of the Second World War throughout Europe, but in particular in any country occupied by the access powers, so German occupation.

There were women who, after the war ended, were rounded up. Yeah, I know this one, yeah. Okay, so you do. And they were deemed without due process to have what they called horizontal collaboration with the enemy, with Nazis. And without due process, they were typically stripped to their underwear and in very public spaces, their hair was forcibly shaped off their heads. Right. Right. So you're familiar with this, though. In the context of another story, one of the subjects that's interested

me in some time and that I might do an episode on, I might not, it just depends, is, what's her name, Hanoi Hanna, and then other people like her. So sort of like, big name women propagandists of a certain, like, um, GI your country is lying to you, surrender now, radio station type of variety. And in the context of that, I learned a bit about, like, okay, what happened to the women who were accused of collaborating with the Nazis, for example, which includes what you're talking about. Yeah.

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I'm excited for that, whenever that comes around. I should do an episode on that. Maybe think about that, yeah. So in Europe, where this happened, again, in the countries that were occupied by Nazi Germany, one of the most documented countries was actually France. And part of that is that American press were there and taking photos.

They had been occupied for almost five years. So it was a very long time that they were under occupation. So there was a lot of women who have their heads shaved. They can trace about 20,000 women throughout France who experienced this. But it wasn't routinely documented. Again, there was no due process. There wasn't a form that you had to fill out after the haircut. Yeah, yeah.

No photo with a number. No. And, you know, in gosh, in a year or so, you might not. be recognizable as having suffered this. Right. But for those months or so after liberation, these women carried this mark with them. And generally speaking,

it was any woman who was suspected of sleeping with a German. And that meant like any woman who was forced to sleep with German shoulders, any woman who felt that her safety, you know, in other layers of forced, you know what I mean? Like there's a lot of ways that you can feel forced to sleep with a soldier who has a gun. and is occupying your country. Absolutely.

Yeah. And then that even includes women who had consensual romantic relationship, German soldiers. And it includes prostitutes who were doing it for money. And you have to think, too, in an occupied country during wartime, all the men were away fighting. There was probably quite a few women who decided, you know what? I'm going to feed my kids. So I'm going to sleep with that guy. And then after the war, like literally after D-Day, these women were rounded up in these

big crowds and were publicly shamed. The shift of power is always telling, right? Mm-hmm. I guess. I think that there are some aspects of human nature, perhaps, humans in big groups being one of them. Yeah. It's not like I'm like, oh, I judge people who were frustrated by the occupation, the Nazi

occupation. That's not what I'm saying either. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. That's tough. There's a professor of anthropology at Tulane University. Her name is Adeline Marie Masquier.

And writing about this specific time in history, and I should note that they go by a few different names, but one of them is Les Fem Tondeux, so the shaven women of France. And so this professor of anthropology, she writes, shaving of women's heads seems to have been the first act of purging nearly everywhere.

It accompanies arrests, shootings, sometimes replaces them. There was no national directive to shave the heads of female collaborators, but the practice was universally tolerated, even encouraged on the grounds that without actually spilling blood, it provided a, quote, unquote, useful outlet for the anger and desire for vengeance that so many felt. A folk punishment. Exactly. Yeah. A folk punishment event for our aggression that is probably more rightly directed toward Hitler, but we don't have access to that right now,

so. Yeah. So women. So let's do women, you know. There were men who collaborated with Nazis, and they were not subjected to this same public shaming. Of course, in the years following in the Nuremberg trials, many of these people were exposed and tried and given due process. But the fact that this initial knee-jerk response was like, women, let's take it out on women. Let's get rid of this aggression by this public shaming. By pointing at somewhere socially acceptable, e.g. sex workers. Yeah. You know, something like this.

And promiscuous women and women who we have perceived to have behaved demorally. Yeah. Well, and this idea, too, that, like, the female body is emblematic of nationhood, right? Because they can produce the population. Yeah, that old chestnut, eh? Yeah, which you see in Nazi Germany all the time, right? Oh, they loved that. Blonde women?

Yeah. Oh. Yeah. And apparently this did happen after, World War I, to a smaller extent, in Germany, when German women were seen or deemed to have slept or had relations with non-Aryan men. After World War I, there was a similar kind of shearing events. But it wasn't always just this, I mean, still traumatic and still very painful, but like our professor of anthropology notes, bloodless. Like, there is no direct

death that's coming from this. Trauma is the blood of the soul. Yeah, exactly, yeah. But in other occupied countries like Norway, the treatment of women who were deemed to have had this horizontal collaboration was worse in that many of them were arrested and not given due process and some of them were kicked out of the country. They lost their citizenship. In 2018, the Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg at a conference about the Universal Declaration of human rights gave a formal apology.

She explained that this was unconstitutional. It did not follow a universal declaration of human rights. It was socially unjust. And she says, quote, the treatment these women received is clearly unacceptable. On this basis, I would like to apologize on behalf of the government for the way the Norwegian authorities treated girls and women who had relationships with German soldiers during World War II. Wow.

This apology has been a long time coming, end quote. How do you feel about the national apology for the atrocity? Like in general as a genre? How about this? Are you as cynical about it as I am? I know it's often really an important step for like the relevant communities. Yeah. As like a gay Canadian, I'm pretty sure I've gotten a couple of national apologies by this point.

Yeah. I never can figure out what it means though because like you get a certain government in, for example. Uh-huh. And they'll just roll all that back, right? Yeah. And then what? I guess we'll just apologize again later, right? Yeah.

Or not? That's such a big part of Canadian current, you know, recent history. The Truth from Reconciliation Council, like... To do with our indigenous population. Right. Yeah. It starts from a place of like apologizing for the wrongdoing. But again, I agree with you.

I have a similar skepticism because apologizing, truly apologizing, means you don't do it again. And then it happens again and again and again. But then it happens again, but like it's different people too, just under the veil of Canada or the United States. But like a government changes at the whims of its citizens, a democracy, right, until it's not. I mean, what was it? It was like a week before the 2020 election. President Biden apologized, did a similar apology to the Native Americans of the U.S. for the treatment delivered by the U.S.

And it was just like a little drop in the pond because then the next week was like, okay, here's this election. And we just voted in, like you say, a whole other region. regime who is totally uninterested in any type of thing like this. Yeah. The opposite. The opposite. In every way. Yeah. People. People, man. Suck. Dick. Yeah. And not in a good way. Not in the fun way, though. In the bad way. In an unfun way. Bad head. Bad head. Yeah, that kind of is the story of la Femme Tondeux, the shorn d'é, the shorn women of France. Yeah. But there are ways that shaving your head is a woman.

in this day and age is a positive thing. It is taking back some of that power. If shaving somebody's head against their wishes is such an act of trauma and traumatization, then doing it yourself is reclaiming that in a very strong way. Consent is key, as we always think and say. Yeah. Which brings us to Grace Jones, because fuck yeah. Oh, the best.

Love me some Grace Jones. What an icon. What a singular kind of striking beauty. Oh, man. And an interesting character and all of it. I didn't realize this, but her father was a Pentecostal preacher. Like, she came from no dance, no singing, no makeup. Footloose rules.

Footloose rules. Yeah. She came from the town and footloose, but like transplanted it to Jamaica. And that's where she's from. Yeah. There I see it now. Absolutely no music that wasn't played in church was allowed in her house. household. It was like a no dancing, no jewelry, no pants for girls kind of household. Oh, you cannot keep

greatness down though. No. You know what I mean? Like you- You cannot keep Grace Jones down. And also, and also, again, the more of a taboo we offer something, the more intrigued we are by it, right? Exactly. You know what happens if you keep dance away from like somebody for their entire life and then they encounter dance? They'll be like, what is this intoxicating body movement? Exactly. My hips. I feel my hips. You know? that's how that goes. Yeah, exactly. That was my Grace Jones. How was that?

That was nice. That was good. Gosh, darn it, my hips are moving. It's like Nixon, Grace Jones. Grace Jones, as played by like Wilfred Bridley, you know? It should be done. It needs to be done. So when she was 14, she moved with her parents.

Well, her parents were already in Syracuse, New York. So she followed them, and she grew up in upstate New York, tinkering her way down to New York City. And at 18 years old, she walked into a New York City modeling agency and all five foot nine of her and just gorgiosity. And they were like... She's only five foot nine? She's such a tall presence.

I know, yeah. I'm five foot nine, to be clear. No hate on five foot nine. I got that wrong. Damn. Well, she's always in heels. We both take Grace Jones in bare feet then. That's crazy.

In bare feet, but is Grace Jones ever in bare feet? I feel like she's always been fucking killer. fucking heels. A large boot. Yes, yes, a nice platform. A large slouchy platform boot. Yeah. So these modeling agencies would take a glance at all

five feet, eight inches of her and say, I don't think so. There's no way I can sell you. She was often told that her skin was too dark, that her features were too sharp and bad take. Masculine. Oh no. This incredibly striking woman with really distinctive skin and features. How will we ever sell her as a model? Yeah, exactly.

In the late 60s during this time, she just turned 18 or so. She shaved off her hair. She shaved her head. It was a pretty radical move, especially if you think about her Pentecostal upbringing, but even just in the modeling world, that was not really a thing that was seen. It's a popular move. From her memoir titled... Oh God, Amazing Grace. No. Damn it! Okay, what do we got? Her memoir titled, I'll never write my memoirs. That's funny, yeah.

Yeah, that's pretty cute. Of shaving her head, she wrote, quote, it 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. End quote. Ooh.

Yeah. Who? I know. So New York wasn't having her. So what do you do when New York does? and have you, you moved to Paris. Oh, way. In Paris, again, all the big modeling agencies were kind of like, we don't, uh, nuh, uh,

but Paris had a burgeoning underground fashion scene at the time in the early 70s. So she was doing her thing, figuring it out in these secret venues and being gnarly. Where the cool shit happens. It's where the cool shit happens. Right. She shared a flat in Paris with two other American models who weren't. getting traction in the U.S., just like her, moved to Paris. Jerry Hall and Jessica Lang. Okay, wow. What an apartment of greatness. I know. So what an apartment with a gorgeous.

A future. Yeah, right? Grace Jones took the underground fashion scene by Storm, obviously, and she started to get more and more jobs and bigger and bigger jobs. And finally, it was Vogue and Louis Vuitton. You know, all the major labels wanted her on their runways. And she was, as reported by the industry, not very easy to work with. If she did not like the clothes, she brought her own clothes. She did her own makeup. She was like... Ew.

You saved money. You saved money. Apparently she would get to these shoots and just direct herself, essentially. To be clear, I get why that's like annoying. Yeah, yeah. Listen, lady, we hired you to like wear the watch and point it at the camera. Yeah. Not to like get on a treadmill and look.

much sexier than what we had planned. Strike this very like architectural pose. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I get that. I do get that. According to one fashion photographer who worked with her at this time, they said, you didn't direct Grace Jones.

You just capped up. That's funny. I really like that, too. After she got her stuff going, she moved back to New York. It was big in the fashion world and very big in Studio 54. This was her scene. Yeah. I think about her in like a series.

New York nightclub when I think of Grace Jones. Yes, yes. Talking to like a handful of absurdly dressed game in. Yeah, no, that's it, exactly. Yeah. And she would perform. She would perform at Studio 54. And that's when she started getting really into singing.

So she signed with a record label in 1977. And the thing that kind of like that got her popularized as a singer was she did her own rendition of La Vie and Rose by Edith Pia. Oh, cool. Yeah, which is very cool. She continued to perform at Studio 54, and she would do these, like, wild shows that were all cocaine-fueled. Keith Herring would, like, paint her on stage. Yeah, no, that sounds right. That feels right. That feels right, yeah. A lot of cocaine. This is what I'm talking about. This is what Grace Jones is doing in my head. Keith Herring's painting her on a stage in, like, the village, you know? She is known for being outspoken and being very direct. There was at one point when she appeared on the Russell Hardy show, which was like a talk show.

He had like multiple people on. And at one point he's talking to her and he turns his back to her to talk to another guest. And she like, it's not to like go tap his shoulder, but it's like a whack across the back of his neck. Fuck yeah. Don't turn your back on the. Wolfback bitch. Yes, exactly. Do not turn your back on Grace Jones.

And she's like, I think she kind of starts like batting at him. It's not like, it's not aggressive, like scratching or anything like that. But it is like for live television, it is very like. It's bold. It's a bold move. Yes, yes. And she says like, you're talking to me. Look at me when you're talking to me.

Like she's like, she was really aggressive. Get his ass. In her memoir looking back on it, she was like, I think I was probably just on drugs. don't really know what was happening, but, eh, who among us? See, I had forgotten she was on a bunch of blow, I was right there with her. Right, yeah, yeah.

Make that man turn around and acknowledge you. Fuck yes. And she's like, listen, I was on so much fucking blow, you guys. Which is great. She was banned for life from performing at Disneyland. What did she do?

What did she do to Mickey? She exposed her. breasts. Those kids have to learn somewhere. You know, and we're better. A beautiful model. Yeah, come on. Slow up there.

Come on, you're really going to. Exactly. Exactly. Get them out. Ben for wife for performing. Was she doing? Like, where was she? Where was this?

It was Disneyland, Anaheim. Tomorrowland. Like, no, no, I want like the district. Are we talking like, um, Thunder Mountain Railroad? I don't. I can't. The Matterhorn.

Where are we talking? I would imagine in front of the Disney castle, like it's a small world situation. Wow. Yeah. That's fucking sick. So cool. If I had the time machine and I could only use it one time, I would go back to the Disneyland performance where Grace Jones gets her rack.

I'm just saying. Reflecting back on it, she was like, I was just really feeling the music. I did what came naturally to me. And that was what came naturally. Yes. Get them off. Dude, coaked out Grace Jones talks a lot of sense. I'm sorry.

I think at this point she was sober. She had gone through a few. Oh, all the better. Then all the better. She also performed for the Queen's Jubilee in 2012. Queen wants to see the girls. Fuck yeah. Get them out.

She had a very structural dress for the performance. But for her performance, she sang a popular song of hers, Slaved to the Rhythm, while hula-hooping, four minutes straight. hula hooping and singing the song. What a choice. In 2012, she was 64 years old. 64 years old and hula hooping for four minutes straight. That's crazy.

But she had probably like that yoga core or something, you know? It's insane. It's insane. Dude, that's so, so take me there with the hula hooping. I want more details. Is this, is this like a fancy silver, like, it's part of a stage performance to loop, or is this like, she went to the ASDA before the show? And she got like a yellow one and a red one and a blue one.

And they have like a marble in them that's going like, well, she does it. You're like, take me there. Okay, it was, uh, her dress was like a sequined black and red and the Hulu Hoot matched the dress. She's so iconic. She's so good. She's so good. She's good.

There are other moments in recent history where women have shorn their locks as well. We text on Shnate O'Connor. We know that story well. Listen to... Episode number 62, Fight the Real Enemy. And the music execs were like, hey, we think you should grow your hair really long and wear short skirts and be really pretty. And she was like, uh, hold that thought. She left the building, went around the corner to the barbershop.

It was just like... Yeah. But as we learned in episode 62, Fight the Real Enemy, a lot of her decisions and a lot of the way she moved had to do with her upbringing. like for any of us, right? But one of the things that she mentions when she talks about shaving her head is that her mother was very, very into the way that her and her sister looked. In particular, her sister had this gorgeous red hair and her mother never saw it as gorgeous because she saw Shanade as the pretty one, quote unquote.

And so being deemed the pretty one, Shanade wasn't interested in that, whether it was from her mother or from people who wanted to make money. off of her, or another reason she gives for shaving her head is from the unwanted male attention. Yeah. All of that kind of built together so that early in her career, she shaved her head and then she never really let it grow long ever again. That was kind of her iconic look. She had a couple of like pixie cuts in there for like a half a minute, but other than that, not really much longer. Certainly never like shoulder length or anything like this.

Which is a, it's an interesting idea that to shave your head is a way. to like, not a quote, but like, to look ugly. Like I think 2007, Britney Spears shaves her head. Right. Yeah, that's true. That was big. That was really big. And I think it was kind of similar veins happening between Sheneid and Brittany with that because the larger population was like, what's wrong with them? There's something wrong. And that became the narrative was like they're rejecting all of these beauty standards because they're unwell versus like they're rejecting these. beauty standards because they've been imposed so forcibly upon them. I mean, Britney Spears was asked by

a photographer, a paparazzi, who was photographing her after she shaved her head. He said, why did you do it? And she answered, because of you. Get him. Get him. Yes. Get him. You get a rip on his throat. That was good. Good answer. And apparently when she was having her head shaved, she told the stylist, she was tired of everybody touching her. her, which... I get that. To shave your head is probably not the best idea, though, because everybody wants to, like, go and, like, rub your head. She didn't think that part of it through, but yes. Yeah. But, you know, she meant, like, you know, primping and prepping. And this was after she had had her two boys. And it seemed as though she wanted to have some more autonomy. Obviously, she wanted more

autonomy. And she was due that right. But I think she felt like, hey, I have these two boys. Like, I'm a mother. Like, I have a say in what happens to me and my boys. And as we know from all the conservatorship situation, everybody in her life just said, no, you don't have any standing in your life. You have no way to make these decisions. Gosh, that must be really frightening. Terrifying. And when all of the conservatorship trials were going, it was very much in the news. Her father and her family trying to still lord over her business and what she was doing with her time and with her money.

A lot of supporters of Brittany, free Brittany movement, they would publicly also shave their heads. Right, right. You remember that? Interesting. Interesting times. Yeah. And we also see this kind of like protest head shaving happening in 2022. Do you remember the death of 22-year-old Masa Amini?

She was an Iranian woman who was taken into custody by. Iran's morality police? Yes, I do. Yes, I remember this now. Yes. I was in L.A. for a wedding and there was a big protest, like this, you know, like parade protest that was happening at the time. But she was essentially abducted by this morality police because her hijab was too loose, so her hair was showing through it. The Iranian government said all women must wear a hijab. And if they don't wear one in public, it's as good as them being naked. So it's like an indecency. Yeah. Pretty rough. Yeah.

And she was taken into custody and she was never released because she supposedly suffered a heart attack. But the family never got to see her body, not until very late in the process. And there was no investigation, like there was no third party investigation of what happened. They erupted these huge protests in Iran about the dictatorship and about this morality police and like enforcement of these laws. And one of the ways that many women protested it was shaving their heads in public. Wow. Was saying, like, we don't care about your beauty standards at all. Wow.

If you don't want to see our hair, find them. We're going to shave it off. Like that kind of. Interesting. Yeah. Amelia Bedelia. The situation. Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what they were calling it on CNN. Yeah. When I heard about it. Yeah. Yeah.

The scholarship these days. Yes, is surrounding that, yeah. Which it is pretty wild to think about, and this was something that Michal and I discussed before I, you know, buzzed my head, was like the power in taking away your hair, if it makes so many people uncomfortable, that is an insane amount of power that you wield. I'm not saying everybody has to shave their head

or like all women identifying folks should shave their head. The power to not conform is powerful. Exactly. Or if you're looking at Le Femmondeau. ton de, then it's this like reappropriation of this punishment. To do it with your own consent and your own way makes it so powerful too. And like, and even even further than that, Joan of Arc, right? Yeah, exactly.

And I think there's another layer of the head shaving scenario for women identifying folks is that there is kind of this layer of like, are you ill? Are you ill? Yeah. Are you gay now? Yeah. I mean, everyone's gay. So there's that.

Are you a skinhead? Yes. Yes. Yeah. And I had actually this experience today. I ran to my landlord and two years ago, I know my landlord had breast cancer. She had to shave her head because her hair was falling out from her chemo treatments. And, you know, I saw her today and she was like, oh, wow.

Wow. Okay. And I like, I didn't quite know how to talk to her about it because I knew that she had done something similar, but not by choice. and what that means. It helped too that there was another person there. So I was like talking to like both of them. Right. And the other woman was like, wow, you really have the balls to do that.

Which I was like, yeah, I guess so. I guess I do. And I did, I waffled a little bit. I was kind of like, I've always wanted to do it. So I just went ahead and did it. And I was like, I don't know how long I'll keep it, but I'm glad I've done it. I think you have to make any decisions. Right.

And yeah, yeah. don't know how long I'll keep it, but it definitely is a lot easier than any other hairstyle I've had. And it's something you can say that you've done, right? Yeah. Yeah. And like the fucking Houston heat, man, it's going to be so nice. Hey now. Yeah. Hey now. Hey now. Hey now. You know? Yeah. Yeah. That's what they say. They tell you not to dream too, by the way. I do it anyway. Fuck. Dream away. Fuck. Fuck. But that interaction of like a woman who has. who had to do it, who didn't have full consent to do it, versus me who had like, you know,

it was a total choice of mine. Like, I think there's just so much power in having a choice of what you want to do with. Consent is sexy. The way you look, with what you do, with how you talk, with how you move through the world. Customize the avatar. Fuck yeah. And that's what's important. And I think for women identifying folks being able to shave all your hair off as a choice,

is a way to kind of exercise that and to, you know, like, see how it feels. Like, literally, like, see how your scalp feels. Yeah, sensory things. Yeah. Yeah, that's really cool. I was like, are there any weird tattoos that I don't know about up there? Scars? No of that.

Great time to figure out if you have really bad dandruff, too. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I've had bad, not maybe not bad, but I've had dandruff. I used to have really wicked dandruff, and I've since started using head and shoulders as well as another kind of, I do two shampoos, one head and shoulders, another dandruff killing shampoo, and then I condition, and then sometimes I put hyalor on it, plumber on it, and I've started doing crow cream. So I have a little root. Just as you're going very low maintenance, I've

suddenly changed and got very high maintenance. Yeah, because you do like a t-shirt curl. It's the curly girl method. You take, sorry to hijack your, your bald podcast from a hair podcast, but what you do is, what you do is if you've got hair that is like kind of half wavy, curly, half-straight, shaggy, you secretly have curly hair and you're probably just not taking care of it, right? Yeah, yeah. Which is what I didn't know until Muhammad told me. What you do is you go, you condition. You get shampoo of course, but you're going to want a condition.

And when you rinse it out, you're going to come out. And rather than towel drying your hair, you're just going to take like a cotton t-shirt. You want just like soft cotton, not abrasive cotton. What I do is I like to take like a really soft t-shirt, put my hair in it up and then tie the arms kind of around it. So it just makes the first step of a t-shirt turban if you weren't as lazy as I. It's more of a t-shirt habit. Okay, okay, okay.

Nice. Like a nun's habit, but a t-shirt. And then you take it out and you have like really kind of like gorgeous, luscious, beautiful curls. And even better if you want to preserve those curls during the day, you just take a little bit of curl cream, massage it in when it's damp. And you'll look like, you'll be like, damn, I didn't know my hair actually looked like this. I didn't know I was a curly girl this whole time. Yeah, yeah, apparently I'm a curly girl. Anyway, that was breaking news from the curly girls.

Back to the Ball Bitch podcast with Josie. It does feel wild, like, in the pool. Because I just, I didn't think about the sensitivity of my. scalp. No, there's nerve endings up there. Yeah, who knew? That is wild. Oh, yeah, no, that's like the first, other than, like, the potentially, like, depersonalization, if you're, like, really tied to your hair or something that can be, like, kind of confronting. Yeah. But, like, other than that, it's, like, entirely a sensory getting used to that. Yeah. Because you're like, oh, I felt a breeze. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I know, and I, uh, I am wearing more hats

and not necessarily to cover up my hair, but just because it's like, I don't want that shit to get sunburn. Like, I. SPF, SPF, SPF, I got to do it. But also, like, it's a little chilly, so maybe a little hat. Interesting, interesting. And so what were your takeaways then? At the end of the day, what's the moral? What's the moral of the story, Josie?

Oh, we're going back to moral. Well, we were shouting out of Betty Broderick episode. We used to do the moral back of end. Let's do the moral now. In your mind, what do you derive from all of this? What does this tell us about people, about women, about style, about hair? Yeah. I think there are, or I should say in the last week,

Because it's only been a week that I've had this hair. There have been times when I'm like, oh, I don't feel comfortable. Like, I don't know how people are reading me. And I feel like I've maybe lost some of that control. Like, maybe they're reading me as, like, being really aggressive or being sick or, like, Harry Krishna or something like that. Like, I, as my friend Izzy said, she was like, oh, don't worry about that. Just stay away from orange.

Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord. But there are, like, negative associations of, like, shaved heads with, with illness, with racism, with the Holocaust. Yeah. Not that this is a negative thing at all, but if you shave your head short, people would be like, oh, maybe that person is, like, transitioning or they're not a woman or something like this, right? Yeah, yeah. There's a bunch of gender stuff tied up in our hair.

Totally, yeah. And I think it's been really helpful to kind of, like, paw through, you know, a little... a infinitesimally small piece of the history of hair because people have had hair. It's really, really interesting. So it's really, really interesting. And it's also like, you know, one of the facets that I found really interesting, too, is like it's an art form that doesn't really get archived maybe in the same way. A costume designer or like a clothes designer can be shown in a museum. Even the runway stuff can get shown in the museum really easily. While hairstyles and like the art of doing hair, cutting hair or hairstyles in general can't be encapsulated.

in the same way. It is so much more personal and it's so much more powerful in a way and sensual. Yeah. It's to do with like the nerve endings on your scalp. Yeah. Yeah. And lots, yeah, no, I feel that. I feel that. Literally, with the nerve endings. Right. Yeah. So it's this art form that's like really hard to encapsulate. And like most of my sources you'll hear at the end are like kind of fashion magazines and a lot of like retrospectives of fashion. And so they're kind of deemed as like the softer, quote unquote, softer arts or whatever, right? And so kind of looking at it that way was really interesting as like hair is so personal that we can't even the discourse around it is kind of like a little squishy. But also I think especially when I'm thinking of folks like Grace Jones, like who fucking rock it. And there's other women too.

There's a long list of celebrity women who fucking rock it. But it's this idea of. of like owning it. Like if you feel good in the way you look, that's what's important. Because then if somebody doesn't like it, then it's just like, okay, well, not your cup of tea. Moving on. And I think not having the hair that I did have just a week ago, I have to like kind of recalibrate some of those interactions. And I'm realizing more and more that I was kind of like, I wasn't like using my hair

in that way, but like I realized that having hair allowed me to. maybe fit into some spaces that... Blend. Yeah, to blend into some spaces that I don't blend in as much now. Like dinner with the in-laws, really, but like, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, like, how do I, how do I navigate those? Because I don't, like, I don't think a buzzed head is, like, aggressive.

Like, I still think it's feminine and I still feel feminine and I still feel like myself. The answer is really thick makeup. Right, yeah, you just... You just travel on your fucking... that when you got to see those people, whoever they are, you just, you got to look like you just fucking, fucking face planted into a clown factory. You know what I mean? Like that Simpson's the shotgun of makeup?

Yeah, when we shoots Marge with the makeup gun. That's what you need. You need the makeup gun for those occasions. There will be no questioning. The question will not be, is she feminine? It will be, is she a mime? Yes. People will be so curious to get to the bottom of that, they won't even notice.

Yeah, yeah. there it is. I'm having a good time. I think it just takes a little bit more getting used to. And also, like, the people who either, like, don't care or, like, move past it quickly, I'm like, I really like you. You know, like, it's kind of like, hmm, you coo. Let's hang out more. You're not a psycho. You know that sometimes people cut their hair. Yeah. Got it. I have gotten tattoos, like, with less thought than this. And, like, I'm going to have that tattoo for the rest of my life. But for this, it was just like, And I have to say, like, having the tattoo was just like, okay. I mean, I don't have any facial tattoos.

So maybe that, that's the real kicker. Maybe that's next. Maybe that's next. Maybe that's what's coming next. Bitter sweet infamy. Oh. The next day, I'm like, Josie, I think we need to cancel the podcast. We should change names.

Yeah, yeah. The brand just harshly, the stock has plummeted it. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfemy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account. At k-o-fifinfi.com forward slash bittersweet infamy. But no pressure.

Bittersweet infamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing. Leaving a review, following us on Instagram at Bittersweet Infamy, or just. past the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet. The sources that I used for this episode included an article from Dangerous Women, Dangerous Women Project.org. No hair, don't care. Posted January 27th, 2017, written by Chavon Shields. I read an article in The Guardian, an ugly carnival, written by Anthony Beaver, published June 4th, 2009. I looked at excerpts of a thesis entitled Le Femme Tondou,

Understanding Gender Relations in Mishy France, written by Letitia Marguerite-Cressel. This was Wesleyan University, and it was published April 2016. I read excerpts from the book Hair and Justice, Sociolegal Significance of Hair and Criminal Justice, by Carmen M. Cusack. Specifically, I looked at Chapter 4, Head Shaving. I read an article from CNN Style, Shnate O'Connor and the Bald History of the Buzzcut, written by Leah Dolan, published July 28, 2023.

I read the article in CNN World. I ran protests rage as Masa Amini's father says authorities lied about her death. That was written by Jesse Young, Jumana Kharadesha, Ramin Mostagin, and Sahar Aparzai, published September 22nd, 2022. I read excerpts of another thesis, this one written by Jessica Larson at the University of Michigan in the Department of Art History,

entitled Usurping Masculinity, the Gender Dynamics of the Cuffe Alatitis in Revolutionary France. I watched a YouTube video from Dazed, OMG, she's bald, the power of a woman with a shaved head, posted to YouTube June 17th, 2017. I watched another YouTube video

video posted by Beyond the Catwalk entitled How a Supermodel Terrified the entire industry, Grace Jones. Posted to YouTube June 27th, 2025. I read an article in Vogue. Happy birthday, Grace Jones 18 times the fearless pop icon broke the beauty mold, written by Lauren Valentini, published May 19th, 2023. I watched a video uploaded to YouTube by Brute America, A History of the Woman's Buzzcut, posted to YouTube January 21st, 2022. And lastly, an article from the Edinburgh Evening News, Chenate O'Connor, the devastating and dark history behind the Irish singer's shaved head, written by Will Miller, published July 27, 2023. If you are interested in supporting the podcast, we always appreciate it. You can head over to coffee. That's K-O-FI.com slash bittersweet

and it's there that you can become a monthly subscriber. Just shoot us a few bucks. And when you become a monthly subscriber, you have access to the Bitter Sweet Film Club where you tell us the movies to watch and then we talk about them. Not only can you tell us what movies to watch and then we talk about them, but you will join the ranks, the glowing, glittering, sparkling ranks of the Bitter Sweet Film Club monthly subscribers. That's Terry, Jonathan, Lizzie D, Erica Joe, Sof, Dylan, and Sackchel the Cat. go on over there and join them. Bitter Sweet Infamy is a proud member of the 604 podcast network. This episode was edited by me, Josie Mitchell and Taylor Bassow.

The interstitial music you heard earlier was written by Mitchell Collins. And the song you are listening to now is T Street by Brian Steele. Josie, in the many compliments, I'm sure that you've gotten on your makeover, as anyone told you that you look like Luen Platter after the Megalomart exploded, like as a compliment. No. Like, I mean that as a compliment. Okay, wait, I got it.

After the... Mickelow Mart exploded. Images. Oh, yeah. I see it. Because all her hair burned off. Is that right? Am I remember that way?

Yes, yes. Yes, yes. And Buckley died, but that was like, you know... Oh. That was less... But whatever. Who's Buckley? Who gives her shit?

It's Buckley. Isn't that the dog? No, that's Lady Bird. Oh, oh, I was... Buckley was Luann's boyfriend. Oh, who fuck cares about him? Who cares? Who cares?

Lady Bird.