I’ve interviewed women about their relationship with their hair for my podcast with the Future Dreams charity, And Then Came Breast Cancer. Again and again, women told me the same thing: it was nothing to do with being vain.
Nicky Elkington, a hairdresser, told me she was determined not to lose her hair when going through chemotherapy. “It’s not a vanity thing… and I think people think that, but it’s your identity and I didn’t want to look like I had cancer,” she says.
For her, the worst thing anyone could say to her was, “It’s only hair, don’t worry about it”.
School nurse and mother of two, Natasha Anderson, said she loved messing about with her hair while growing up – “one week having a big afro, then having hair extensions,” she remembers.
“It wasn’t just hair, it was my culture.”
Faced with the prospect of losing it through chemotherapy, she asked her brother to shave it off for her.
“I felt liberated when it was being shaved,” she says. “I had taken control of the situation… it was more painful and upsetting seeing it just falling out.”
One of the hardest parts of cancer is how little control you have over any of it – the diagnosis, treatment, or the side effects. For some women, choosing to shave their hair before it falls out becomes a way of taking back a semblance of control in their life.